On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors.  This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children about.  Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun fits.  The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors.  He was piloting a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from.  Undoubtedly that guide knew best.

With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment of England’s most popular and prominent murderers.  The English dearly love a murderer.  Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good spirits to a ripe old age.  Almost any American community of fair size can afford at least two murderers —­one in jail, under sentence, receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his time for going through the same procedure.  But with the English it is different.

We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make an issue of stretching the neck of the veriest nobody.  They will hang almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that.  They do not exactly hang their murderer before they catch him, but the two events occur in such close succession that one can readily understand why a confusion should have arisen in the public mind on these points.  First of all, though, they catch him; and then some morning between ten and twelve they try him.  This is a brief and businesslike formality.  While the judge is looking in a drawer of his desk to see whether the black cap is handy the bailiffs shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box.  A tradesman is generally chosen for jury service because he is naturally anxious to get the thing over and hurry back to his shop before his helper goes to lunch.  The judge tells the jurors to look on the prisoner, because he is going away shortly and is not expected back; so they take full advantage of the opportunity, realizing it to be their last chance.  Then, in order to comply with the forms, the judge asks the accused whether he is guilty or not guilty, and the jurors promptly say he is.  His Worship, concurring heartily, fixes the date of execution for the first Friday morning when the hangman has no other engagements.  It is never necessary to postpone this event through failure of the condemned to be present.  He is always there; there is no record of his having disappointed an audience.  So, on the date named, rain or shine, he is hanged very thoroughly; but after the hanging is over they write songs and books about him and revere his memory forevermore.