Some readers may remember a gruesome little play which was produced by Seymour Hicks some years ago. In it he had betrayed some gang or secret society of which he was a member. He is caught by them, tried and the sentence is passed that death shal] overtake him before he leaves the room. Then the gang file out "ud Seymour Hicks is left to the terrors of apprehension which gradually so work upon him that he finally falls dead of sheer fright. And at that moment the leader of the gang re-enters the room and points significantly at the body. It only remains to say that Seymour Hicks ran this piece for but a very short time. All this apropos of the news that the Nevada State Government has passed a law by which men condemned to death will be put to sleep in what will really be a lethal chamber and at some unknown moment the gas will be turned on The measure is humanely meant ro doubt, but one may imagine that it will act in the very reverse way to whit is intended and that the feelings aroused in the criminal by never knowing what night is to be his last will be far more painful than even the counting of his remaining days. Capital punishment is so terrible a thing, not least because it necessitates the making of certain people executioners, that, so long as death can be as painless as possible, no other mitigation seems practicable.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.