to men and of which God alone knows the secret.

"Gentlemen, I, shall ask you to go with me away from this court room and
its minions of the law, away from the scene of this tragedy, to a
distant, I wish I could say a happier day. The story I have to tell is
of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling
with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a
Mississippi steamboat. There is an explosion, one of those terrible
catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the
survivors. Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity. When the
wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found among the panic
stricken survivors in the midst of a scene of horror enough to turn the
steadiest brain. Her parents have disappeared. Search even for their
bodies is in vain. The bewildered, stricken child--who can say what
changes the fearful event wrought in her tender brain--clings to the
first person who shows her sympathy. It is Mrs. Hawkins, this good lady
who is still her loving friend. Laura is adopted into the Hawkins
family. Perhaps she forgets in time that she is not their child. She is
an orphan. No, gentlemen, I will not deceive you, she is not an orphan.
Worse than that. There comes another day of agony. She knows that her
father lives. Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you. Through
the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic!
If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as
one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks
her father. In vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he
disappears, he is gone, he vanishes.

"But this is only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I
relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly;
crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew