The Gilded Age


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they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and  
shootings.  
The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary, and  
consisted of nine parts of, the reporter's valuable observations to one  
of Laura's, and it was, as the reporter significantly remarked,  
"incoherent", but it appeared that Laura claimed to be Selby's wife,  
or to have been his wife, that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and  
that she was going to follow him to Europe. When the reporter asked:  
"
What made you shoot him Miss. Hawkins?"  
Laura's only reply was, very simply,  
"
Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?". And she would say no more.  
The news of the murder was made the excitement of the day. Talk of it  
filled the town. The facts reported were scrutinized, the standing of  
the parties was discussed, the dozen different theories of the motive,  
broached in the newspapers, were disputed over.  
During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale over all the  
wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns  
of the Union, from the Atlantic to the territories, and away up and  
down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that  
morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of  
500  


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