The End of Czolgosz

     Child of yellow journalism and anarchy, the most contemptible being that God ever permitted to breathe the breath of life, Leon F. Czolgosz, the cowardly cur who assassinated President McKinley on September 6, went to his death in Auburn Prison Tuesday morning shortly after 7 o’clock, and by the use of a powerful electrical current of 1,700 volts the earth was made rid of the most loathsome creature it has ever known. There have been dastardly deeds of assassination before, but never one more contemptible, for this being extended his hand in mock friendship and, when it was taken by the president, shot him down. Guiteau’s shooting of Garfield in the back was an awful deed, as was the work of Booth in assassinating Lincoln, but we have not the contempt for them that we have for Czolgosz, who offered one hand in friendship and then dealt murder with the other. With a guard on either side holding his arms to support and steady him he stumbled as he entered the death chamber, and the dispatches say that again, when he reached the little platform upon which rested the death chair, he stumbled. “He was intensely pale and as he tried to throw his head back and carry himself erect his chin quivered very perceptibly.” Czolgosz tried to conduct himself as a martyr, but it was not in him. As he was being seated in the chair he stared at the witnesses and said: “I killed the president because he was an enemy of the good people—of the working people.” At 7:11 he crossed the threshold of the room, at 7:12½ he had been strapped in the chair and the warden gave the signal for the current, and at 7:15, after three applications, the current was turned off for good, and the spirit of Czolgosz had passed out of the body and had gone straight to hell, if there is any such place, as all admit there should be for such creatures.