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31ankety, Blank, Blank!
Some time ago, Matthew Williams a negro, was lynched in the court house square at .Salisbury, Wicomico county, and a storm of indignation: swept the entire State, with the exception of the locality in which the outrage occurred and most of 1he sympathetic Eastern Shore. Considerable heat was generated on both .sides of the Bay—Western Maryland condemning- the Eastern Shore and the Eastern Shore resenting the attitude with nil the vehemence of badly wounded pride. It was an ill. gust of tfind on the Presidential nomination kite which Governor Ritchie was flying in the political sky, and His Excellency" with' a flourish, immediately ordered his Attorney-General to make a complete investigation and bring the matter to the attention of the grand jury. On the surface, and to the uninitiated, it looked as though something was really going to be done about the necktie party. Governor Ritchie and Attorney-General Lane certainly did their parts. The investigation was made, and the case was duly presented to the Wicomico county tfrand jury, and Avhat did that august body do? Well, what is in the middle of a doughnut ?
According to the finding of the grand jury nobody was present at the lynching; so, as it is absolutely necessary for someone to be present at an affair of that kind or the ceremonies cannot take place, the lynching never happened, at all. Why, as some wag has pointed out, the grand jury didn't • even find that Williams was there. No sir, there wasn't anybody there; despite the fact that Williams' body was found there later, dangling from a tree. If we are to take the finding of the grand jury as a frame for a picture of Salisbury's court house square on that alleged mobby night, when the unfortunate Williams was swung from here to hereafter, it was deserted. There was no mob there; there was no lynching, and all our indignation and storming and het-upness was based on a piece of fiction, a false alarm.
As for the lifeless form of the negro suspended from a tree; the poor soul, finding the town empty of the human element that night, probably got so lonesome he left his cell in the county jail, borrowed a rope somewhere, wandered up to the court house square, strung himself up and went over the River Jordan, where he felt he could find a crowd.
A Baltimore Countian, who happened to be in Salisbury on that uneventful night—uneventful ac-
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