a recent humiliation received at the hands of the other
person, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of one's
family, or one's property. But this was too easy an answer to
my friend's question. He wanted and deserved more than that,
and I set out to give it to him.

My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I
sought out the man in the district attorney's office who had
had the widest general experience and put the question to him.
This was Mr. Charles C. Nott, Jr., (now judge of the General
Sessions) who had been trying murder cases for nearly ten
years. It so happened that he had kept a complete record of
all of them and this he courteously placed at my disposal.
The list contains sixty-two cases, and the defendants were of
divers races. These homicides included seventeen committed in
cold blood (about twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary
percentage) from varying motives, as follows: One defendant
(white) murdered his colored mistress simply to get rid of
her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased had
"licked" him several times before; another, having quarrelled
with his friend over a glass of soda water, later on returned
and precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the course of
which he killed him; another because the deceased had induced
his wife to desert him; another lay in wait for his victim and
killed him without the motive ever being ascertained; one man
killed his brother to get a sum of money, and another because
his brother would not give him money; another because he
believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the
Turks; another because he wished to get the deceased out of
the way in order to marry his wife; and another because