S well look for green peas in March as for sentiment in a Government analyst," says Sergeant Dyce in his autobiography; yet that that phenomenon may occur is proved in the personal reminiscences of the late Professor Ganthony, some extracts only from which have appeared in the public prints. From what remains we are free to select the following passages, in irrefutable testimony to the existence of that verdant spot in the constitution of the great pathologist; and it is with the purpose rather to vindicate their narrator's memory from a charge of moral insensibility, than to recapitulate the evidences in a pretty recent cause célèbre, that the choice is made. The allusion is to what the reader will remember as the Footover Poison-bottle case.
As curious and touching a case as any in my experience, says the Professor, was that of young Langdon. I refer to it particularly, because circumstances brought me into unwonted association with some parties to the affair, and to the knowledge, connected with it, of as strange an instance of youthful clairvoyance as might be related.
Young Harry Langdon was the heir presumptive to the Langdon baronetcy and estates, at that time enjoyed—save the irony of the term—by his great-uncle Sir Hugh Langdon, who was a childless widower and paralytic. The boy was, I understand, a particularly bright intelligent youngster of fourteen at the time of his death, which was due to poisoning by cyanide of potassium. I received officially—here follow some details which may be omitted—and attended the inquest in due course, to give my evidence. It was plain enough, for all my concern in the matter; painfully plain, moreover, it appeared, from the ex-professional point of view. The boy, with his little sister Marjory, had been on a visit to Langdon Court, South Hampshire, a county famous for its lepidoptera. Naturally he had started to make a collection of butterflies—bug-hunting, in the modern vernacular; and had secured for his lethal purposes one of those squat wide-mouthed bottles—containing a deposit, to about a tenth of their depth, of inspissated cyanide of potassium—which are used by collectors to kill their insects when netted. This bottle had been found upon the poor young fellow's dressing-table, incident upon the discovery of its owner's body lying dead in an arm-chair near the fire-place. The cork was out; the stuff at the bottom showed unmistakable signs of having been prodded and raked at, and the boy's own penknife, smeared with the poison, lay beside. Circumstantially the case was clear. Moved by one of those reckless explorative appetites to which youth is subject, attracted, no doubt, by the sweet almondy or peach-stony savour of the stuff, he had dared to taste, and had paid with his life for his mad temerity. The supposition was quite plausible. Indeed it is a frequent matter for wonder with me that unconsidering youth does not more often than happens fall a victim to the thousand temptations, in the way of insidious foods and drinks, which assail it.
My evidence, I say, was clear and unequivocal. The only other, of local importance, was contributed by William Brash, Sir Hugh's butler. It is necessary, before detailing this man's sworn testimony, to say a word as to the circumstances surrounding the case.
These two children, Harry and Marjory, were, it appeared, the only offspring of a widowed lady of adequate but not considerable means. The boy had been educated in virtual ignorance of his presumptive title to the baronetcy, and his fateful visit, with his little sister, to the Court, had been his first and last. It seemed that Sir Hugh, with the perversity of a sick-grained valetudinarian, had fought, until nearing his end, against the acknowledgment of his heir in the person of a remoter scion, and had only succumbed to the inevitable when that became obvious. Then, with what grace he could recover, he had sent for the children to visit him, and, from making a virtue of necessity, had come to take a delight in the bright fearless boy. The end had been at least as great a shock to him as to his household at large; to the mother it had come, of course, as a potential death-blow.