sent me. And this suggests a reason for the large percentage
of cold-blooded killings prosecuted by my friend--namely, that
Mr. Nott being the most astute prosecutor available, the
district attorney, whenever the latter had a particularly
atrocious case, sent it to him in order that the defendant
might surely get his full deserts.

The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; police
officers and citizens were shot and killed by criminals trying
to make "get-aways," and by negroes and others "running
amuck"; despondent young men shot their unresponsive
sweethearts and then either blew out their own brains of
pretended to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with
revolvers, and each killed the other; several men were shot
for being too attentive to young women residing in the same
hotels; an Italian, whose wife had left him and gone to her
mother, went to the house and killed her, her sister, her
sister's husband, his mother-in-law, two children, and finally
himself; the "Gopher Gang" started a riot at a "benefit" dance
given to a widow and killed a man, after which they fled to
the woods and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen
were overpowered and arrested; a young girl and her fiance,
sitting in the parlor, planning their honeymoon, were
unexpectedly interrupted by a rejected suitor of the girl's,
who shot and killed both of them; an Italian who peeked into a
bedroom, just for fun, afterward rushed in and cut off two
persons' heads with an ax--one of them was his wife; a gang of
white ruffians shot and then burned a negro family of three
peacefully working in the fields; a man who went to the front
door to see who had tapped on his window was shot through the