Friday, May 18, 2007

Moonshine and Murder

1914

A dispatch recently appeared regarding a maniac now pursuing his murderous career throughout various of the Western States, armed with an ax, which, according to the view of the benighted, he is moved to wield only in the dark of the moon. Why in the dark and not in the light, they do not explain; anyhow, most of his deeds have been accomplished in the absence of the lunar glow, and hence is argued a mysterious connection between that fact and his recurring fits of homicidal insanity.

Every scientist in the land will scout this theory at once, just as they have the theory that the things that grow down should be planted in the dark of the moon, and the crops that grow upward in its light. Some of 'em will admit that crabs fatten under moonlight, but this, they claim, is because they can see better to hustle around for their meals under such conditions. They will further point out, no doubt, that most murderous deeds, and especially those that have been deliberately planned, will be perpetrated when darkness lends a measure of protection to the murderer and removes the same from his victim.

Be that as it may, we still have the poets to fall back on. Didn't Byron say "The devil's in the moon for mischief?" And Othello, who had his own reasons for knowing, could cry:

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont.
And makes men mad.

Which may not have been altogether grammatical, but it is far more convincing than anything the scientists have had to offer up to the hour of going to press.

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