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cool down. I bought a revolver once and travelled twelve hundred miles
to kill a man. He was away. He was gone a day. With nothing else to do,
I had to stop and think--and did. Within an hour--within half of it--I
was ashamed of myself--and felt unspeakably ridiculous. I do not know
what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head was in
a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to upset a
stronger reason than mine.
All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in
that condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a
moment--perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man
was at hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are
that it has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes
exactly at the supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the
world--for sure.
No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously
devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near
the
temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a day--two
days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half
of them; and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from
any of them, no doubt.
It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another
ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind
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