A Poisoned Mind

The confession of Joseph E. Kelley, the wretched young murderer at Somersworth, N. H., shows how a boy can edúcate htmself for his flrst evil deed - and for a career of crime. Kelley was employed In Somersworth and had a room near a bank. He was known as a bright and capable, but rather "tast" youth, and people who gave hlm work were kind enough to overlook the fact that he had once "done time" for taking what was not his own. Being heavily in debt he cast covetous eyes on the money-vaults near him and determined to procure mon'-y the shortest way. On the 16th of last April, at the nopn hour, he entered the bank on a pretended errand, forced his way through the private door, brutally murdered the agad cashier, and made off with several thousand dollars. Very soon he was traced and pursued, and being caught almost "red-handed," confession of his deed was Inevitable. The testimony of neighbors, who knew him from chlldhood in his natlve town of Amesbury, proves that hls story of himself is not a mere swagger for newspaper sensation. Their statement is that "he was an invetérate reader of cheap literatura." "He developed criminal instincts in his early youth." "When very young he was brauded as a thief." His confession follows the same order, and begins with the same explanation. "When I was a little boy I began reading novéis. I read anything and everything I could get, mostly about mysterious crimes. We were pretty wild boys in Amesbury, and I was the wildest of the lot. We were a gang - sometimes there were nine or ten. We took whatever we could lay our hands on." In he "little boy" devouring exciting storles of successful wickedness was shaped the character of the young man who now, at the age of twenty-two, stands in the shadow of the gallows. Charity will plead at his trial the warping effect of a physical injury to his brain, and justice will give such a plea for the unhappy culprit all possible latitude; but it is too sadly probable that the mental and moral poison imbibed in childhood must account for Kelley's viciousness after as well as before the accident of hls youth.