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 SELENA NEMORIN

BIOSURVEILLANCE
IN NEW MEDIA
MARKETING
WORLD, DISCOURSE, REPRESENTATION
Biosurveillance in New Media Marketing
 Selena Nemorin

Biosurveillance
in New Media
Marketing
World, Discourse, Representation
Selena Nemorin
Department of Culture, Communication and Media
University College London
London, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-96216-0    ISBN 978-3-319-96217-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96217-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954063

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover design by Akihiro Nakayama

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Venn
 Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support of my fam-
ily, friends and colleagues. To Andrew Feenberg and Megan Boler who
have provided me with personal and professional guidance. I would espe-
cially like to thank Oscar Gandy for his wisdom and patience. As my
mentor, he has taught me more than I could ever give him credit for here.
I extend gratitude to my colleagues Neil Selwyn, Scott Bulfin, David
Gruber, Ben Williamson, Nick Couldry, Paul Edwards, Leslie Regan-­
Shade, Alison Powell and all those at the UCL Knowledge Lab who have
shared their knowledge with me. My dear friends Didem Ozkul, Sam
White, Ester Fritsch, Matthew Cunliffe and Samuel Brenton, all of whom
helped me along the way.
In terms of the production and publication of this book, the anony-
mous reviewers were of great help offering suggestions for improvements.
I extend sincere thanks to the staff of Palgrave Macmillan, particularly
my editor Shaun Vigil and assistant editor Glenn Ramirez.
Last but not least, nobody has been more important to me while
undertaking this project than my family. I would like to thank my daugh-
ter whose love is always with me. I also wish to thank my mother who has
always given me her unwavering support.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction: Advertising Futures   1

2 A Theory of Manipulation: Critical Perspectives  15

3 The Emergence of Neuromarketing  43

4 The Discursive World of Neuromarketing: For Whom Are

These Technologies Working?  73

5 Structures of Understanding 101

6 Worldlessness: The Brain as ‘Buy Button’ 123

7 Poor in World: Augmenting Animality 149

8 World-Forming: The Agentic Consumer 175

9 Self-Determination and Implications of Mining the Brain 203

Index 231

ix
 1
Introduction: Advertising Futures

In The Minority Report, a science-fiction movie based on the short story

by Philip K. Dick, the year is 2054 and protagonist, Chief John Anderton,
is the leader of the Precrime programme. This law enforcement pro-
gramme relies on brain data transmitted by three precognitive mutants
(Precogs) who can predict premeditated murders before they occur. The
Precogs, or cyborgs by virtue of their organism/machine connectivity, are
kept in a drug-induced dreamlike state in a floatation tank. Their brains
are hardwired to a computer network monitoring their neurological
activity, and their visions are streamed to a set of screens via the medical
imaging process of optical tomography. To justify instrumental treatment
of the Precogs, Anderton states: “It’s better if you don’t think of them as
human.” The moment the Precogs detect a future crime their brainwaves
transmit the name of the victim and perpetrator to a computer. The data
are transferred to another machine that etches the information onto
wooden balls; the colour of the ball depends on the type of crime to be
committed. The Precrime unit is then deployed to apprehend the would-
­be perpetrators before the crime can occur. The question of accuracy of
predictive technology arises when Anderton is framed for a murder he
will not commit.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Nemorin, Biosurveillance in New Media Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96217-7_1
2 S. Nemorin

The theme of predictive technology is recurrent in the movie. It also

arises in a scene during which Anderton’s eyes are scanned biometrically
and he is greeted by personalised advertising billboards as he walks
through a mall. Identification of consumers, here, seems to occur primar-
ily through retinal scans. One can assume that extracted consumer data are
then matched to names and other identifiers in a global database much
like current big data processes of personalisation. These data analytics
allow for the identification and categorisation of individuals and groups
as automated data profiles which are then matched to relevant products.
When the movie was first released in 2002 observers claimed that such
depictions of interactive predictive advertisements were far-fetched.
However, it did not take long for rapid advancements in new media mar-
keting to prove them wrong. Inspired by the movie, in 2015 tech start-up
Immersive Labs (IMRSV) was one of the first North American compa-
nies that actively sought to make targeted billboard advertising as ubiqui-
tous as targeted online advertising.1 IMRSV aimed to install small
cameras into existing billboards and retail signage that would then have
the capacity to display advertisements according to consumer type.
Acquired by Kairos, a ‘human analytics’ company, the facial detection
platform developed by IMRSV is presented as a “camera enabled soft-
ware solution that gathers continuous audience analytics, bringing online
measurement to offline engagements.”2 The software identifies consumer
attributes based on factors such as sex, estimated age, race and attention
time, using these data to adapt advertising content to targeted
individuals.
Around the same time, responsive billboards emerging in the United
States displayed a personalised advertising campaign for the GMC Acadia
sports utility vehicle. In collaboration with several companies such as
Posterscope USA, EYE Corp Media, Engage M1 and Quividi, the digital
billboard combined facial recognition technology and pre-programmed
advertising strategies to push tailored responses to consumers.3 More
recently, Estimote, a leading player in sensor development for the Internet
of Things (IoT), has been developing proximity technologies (beacons
and sensors) referred to as ‘nearables.’ These devices are placed in strategic
areas in stores to detect human presence and behaviours, retrieving con-
tent connected to a user’s profile or micro-location derived from smart
 Introduction: Advertising Futures 3

phone data. The nearables trigger pre-programmed actions that deliver

contextual and personalised experiences which are displayed either as a
notification or directly in a smart phone application. Video screens within
range can also respond with information relevant to the target audience.4
Despite these incredible technological advances, the advertising indus-
try continues to search for increasingly precise methods of mining data
from consumers. Now their target is what they refer to as ‘subconscious’
(or unconscious) terrain. With the aid of neuroscience research, brain
imaging and other biometric tools, neuromarketers are seeking to “mine
the brain so they can blow your mind with products you deeply desire.”5

The Promise of Concrete Facts

A contemporary form of market research, neuromarketing uses brain-
and bio-imaging technologies to track consumers’ sensorimotor, cogni-
tive and affective responses to an advertising stimulus. Marketers use
these as aids for understanding the nuances within messages that distin-
guish between those that are more or less effective in mobilising a desired
response. Proponents have argued that personalised advertising derived
from brain data has the potential to go much further than traditional
focus groups and become more efficient and profitable by extracting
marketing-­relevant information from the consumer’s subconscious. The
following text bytes by neuromarketing companies are indicative of the
popular claims to access the subconscious workings of the consumer:

Every marketers dream is to speak to this subconscious and make sure it

flags their product, in the right light, to the brain’s owner on their behalf.
If you want your website, product, packaging, advertising and brand expe-
riences to speak directly to the subconscious emotional brain, then you
need to measure these experiences directly. (Simple Usability, 2018)
By going beyond empirical data, studying more than 50,000 brands from
around the world and employing recent developments in neuroscience to
delve into “the black box” of the mind of the consumer, we discovered a
direct link between financial performance and fundamental human values.
(Millward Brown, 2017)
4 S. Nemorin

Neuro-Insight analyses ad creative to assess effectiveness, using neuroscience

to understand audiences’ subconscious responses. (Neuro-Insight, 2016)

One of neuromarketing’s early adopters, Clint Kilts, the scientific

director of the BrightHouse Institute, claims that traditional focus groups
“are plagued by a basic flaw of human psychology: people often do not
know their own minds,” which is a common assumption in the industry.
Brain imaging, on the other hand, “offers the promise of concrete facts –
an unbiased glimpse at a consumer’s mind in action.” This expansion of
neuroimaging technologies into diverse commercial settings has heralded
what SharpBrains chief executive Alvaro Fernandez refers to as a “perva-
sive neuro-technology age.”6
While neuromarketing builds on traditional forms of market research
comprising both physiological measurement and communicative interac-
tions, its technological resources have been expanded to incorporate
advanced neuroimaging techniques to measure, collect and interpret con-
sumer responses to stimuli that are believed to be more accurate and reli-
able as predictors of behaviour than self-report.7 When neurophysiological
data are collected, they are analysed using automatic algorithms and
interpreted by a market researcher. The reporting phase aims to produce
detailed accounts, often including raw data and insights such as metrics,
key performance indicators and data visualisations to inform advertising
strategies aimed at manipulating consumer behaviour. A range of high-
profile brands have turned to these new research techniques, but many of
these companies have tended to keep their use of these tools out of the
public eye. In fact, as neuromarketing expert Roger Dooley explains:
“Many brands use some kind of neurotechnique but very few will talk
about it, as it’s scary for consumers.” Steve Miller, co-­founder of Scientific
Learning, shares the same sentiment: “With any project you work on,
you keep the name out the discussion.”8
Although the present work focuses on the commercial dimension, it is
worth noting that neuromarketing strategies also comprise political-­
oriented techniques similar to those of Cambridge Analytica, in the way the
company used technological platforms to target and influence the US presi-
dential election and UK’s Brexit referendum. This technique comprised the
use of personalised political advertisements based on psychological profiling
 Introduction: Advertising Futures 5

of voters.9 While the practices of Cambridge Analytica were not only

deemed unethical but also illegal, resulting in the business closing its doors
recently, many neuromarketing companies have been and are still engaging
in psycho-social profiling of audiences and deployment of targeted political
marketing tactics into various media. This p ­ ractice is referred to as ‘neu-
ropolitics’: furtive behavioural microtargeting for political campaigns.10 As
an online article highlights:

By reading the responses taken from people linked to fMRI or EEG machines,
neuromarketers and their clients aim to optimize stimuli (political messages)
and reaction in consumers’ brains and drive their (voting) decisions.11

Similar behavioural interventions are being made at the governmental

level through ‘nudge’ practices as a corrective to boost economic perfor-
mance, and, where possible, the improvement of the health, welfare and
safety of populations. The use of ‘nudge’ as a term of art in discussions of
public policy development, implementation and assessment owes its
position to the widely read book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein12
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness in which
the authors argued that it is possible to use actions or stimuli to encour-
age people to choose one option over others when making a decision.
These forms of libertarian paternalism are justified as benevolent actions
used to guide people to make correct choices given their nature is to make
predictable mistake-based subconscious reliance on heuristics, fallacies
and negative social influences.
Several governments have followed the leadership of Thaler in the
United Kingdom and Sunstein in the United States to establish special-
ised administrative units tasked with the responsibility for promoting the
use of these techniques, and to experiment with interventions designed
to manage a range of behaviours13 with increasing claims that neurosci-
ence has the potential to provide a framework for understanding how
nudges work and how they can be improved.14 Commentators have
argued that behavioural nudges offer a cost-effective policy tool, diverg-
ing from traditional policy tools in that they encourage particular behav-
iours without restricting an individual’s choices or imposing financial
penalties.15 Others have claimed that the practice is unethical.16
6 S. Nemorin

Potential Implications of Neuromarketing

Even those who don’t see anything inherently problematic about using
diagnostic imaging tools and neurocognitive models to advance commer-
cial interests note that the application of these technologies to probe the
human brain, “especially beyond what one might divulge in traditional
behavioural testing” raises ethical concerns.17 Others highlight similar
ethical considerations regarding (1) the protection of various parties who
may be harmed or exploited through the process of neuromarketing and
(2) the protection of consumer autonomy if applications of brain imag-
ing technology are developed to the point where they can enable what is
effectively the manipulation of consumers from afar.18 Scholars also grant
that serious ethical issues have the potential to emerge from neuromar-
keting research practices which are largely proprietary and opaque; how-
ever, they maintain that most of the commonly expressed ethical concerns
are unrealistic as they are based on the assumption that neuromarketing
has technological capacity it cannot possibly acquire in the near future.19
Although it has been argued that current technological limitations
constrain the capacity for neuromarketing to access the mind at a sub-
conscious level, many of the claims about the benefits of embedding neu-
roscience into market research raise important questions.20 These new
technologies of biosurveillance have undoubtedly provided advertising
with more powerful techniques to manage consumers, leading to a range
of social and ethical implications specific to objectification and dehu-
manisation. The idea of the biometric economy is also relevant here in
that new media marketing is exploiting our cognitive life for commercial
gain. In this context, neurophysiological data accrue biovalue when the
generative and transformative productivity of living beings is instrumen-
talised and treated as a utility for human projects.21 As neuromarketing is
still a relatively new practice, of course there is an amount of uncertainty
in terms of its development. Might the neuromarketing project fail?
What if it could succeed? How might our freedoms and democratic rights
be damaged by such intimate marketing practices? Even if it does not
succeed, what are the harms that might ensue because of its mis/under-
standing of how human minds work? And what of its apparent disregard
of important ethical principles?
 Introduction: Advertising Futures 7

This book arises from a political imperative spurred on by a realisation

that these techniques are increasingly disrupting the potential of demo-
cratic communicative action. In order to foreground how these incur-
sions into the self are taking place, this work is necessarily one of social
and cultural theory, drawing on both philosophical and theoretical frames
to develop an account of the relationship between neuromarketing, social
worlds and the process of meaning-making. The socio-cognitive practices
and operational assumptions of neuromarketing as they are rendered in
the discourse are the primary focuses for analysis. The central question
driving this work is whether or not the discourse of neuromarketing indi-
cates that the practice amounts to a reduction of human beings to a set of
reflexive relations to triggers external to their consumer niche (subjective
world). My overall aim is to understand who—or what—is made through
the relationship of neuroscience, market research and consumer surveil-
lance, thereby questioning how neuromarketing, as a cultural media
environment, shapes psycho-social constructions of world and self. A key
issue underpinning this work is that of representation: To what extent are
consumers systematically portrayed in ways that may enhance or under-
mine their social authority and agency?

Outline of Chapters
The chapters that follow adhere to the view that marketing is continu-
ously deploying new modes of representation that construct how the
world is, new subjects who exist in the world and new goods and services
that have the power to trigger market growth through increasingly
­unreflective consumption. As such, the book is concerned with mapping
out ontological structures of the neuromarketing world as a cultural
media environment within which realities are shaped and revealed by
those in power. At its core, however, it is about the psycho-social experi-
ence of modern forms of consumer surveillance using neuromarketing as
an example to work through emerging social and ethical implications. In
this regard, the work seeks to make a contribution to the conceptual
foundations of surveillance studies through an exploration of structures
8 S. Nemorin

of meaning-making, and how new media marketing is using diagnostic

technologies for surveillance and manipulation of this communicative
process. It also seeks to contribute to cultural studies in terms of explicat-
ing the impact that pervasive neurophysiological technologies have on
consumer representations in cultural media environments. Composed of
eight chapters, the book draws centrally from Heidegger’s writings on
world and structures of understanding as they pertain to Being and Time,
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude and
The Question Concerning Technology.
Chapter 2 presents the main themes that run through the book,
including issues of representation and surveillance. It begins with how
marketing has taken up by cultural studies with a particular focus on the
rise of behavioural psychology. This is followed by an overview of the
relations between marketing and surveillance where I offer an overview of
what I call ‘consumer biosurveillance’: the monitoring and extraction of
neurophysiological data used for both behavioural management and
value creation. The chapter then presents the method used for undertak-
ing this project: a hybrid approach merging a Heideggerian analytical
framework with critical textual analysis, concluding with a summary of
potential limitations of this framework.
Chapter 3 is historically informed and outlines in some detail the
emergence of the neuromarketing industry. The aim here is not to pro-
vide a history of market research and advertising but to explore neuro-
marketing in practice, including various methods and technological
instruments used by the industry. It delineates neuromarketing propo-
nents to include agents who have a stake in the business of ‘doing’ neuro-
marketing such as authors, marketing specialists, advertising agencies and
regulatory bodies. Some agents with a stake in a neuromarketing com-
pany are also attached to universities as academics. These individuals can
be considered spokespersons for neuromarketing as they all have interests
in the growth of new media marketing. A range of individuals are increas-
ingly turning their attention to the implications of neuromarketing, so
this section also addresses critiques of the pro-neuromarketing stance.
These individuals range from journalists and scholars to neuroscientists
and consumer rights advocates.
 Introduction: Advertising Futures 9

Chapter 4 begins by laying out the methodology used in later chapters

to analyse consumer representations. The ensuing discussion elaborates
on the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the book, outlin-
ing how Heidegger’s concept of world can help us understand the com-
municative relationship between the consumer in her own subjective
world and the larger world of neuromarketing as a shaper of social worlds.
To grasp structures of thought and the intersubjective socio-cognitive
relations that occur between world (as reality/the known) and subject (as
knower) it is necessary to be clear on the structures of the world that play
a part in the communicative dynamic in which thought occurs.22 As a
heuristic device, the concept of world illustrates the multi-layered dimen-
sions of meaning-making for readers who seek to understand the connec-
tion between objectivity (reality) and subjectivity (audience).
The chapter presents an overview of the assumptions of the neuromar-
keting industry, and how practitioners (from within the community of
marketers) are making use of emergent neurophysiological technologies
to gain a competitive advantage by attempting to access consumers at a
subliminal level in order to shape their behaviour with greater skill, effi-
ciency and effectiveness. This discussion also considers the manner in
which the self-promotion of certain neuromarketing groups incorporates
constructions of consumers as ignorant, unreflective and malleable tar-
gets of strategic communications, despite the fact that the notion of the
easily managed passive consumer has been critiqued and debunked in
various works.23
In order to identify how the discourse of neuromarketing is represent-
ing consumers, and whether or not these depictions are accurate, Chap. 5
examines the fundamental structures of how human beings make mean-
ing in and from the world. Our capacity for understanding the world
moves from practical understanding to more critical thinking comprising
processes such as reflection and interpretation. Existential structures such
as practical understanding (e.g. coping and comportment), interpreta-
tion and attunement highlight the structures of understanding (i.e. the
communicative practice) that neuromarketing seeks to disrupt. A
Heideggerian perspective provides the analytic tools to examine the dis-
cursive world of neuromarketing as a cultural environment in which
10 S. Nemorin

media objects, events, values and assumptions can be used to shape con-
sumer consciousness in a targeted consumer niche. Using structures of
understanding as part of a framework for analysis can reveal the ways in
which the discourse of neuromarketing frames consumer thinking in—at
times—reductive metaphors.
The next three chapters provide textual analyses of how various neuro-
marketing groups represent the consumer along a continuum that depicts
capacity to access and understand the world. More specifically, I use
Heidegger’s tripartite thesis that the stone is worldless, animal is poor in
world, and man is world-forming [sic], to analyse in more detail how the
consumer is represented in the discourse. This framework illustrates a
spectrum of consumer representations, ranging from the consumer as
automata, a mechanical object (brain as buy button) driven to action by
an external party; an unreflective animal guided by instincts and reflex
(reptilian brain or brain as animality); and an agentic and world-forming
individual who can engage critically with the world (Dasein).
By comparing these structures, I seek to unearth the social and ethical
implications that arise when consumers are represented in a manner that
renders them instrumental for advertising projects. Two forms of dehu-
manisation are proposed: (1) objectification—representing individuals as
objects or automata; and (2) animalisation—representing individuals as
animal-like. Scholars have argued that technological dehumanisation or
reductionism of human beings to machines is a condition of postmod-
ernism.24 The idea of human animality has been used to signify the way
in which biological-determinist ideology has tended to shape human
subjectivities in networked societies.25
The final chapter rounds off the book by considering the social and
ethical questions that emerged in previous chapters. It situates neuromar-
keting discourse as a form of public knowledge dissemination and cre-
ation fundamental to a surveillance society; and considers the implications
that these representations may have for various groups. While the kind of
knowledge creation neuromarketing represents exists in an informal
space for learning, its goals are driven by market discourse, signifying an
ensemble of institutional forces with the aim of creating an environment
of unreflective consumerism. In this capacity, neuromarketing becomes
an educational tool for social conditioning. The chapter seeks to connect
 Introduction: Advertising Futures 11

the central aims of the book using a hybrid analytics to map out the dis-
cursive structures implicit in neuromarketing as a cultural media envi-
ronment; to critique how certain vocabularies of neuromarketing
discourse are used to frame consumers as manipulatable entities; to high-
light the social and ethical implications of such representations of con-
sumers and to identify the discriminatory processes implicit in the
material and immaterial practices of neuromarketing. The chapter con-
cludes with thoughts on possible ways forward.

Notes
1. Tsotsis, A. (2011, September 20). Inspired by ‘Minority Report,’
Immersive Labs raises $810k for digital display recognition. Tech Crunch.
Retrieved from https://tcrn.ch/2s4fCGM
2. Brackeen, B. (2015, April 5). Kairos acquires IMRSV. Kairos. Retrieved
from http://bit.ly/1Rh8Kf8
3. Quividi. (2016, September 26). Responsive Facial Detection Technology
Redefines Customer Engagement for GMC Acadia. Retrieved from https://
bit.ly/2J1eQol
4. Estimote. (2018). Reality Matters. Retrieved from https://estimote.com
5. Penenberg, A. (2011). They have hacked your brain. Fast Company,
158(85–89), 123–125. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1wcQ313
6. BBC. (2015, May 15). Surge in US ‘brain-reading’ patents. BBC News.
Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32623063
7. Fortunato, V. C. R., Giraldi, J. M. E., & Oliveira, J. H. E. (2014). A
review of studies on neuromarketing: Practical results, techniques, con-
tributions and limitations. Journal of Management Research, 6(2),
201–220.
8. Stone, Z. (2018). The scientists who control your brain’s ‘buy button.’
Ozy. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2GGPUNS
9. Hankey, S. (2018, May 29). How your data is acquired, analysed and
used to influence you in political campaigns. Tactical Tech. Retrieved
from https://bit.ly/2L7kAdY
10. Lane, C. (2015, November 13). The biological citizen: How neuropoli-
tics is growing as an aim and threat. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from
https://bit.ly/2GFvq82
12 S. Nemorin

11. Randall, K. (2010, November 4). How neuromarketers tapped the vote
button in your brain to help the GOP win the house. Fast Company.
Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2IB53WH
12. Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions
About Health, Welfare and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
13. Selinger, E. & Whyte, K. (2011). Is there a right way to nudge? The
practice and ethics of choice architecture. Sociology Compass, 5(10),
923–935.
14. Felsen, G. & Reiner, P. B. (2015). What can neuroscience contribute to
the debate over nudging? Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6(3),
469–479.
15. Association for Psychological Science. (2017, June 8). Behavioral
‘nudges’ offer a cost-effective policy tool. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from
https://bit.ly/2kgGJuG
16. Pykett, J. (2013). Neurocapitalism and the new neuros: Using neuroeco-
nomics, behavioral economics and picoeconomics for public policy.
Journal of Economic Geography, 13(5), 845–869.
17. Eser, Z., Isin, F. B., & Tolon, M. (2011). Perceptions of marketing aca-
demics, neurologists, and marketing professionals about neuromarket-
ing. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(7/8), 854–868, (p. 860).
18. Murphy, E. R., Illes, J., & Reiner, P. B. (2008). Neuroethics of neuro-
marketing. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 7(Jul–Oct), 293–302.
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Neuromarketing: Ethical implications of its use and potential misuse.
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Another random document with
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 THE CRIMES OF RICHARD HAWKINS.

By Thomas Aird.

When a young man, Richard Hawkins was guilty of the heinous

crime of betraying the daughter of a respectable farmer in the west of
Galloway, of the name of Emily Robson. As he yet loved the injured
maiden, he would have married her, but in this he was determinedly
opposed by her relatives, and particularly by her only brother,
betwixt whom and himself an inveterate hostility had, from various
causes, been growing up since their earliest boyhood. From remorse
partly, and shame and disappointment, and partly from other causes,
Hawkins hereupon left his home and went abroad; but after making
a considerable sum of money he returned to Scotland, determined to
use every remonstrance to win over Emily’s friends to allow him yet
by marriage to make reparation to the gentle maiden, the
remembrance of whose beauty and faithful confiding spirit had
unceasingly haunted him in a foreign land. He arrived first at
Glasgow, and proceeded thence to Edinburgh, where he purposed to
stay a week or a fortnight before going southward to his native
county, in which also Emily Robson resided.
During his stay in the metropolis, having been one evening invited
to sup at the house of a gentleman, originally from the same county
with himself, scarcely had he taken his seat in his host’s parlour,
when Emily’s brother entered, and, instantly recognizing him,
advanced with a face of grim wrath, denounced him as a villain,
declared he would not sit a moment in his company, and to make
good his declaration, instantly turned on his heel and left the house.
The violent spirit of Hawkins was in a moment stung to madness by
this rash and unseasonable insolence, which was offered him,
moreover, before a number of gentlemen; he rose, craved their leave
for a moment, that he might follow, and show Mr Robson his
mistake; and sallying out of the house, without his hat, he overtook
his aggressor on the street, tapped him on the shoulder, and thus
bespoke him, with a grim smile:—“Why, sir, give me leave to
propound to you that this same word and exit of yours are most
preciously insolent. With your leave, now, I must have you back,
gently to unsay me a word or two; or, by heaven! this night your
blood shall wash out the imputation!”
“This hour—this hour!” replied Robson, in a hoarse compressed
whisper; “my soul craves to grapple with you, and put our mutual
affair to a mortal arbitrament. Hark ye, Hawkins, you are a stranger
in this city, I presume, and cannot reasonably be expected easily to
provide yourself with a second; moreover, no one would back such a
villain;—now, will you follow me this moment to my lodgings, accept
from my hand one of a pair of pistols, and let us, without farther
formality, retire to a convenient place, and do ourselves a pleasure
and a justice. I am weary of living under the same sun with you, and
if I can shed your foul blood beneath yon chaste stars of God, I would
willingly die for it. Dare you follow me?—and, quickly, before those
fellows think of looking after us?”
To Hawkins’ boiling heart of indignation ’twas no hard task so to
follow, and the above proposal of Robson was strictly and instantly
followed up. We must notice here particularly, that, as the parties
were about to leave the house, a letter was put into Robson’s hand,
who, seeing that it was from his mother, and bore the outward
notification of mourning, craved Hawkins’ permission to read it,
which he did with a twinkling in his eye, and a working, as of deep
grief, in the muscles of his face; but in a minute he violently crushed
the letter, put it into his pocket, and, turning anew to his foe with
glaring eyes of anger, told him that all was ready. And now we shall
only state generally, that within an hour from the first provocation of
the evening, this mortal and irregular duel was settled, and left
Robson shot through the body by his antagonist.
No sooner did Hawkins see him fall, than horror and remorse for
his deed rushed upon him; he ran to the prostrate youth, attempted
to raise him up, but dared not offer pity or ask forgiveness, for which
his soul yet panted. The wounded man rejected his assistance—
waved him off, and thus faintly but fearfully spoke:—“Now, mine
enemy! I will tell you, that you may sooner know the curse of God,
which shall for ever cling and warp itself round all the red cords of
your heart. That letter from my mother, which you saw me read, told
me of the death of that sister Emily whom I so loved; whom you—oh,
God!—who never recovered from your villany. And my father, too!—
Off, fiend, nor mock me! You shall not so triumph—you shall not see
me die!” So saying, the wounded youth, who was lying on his back,
with his pale writhen features upturned, and dimly seen in the
twilight, with a convulsive effort now threw himself round, with his
face upon the grass.
In a fearful agony stood Hawkins, twisting his hands, not knowing
whether again to attempt raising his victim, or to run to the city for a
surgeon. The former he at length did, and found no resistance; for,
alas! the unhappy youth was dead. The appearance of two or three
individuals now making towards the bloody spot, which was near the
suburbs of the town, and to which, in all probability, they had been
drawn by the report of the pistols, roused Hawkins, for the first time,
to a sense of his own danger. He quickly left the ground, dashed
through the fields, and, without distinctly calculating his route,
instinctively turned towards his native district.
As he proceeded onwards, he began to consider the bearings of his
difficult situation, and at last resolved to hasten on through the
country, to lay his case before his excellent friend Frank Dillon, who
was the only son of a gentleman in the western parts of Galloway,
and who, he knew, was at present residing with his father. Full of the
most riotous glee, and nimble-witted as Mercutio, Frank, he was
aware, could be no less gravely wise as an adviser in a difficult
emergency, and he determined, in the present case, to be wholly
ruled by his opinion. Invigorated from thus having settled for himself
a definite course, he walked swiftly forward through the night, which
shone with the finest beauty of the moon. Yet what peace to the
murderer, whose red title not the fairest duellist, who has slain a
human being, can to his own conscience reduce? The cold glittering
leaves on the trees, struck with a quick, momentary gust, made him
start as he passed; and the shadowy foot and figure of the lover,
coming round from the back window of the lone cottage, was to his
startled apprehension the avenger of blood at hand. As he looked
afar along the glittering road, the black fir trees upon the edge of the
moor seemed men coming running down to meet him; and the long
howl of some houseless cur, and the distant hoof of the traveller,
which struck his listening ear with two or three beatings, seemed all
in the track of pursuit and vengeance.
Morning came, and to the weary fugitive was agreeably cloudy; but
the sun rose upon him in the forenoon, shining from between the
glassy, glistering clouds with far greater heat than it does from a pure
blue sky. Hawkins had now crossed many a broad acre of the weary
moorlands, fatigued and thirsty, his heart beating in his ears, and not
a drop of water that he could see to sprinkle the dry pulses of his
bosom, when he came to a long morass, which barred his
straightforward path. His first business was to quench his thirst from
a dull stank, overgrown with paddowpipe, and black with myriads of
tadpoles. There, finding himself so faint from fatigue that he could
not brook the idea of going round by the end of the moss, and being
far less able to make his way through the middle of it, by leaping
from hagg to hagg, he threw himself down on the sunny side of
some long reeds, and fell fast asleep.
He was waked by the screaming of lapwings, and the noise of a
neighbouring bittern, to a feeling of violent throbbing, headache, and
nausea, which were probably owing to the sun’s having beat upon
him whilst he lay asleep, aggravated by the reflection from the reeds.
He arose, but finding himself quite unable to pursue his journey,
again threw himself down on a small airy brow of land, to get what
breeze might be stirring abroad. There were several companies of
people at work digging peats in the moss, and one party now sat
down very near him to their dinner. One of them, a young woman,
had passed so near him, as to be able to guess, from his countenance,
that he was unwell; and in a few minutes, with the fine charity of
womanhood, she came to him with some food, of which, to satisfy
her kindness, rather than his own hunger, he ate a little. The air
changed in the afternoon, and streaming clouds of hail crossed over
that wild country, yet he lay still. Party after party left the moss, and
yet he was there. He made, indeed, a show of leaving the place at a
quick rate, to disappoint the fears of the people who had seen him at
noon, and who, as they again came near to gather up their
supernumerary clothes, were evidently perplexed on his account,
which they showed by looking first towards him and then at each
other. It was all he could do to get quite out of their sight beyond a
little eminence; and there, once more, he lay down in utter
prostration of mind and body.
Twilight began to darken upon the pools of that desolate place.
The wild birds were gone to their heathy nests, all save the curlew,
whose bravura was still sung over the fells, and borne far away into
the dim and silent night. At length a tall, powerful-looking man came
stepping through the moss, and as he passed near the poor youth,
asked, in slow speech, who he was. In the reaction of nature,
Hawkins was, in a moment, anxious about his situation, and replied
to him that he had fallen sick on his way, and was unable to go in
quest of a resting-place for the night. Approaching and turning
himself round to the youth as he arose, the genius of the place had
him on his back in a moment, and went off with him carelessly and
in silence over the heath. In about half an hour they came to a lonely
cottage, which the kind creature entered; and, setting the young man
down, without the least appearance of fatigue on his part, “Here,
gudewife,” said he, “is a bairn t’ye, that I hae foun’ i’ the moss: now,
let us see ye be gude to him.” Either this injunction was very
effective, or it was not at all necessary; for, had the youth been her
own son, come from a far country to see her, this hostess of the
cottage could not have treated him more kindly. From his little
conversation during the evening, her husband, like most very bulky
men, appeared to be of dull intellect; but there was a third personage
in the composition of his household, a younger brother, a very little
man,—the flower of the flock,—who made ample amends for his
senior brother’s deficiencies as a talker. A smattering of Church-
history had filled his soul with a thousand stories of persecution and
martyrdom, and, from some old history of America, he had gained a
little knowledge of Upper Canada, for which, Hawkins was during
the night repeatedly given to understand, he was once on the very
point of setting out, an abiding embryo of bold travel, which, in his
own eye, seemed to invest him with all the honours and privileges of
bona fide voyagers. His guest had a thousand questions put to him
on these interesting topics, less for his answers, it was evident, than
for an opportunity to the little man of setting forth his own
information. All this was tolerably fair; but it was truly disgusting
when the little oracle took the Bible after supper, and, in place of his
elder brother, who was otherwise also the head of the family,
performed the religious services of the evening, presuming to add a
comment to the chapter which he read; to enforce which, his elbow
was drawn back to the sharpest angle of edification, from which, ever
and anon unslinging itself like a shifting rhomboid, it forced forward
the stiff information in many a pompous instalment. The
pertinacious forefinger was at work too; and before it trembled the
mystic Babylon, which, in a side argument, that digit was uplifted to
denounce. Moreover, the whole lecture was given in a squeaking,
pragmatic voice, which sounded like the sharping of thatchers’
knives.
Next morning the duellist renewed his journey, hoping against
eveningtide to reach Dillon’s house, which he guessed could not now
be more than forty miles distant. About mid-afternoon, as he was
going through a small hamlet of five or six cottages, he stepped into
one of them, and requested a little water to drink. There was a
hushed solemnity, he could see in a moment, throughout the little
apartment into which, rather too unceremoniously, he had entered;
and a kind-looking matron, in a dark robe, whispered in his ear, as
she gave him a porringer of sweet water, with a little oatmeal
sprinkled upon it, that an only daughter of the house, a fine young
woman, was lying “a corpse.” Without noticing his presence, and
indeed with her face hid, sat the mother doubtless of the maiden,
heedless of the whispered consolations of two or three officious
matrons, and racking in that full and intense sorrow with which
strangers cannot intermeddle. The sloping beams of the declining
sun shone beautifully in through a small lattice, illumining a half-
decayed nosegay of flowers which stood on the sunny whitewashed
sill—emblem of a more sorrowful decay!—and after traversing the
middle of the apartment, with a thin deep bar of light, peopled by a
maze of dancing motes, struck into the white bed, where lay
something covered up and awfully indistinct, like sanctified thing not
to be gazed at, which the fugitive’s fascinated eye yet tried to shape
into the elegant body of the maiden, as she lay before her virgin
sheets purer than they, with the salt above her still and unvexed
bosom. The restricted din of boys at play—for that buoyant age is yet
truly reverential, and feels most deeply the solemn occasion of death
—was heard faint and aloof from the house of mourning. This, and
the lonely chirrup of a single sparrow from the thatch; the soft
purring of the cat at the sunny pane; the muffled tread of the
mourners over the threshold; and the audible grief of that poor
mother, seemed, instead of interruption, rather parts of the solemn
stillness.
As Hawkins was going out, after lingering a minute in this sacred
interior, he met, in the narrow passage which led to the door, a man
with the coffin, on the lid of which he read, as it was pushed up to his
very face, “Emily Robson, aged 22.” The heart of the murderer—the
seducer—was in a moment as if steeped in the benumbing waters of
petrifaction; he was horrified; he would fain have passed, but could
not for want of room; and as the coffin was not to be withdrawn in
accommodation to him, he was pushed again into the interior of the
cottage to encounter a look of piercing recognition from Emily’s
afflicted mother, who had started up on hearing the hollow grating of
the coffin as it struck occasionally on the walls of the narrow
entrance. “Take him away—take him away—take him away!” she
screamed, when she saw Hawkins, and pressed her face down on the
white bed of death. As for the youth, who was fearfully conscious of
another bloody woe which had not yet reached her heart, and of
which he was still the author, and who saw, moreover, that this poor
mother was now come to poverty, probably from his own first injury
against the peace of her family, he needed not to be told to depart.
With conscience, that truest conducting-rod, flashing its moral
electricities of shame and fear, and with knees knocking against each
other, he stumbled out of the house, and making his way by chance
to an idle quarry, overgrown with weeds, he there threw himself
down, with his face on the ground. In this situation he lay the whole
night and all next forenoon; and in the afternoon—for he had
occasionally risen to look for the assembling of the funeral train—he
joined the small group who carried his Emily to the churchyard, and
saw her young body laid in the grave. Oh! who can cast away
carelessly, like a useless thing, the finely-moulded clay, perfumed
with the lingering beauty of warm motions, sweet graces, and young
charities! But had not the young man, think ye, tenfold reason to
weep for her whom he now saw laid down within the dark shadow of
the grave?
In the evening, he found his way to Frank Dillon’s; met his friend
by chance at a little distance from his father’s house, and told him at
once his unhappy situation. “My father,” replied Frank, “cannot be
an adviser here, because he is a Justice of the Peace. But he has been
at London for some time, and I do not expect him home till to-
morrow; so you can go with me to our house for this night, where we
shall deliberate what next must be done in this truly sad affair of
yours. Come on.”
It is unnecessary for us to explain at length the circumstances
which frustrated the friendly intentions of Dillon, and which enabled
the officers of justice to trace Hawkins to his place of concealment.
They arrived that very evening; and, notwithstanding the efforts of
Frank to save his friend, secured the unhappy duellist, who, within
two days afterwards, found himself in Edinburgh, securely lodged in
jail.
The issue of Hawkins’ trial was that he was condemned to death as
a murderer. This severe sentence of the law was, however, commuted
into that of banishment for seven years. But he never again returned
to his native country. And it must be told of him also, that no
happiness ever shone upon this after-life of his. Independent of his
first crime, which brought a beautiful young woman prematurely to
the grave, he had broken rashly “into the bloody house of life,” and,
in the language of Holy Writ, “slain a young man to his hurt.”
Oh! for that still and quiet conscience—those third heavens within
a man—wherein he can soar within himself and be at peace, where
the image of God shines down, never dislimned nor long hid by those
wild racks and deep continents of gloom which come over the soul of
the blood-guilty man!
 THE HEADSTONE.

By Professor Wilson.

The coffin was let down to the bottom of the grave, the planks were
removed from the heaped-up brink, the first rattling clods had struck
their knell, the quick shovelling was over, and the long, broad,
skilfully cut pieces of turf were aptly joined together, and trimly laid
by the beating spade, so that the newest mound in the churchyard
was scarcely distinguishable from those that were grown over by the
undisturbed grass and daisies of a luxuriant spring. The burial was
soon over; and the party, with one consenting motion, having
uncovered their heads in decent reverence of the place and occasion,
were beginning to separate, and about to leave the churchyard. Here
some acquaintances, from distant parts of the parish, who had not
had an opportunity of addressing each other in the house that had
belonged to the deceased, nor in the course of the few hundred yards
that the little procession had to move over from his bed to his grave,
were shaking hands, quietly but cheerfully, and inquiring after the
welfare of each other’s families. There, a small knot of neighbours
were speaking, without exaggeration, of the respectable character
which the deceased had borne, and mentioning to one another little
incidents of his life, some of them so remote as to be known only to
the grayheaded persons of the group; while a few yards farther
removed from the spot, were standing together parties who
discussed ordinary concerns, altogether unconnected with the
funeral, such as the state of the markets, the promise of the season,
or change of tenants; but still with a sobriety of manner and voice
that was insensibly produced by the influence of the simple
ceremony now closed, by the quiet graves around, and the shadow of
the spire and gray walls of the house of God.
 Two men yet stood together at the head of the grave, with
countenances of sincere but unimpassioned grief. They were
brothers, the only sons of him who had been buried. And there was
something in their situation that naturally kept the eyes of many
directed upon them for a longer time, and more intently, than would
have been the case had there been nothing more observable about
them than the common symptoms of a common sorrow. But these
two brothers, who were now standing at the head of their father’s
grave, had for some years been totally estranged from each other,
and the only words that had passed between them, during all that
time, had been uttered within a few days past, during the necessary
preparations for the old man’s funeral.
No deep and deadly quarrel was between these brothers, and
neither of them could distinctly tell the cause of this unnatural
estrangement. Perhaps dim jealousies of their father’s favour—selfish
thoughts that will sometimes force themselves into poor men’s
hearts respecting temporal expectations—unaccommodating
manners on both sides—taunting words that mean little when
uttered, but which rankle and fester in remembrance—imagined
opposition of interests, that, duly considered, would have been found
one and the same—these, and many other causes, slight when single,
but strong when rising up together in one baneful band, had
gradually but fatally infected their hearts, till at last they who in
youth had been seldom separate, and truly attached, now met at
market, and, miserable to say, at church, with dark and averted faces,
like different clansmen during a feud.
Surely if anything could have softened their hearts towards each
other, it must have been to stand silently, side by side, while the
earth, stones, and clods, were falling down upon their father’s coffin.
And, doubtless, their hearts were so softened. But pride, though it
cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from being felt, may
prevent them from being shown; and these two brothers stood there
together, determined not to let each other know the mutual
tenderness that, in spite of them, was gushing up in their hearts, and
teaching them the unconfessed folly and wickedness of their
causeless quarrel.
A headstone had been prepared, and a person came forward to
plant it. The elder brother directed him how to place it—a plain
stone, with a sand-glass, skull, and cross-bones, chiselled not rudely,
and a few words inscribed. The younger brother regarded the
operation with a troubled eye, and said, loudly enough to be heard by
several of the bystanders, “William, this was not kind in you;—you
should have told me of this. I loved my father as well as you could
love him. You were the elder, and, it may be, the favourite son; but I
had a right in nature to have joined you in ordering this headstone,
had I not?”
During these words, the stone was sinking into the earth, and
many persons who were on their way from the grave returned. For a
while the elder brother said nothing, for he had a consciousness in
his heart that he ought to have consulted his father’s son in designing
this last becoming mark of affection and respect to his memory; so
the stone was planted in silence, and now stood erect, decently and
simply among the other unostentatious memorials of the humble
dead.
The inscription merely gave the name and age of the deceased, and
told that the stone had been erected “by his affectionate sons.” The
sight of these words seemed to soften the displeasure of the angry
man, and he said, somewhat more mildly, “Yes, we were his
affectionate sons, and since my name is on the stone, I am satisfied,
brother. We have not drawn together kindly of late years, and
perhaps never may; but I acknowledge and respect your worth; and
here, before our own friends, and before the friends of our father,
with my foot above his head, I express my willingness to be on better
and other terms with you, and if we cannot command love in our
hearts, let us, at least, brother, bar out all unkindness.”
The minister, who had attended the funeral, and had something
intrusted to him to say publicly before he left the churchyard, now
came forward, and asked the elder brother why he spake not
regarding this matter. He saw that there was something of a cold and
sullen pride rising up in his heart—for not easily may any man hope
to dismiss from the chamber of his heart even the vilest guest, if once
cherished there. With a solemn and almost severe air, he looked
upon the relenting man, and then, changing his countenance into
serenity, said gently,—
Behold how good a thing it is,
And how becoming well,
Together such as brethren are
In unity to dwell.

The time, the place, and this beautiful expression of a natural

sentiment, quite overcame a heart in which many kind, if not warm,
affections dwelt; and the man thus appealed to bowed down his head
and wept.
“Give me your hand, brother;” and it was given, while a murmur of
satisfaction arose from all present, and all hearts felt kindlier and
more humanely towards each other.
As the brothers stood fervently, but composedly, grasping each
other’s hands, in the little hollow that lay between the grave of their
mother, long since dead, and that of their father, whose shroud was
haply not yet still from the fall of dust to dust, the minister stood
beside them with a pleasant countenance, and said, “I must fulfil the
promise I made to your father on his deathbed. I must read to you a
few words which his hand wrote at an hour when his tongue denied
its office. I must not say that you did your duty to your old father; for
did he not often beseech you, apart from one another, to be
reconciled, for your own sakes as Christians, for his sake, and for the
sake of the mother who bare you, and, Stephen, who died that you
might be born? When the palsy struck him for the last time, you were
both absent, nor was it your fault that you were not beside the old
man when he died. As long as sense continued with him here, did he
think of you two, and of you two alone. Tears were in his eyes; I saw
them there, and on his cheek too, when no breath came from his lips.
But of this no more. He died with this paper in his hand; and he
made me know that I was to read it to you over his grave. I now obey
him:
“‘My sons, if you will let my bones lie quiet in the grave, near the
dust of your mother, depart not from my burial till, in the name of
God and Christ, you promise to love one another as you used to do.
Dear boys, receive my blessing.’”
Some turned their heads away to hide the tears that needed not to
be hidden; and when the brothers had released each other from a
long and sobbing embrace, many went up to them, and in a single
word or two expressed their joy at this perfect reconcilement. The
brothers themselves walked away from the churchyard, arm in arm
with the minister, to the manse. On the following Sabbath they were
seen sitting with their families in the same pew; and it was observed
that they read together off the same Bible when the minister gave out
the text, and that they sang together, taking hold of the same psalm-
book. The same psalm was sung (given out at their own request), of
which one verse had been repeated at their father’s grave; and a
larger sum than usual was on that Sabbath found in the plate for the
poor, for Love and Charity are sisters. And ever after, both during the
peace and the troubles of this life, the hearts of the brothers were as
one, and in nothing were they divided.
 THE WIDOW’S PREDICTION:
A TALE OF THE SIEGE OF NAMUR.

On the morning of the 30th August 1695, just as the sun began to
tinge the dark and blood-stained battlements of Namur, a
detachment of Mackay’s Scottish regiment made their rounds,
relieving the last night-sentinels, and placing those of the morning.
As soon as the party returned to their quarters, and relaxed from the
formalities of military discipline, their leader, a tall, muscular man,
of about middle age, with a keen eye and manly features, though
swarthy and embrowned with toil, and wearing an expression but
little akin to the gentle or the amiable, moved to an angle of the
bastion, and, leaning on his spontoon, fixed an anxious gaze on the
rising sun. While he remained in this position, he was approached by
another officer, who, slapping him roughly on the shoulder, accosted
him in these words—
“What, Monteith! are you in a musing mood? Pray, let me have the
benefit of your morning meditations.”
“Sir!” said Monteith, turning hastily round. “Oh! ’tis you, Keppel.
What think you of this morning?”
“Why, that it will be a glorious day for some; and for you and me, I
hope, among others. Do you know that the Elector of Bavaria
purposes a general assault to-day?”
“I might guess as much, from the preparations going on. Well,
would it were to-morrow!”
“Sure you are not afraid, Monteith?”
“Afraid! It is not worth while to quarrel at present; but methinks
you, Keppel, might have spared that word. There are not many men
who might utter it and live.”
 “Nay, I meant no offence; yet permit me to say, that your words
and manner are strangely at variance with your usual bearing on a
battle-morn.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Monteith; “and, but that your English
prejudices will refuse assent, it might be accounted for. That sun will
rise to-morrow with equal power and splendour, gilding this earth’s
murky vapours, but I shall not behold his glory.”
“Now, do tell me some soothful narrative of a second-sighted seer,”
said Keppel. “I promise to do my best to believe it. At any rate, I will
not laugh outright, I assure you.”
“I fear not that. It is no matter to excite mirth; and, in truth, I feel
at present strangely inclined to be communicative. Besides, I have a
request to make; and I may as well do something to induce you to
grant it.”
“That I readily will, if in my power,” replied Keppel. “So, proceed
with your story, if you please.”
“Listen attentively, then—and be at once my first and my last
confidant.
“Shortly after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, I joined the troop
commanded by Irvine of Bonshaw; and gloriously did we scour the
country, hunting the rebel Covenanters, and acting our pleasure
upon man, woman, and child, person and property. I was then but
young, and, for a time, rather witnessed than acted in the wild and
exciting commission which we so amply discharged. But use is all in
all. Ere half-a-dozen years had sped their round, I was one of the
prettiest men in the troop at everything. It was in the autumn of
1684, as I too well remember, that we were engaged in beating up the
haunts of the Covenanters on the skirts of Galloway and Ayrshire. A
deep mist, which covered the moors thick as a shroud—friendly at
times to the Whigs, but, in the present instance, their foe—concealed
our approach, till we were close upon a numerous conventicle. We
hailed, and bade them stand; but, trusting to their mosses and glens,
they scattered and fled. We pursued in various directions, pressing
hard upon the fugitives. In spite of several morasses which I had to
skirt, and difficult glens to thread, being well mounted, I gained
rapidly on a young mountaineer, who, finding escape by flight
impossible, bent his course to a house at a short distance, as hoping
for shelter there, like a hare to her form. I shouted to him to stand;
he ran on. Again I hailed him; but he heeded not; when, dreading to
lose all trace of him, should he gain the house, I fired. The bullet took
effect. He fell, and his heart’s blood gushed on his father’s threshold.
Just at that instant an aged woman, alarmed by the gallop of my
horse, and the report of the pistol, rushed to the door, and
stumbling, fell upon the body of her dying son. She raised his
drooping head upon her knee, kissed his bloody brow, and screamed
aloud, ‘Oh, God of the widow and the fatherless, have mercy on me!’
One ghastly convulsive shudder shook all her nerves, and the next
moment they were calm as the steel of my sword; then raising her
pale and shrivelled countenance, every feature of which was fixed in
the calm, unearthly earnestness of utter despair, or perfect
resignation, she addressed me, every word falling distinct and
piercing on my ear like dropping musketry.
“‘And hast thou this day made me a widowed, childless mother?
Hast thou shed the precious blood of this young servant of Jehovah?
And canst thou hope that thy lot will be one of unmingled happiness?
Go, red-handed persecutor! Follow thine evil way! But hear one
message of truth from a feeble and unworthy tongue. Remorse, like a
bloodhound, shall dog thy steps; and the serpent of an evil
conscience shall coil around thy heart. From this hour thou shalt
never know peace. Thou shalt seek death, and long to meet it as a
friend; but it shall flee thee. And when thou shalt begin to love life,
and dread death, then shall thine enemy come upon thee; and thou
shalt not escape. Hence to thy bloody comrades, thou second Cain!
Thou accursed and banished from the face of Heaven and of mercy!
—
“‘Foul hag!’ I exclaimed, it would take little to make me send thee
to join thy psalm-singing offspring!’
“‘Well do I know that thou wouldst if thou wert permitted!’ replied
she. ‘But go thy way, and bethink thee how thou wilt answer to thy
Creator for this morning’s work!’
“And, ceasing to regard me, she stooped her head over the dead
body of her son. I could endure no more, but wheeled around, and
galloped off to join my companions.
“From that hour, I felt myself a doomed and miserable man. In
vain did I attempt to banish from my mind the deed I had done, and
the words I had heard. In the midst of mirth and revelry, the dying
groan of the youth, and the words of doom spoken by his mother,
rung for ever in my ears, converting the festal board to a scene of
carnage and horror, till the very wine-cup seemed to foam over with
hot bubbling gore. Once I tried—laugh, if you will—I tried to pray;
but the clotted locks of the dying man, and the earnest gaze of the
soul-stricken mother, came betwixt me and Heaven,—my lip faltered
—my breath stopped—my very soul stood still, for I knew that my
victims were in Paradise, and how could I think of happiness—I,
their murderer—in one common home with them? Despair took
possession of my whole being. I rushed voluntarily to the centre of
every deadly peril, in hopes to find an end to my misery. Yourself can
bear me witness that I have ever been the first to meet, the last to
retire from, danger. Often, when I heard the battle-signal given, and
when I passed the trench, or stormed the breach, in front of my
troop, it was less to gain applause and promotion than to provoke the
encounter of death. ’Twas all in vain. I was doomed not to die, while I
longed for death. And now—”
“Well, by your own account, you run no manner of risk, and at the
same time are proceeding on a rapid career of military success,” said
Keppel; “and, for my life, I cannot see why that should affect you,
supposing it all perfectly true.”
“Because you have not yet heard the whole. But listen a few
minutes longer. During last winter, our division, as you know, was
quartered in Brussels, and was very kindly entertained by the
wealthy and good-natured Flemings. Utterly tired of the heartless
dissipation of life in a camp, I endeavoured to make myself agreeable
to my landlord, that I might obtain a more intimate admission into
his family circle. To this I was the more incited, that I expected some
pleasure in the society of his daughter. In all I succeeded to my wish.
I became quite a favourite with the old man, and procured ready
access to the company of his child. But I was sufficiently piqued to
find, that in spite of all my gallantry, I could not learn whether I had
made any impression upon the heart of the laughing Fanchon. What
peace and playful toying could not accomplish, war and sorrow did.
We were called out of winter quarters, to commence what was
anticipated to be a bloody campaign. I obtained an interview to take
a long and doubtful farewell. In my arms the weeping girl owned her
love, and pledged her hand, should I survive to return once more to
Brussels. Keppel, I am a doomed man; and my doom is about to be
accomplished! Formerly I wished to die; but death fled me. Now I
wish to live; and death will come upon me! I know I shall never more
see Brussels, nor my lovely little Fleming. Wilt thou carry her my last
farewell; and tell her to forget a man who was unworthy of her love—
whose destiny drove him to love, and be beloved, that he might
experience the worst of human wretchedness? You’ll do this for me,
Keppel?”
“If I myself survive, I will. But this is some delusion—some strong
dream. I trust it will not unnerve your arm in the moment of the
storm.”
“No! I may die—must die; but it shall be in front of my troop, or in
the middle of the breach. Yet how I long to escape this doom! I have
won enough of glory; I despise pillage and wealth; but I feel my very
heartstrings shrink from the now terrible idea of final dissolution.
Oh! that the fatal hour were past, or that I had still my former
eagerness to die! Keppel, if I dared, I would to-day own myself a
coward.”
“Come with me,” said Keppel, “to my quarters. The night air has
made you aguish. The cold fit will yield to a cup of as generous Rhine
wine as ever was drunk on the banks of the Sambre.” Monteith
consented, and the two moved off to partake of the stimulating and
substantial comforts of a soldier’s breakfast in the Netherlands.
It was between one and two in the afternoon. An unusual stillness
reigned in the lines of the besiegers. The garrison remained equally
silent, as watching in deep suspense on what point the storm
portended by this terrible calm would burst. A single piece of
artillery was discharged. Instantly a body of grenadiers rushed from
the intrenchments, struggled over masses of ruins, and mounted the
breach. The shock was dreadful. Man strove with man, and blow
succeeded to blow, with fierce and breathless energy. The English
reached the summit, but were almost immediately beaten back,
leaving numbers of their bravest grovelling among the blackened
fragments. Their leader, Lord Cutts, had himself received a
dangerous wound in the head; but disregarding it, he selected two
hundred men from Mackay’s regiment, and putting them under the
command of Lieutenants Cockle and Monteith, sent them to restore
the fortunes of the assault. Their charge was irresistible. Led on by
Monteith, who displayed a wild and frantic desperation, rather than
bravery, they broke through all impediments, drove the French from
the covered way, seized on one of the batteries, and turned the
cannon against the enemy. To enable them to maintain this
advantage, they were reinforced by parties from other divisions.
Keppel, advancing in one of those parties, discovered the mangled
form of his friend Monteith, lying on heaps of the enemy on the very
summit of the captured battery. He attempted to raise the seemingly
lifeless body. Monteith opened his eyes,—“Save me!” he cried; “save
me! I will not die! I dare not—I must not die!”
It were too horrid to specify the ghastly nature of the mortal
wounds which had torn and disfigured his frame. To live was
impossible. Yet Keppel strove to render him some assistance, were it
but to soothe his parting spirit. Again he opened his glazing eyes,—“I
will resist thee to the last!” he cried, in a raving delirium. “I killed
him but in the discharge of my duty. What worse was I than others?
Poor consolation now! The doom—the doom! I cannot—dare not—
must not—will not die!” And while the vain words were gurgling in
his throat, his head sunk back on the body of a slaughtered foe, and
his unwilling spirit forsook his shattered body.—Edinburgh Literary
Journal.
 THE LADY OF WARISTOUN.

The estate of Waristoun, near Edinburgh, now partly covered by

the extended streets of the metropolis on its northern side, is
remarkable in local history for having belonged to a gentleman, who
in the year 1600, was cruelly murdered at the instigation of his wife.
This unfortunate lady, whose name was Jean Livingstone, was
descended from a respectable ancestry, being the daughter of
Livingstone, the laird of Dunipace, in Stirlingshire, and at an early
age was married to John Kincaid, the laird of Waristoun, who, it is
believed, was considerably more advanced in years than herself. It is
probable that this disparity of age laid the foundation of much
domestic strife, and led to the tragical event now to be noticed. The
ill-fated marriage and its results form the subject of an old Scottish
ballad, in which the proximate cause of the murder is said to have
been a quarrel at the dinner-table:
It was at dinner as they sat,
And when they drank the wine,
How happy were the laird and lady
Of bonny Waristoun!

But he has spoken a word in jest;

Her answer was not good;
And he has thrown a plate at her,
Made her mouth gush with blude.

Whether owing to such a circumstance as is here alluded to, or a bite

which the laird is said to have inflicted upon her arm, is immaterial;
the lady, who appeared to have been unable to restrain her
malignant passions, conceived the diabolical design of having her
husband assassinated. There was something extraordinary in the
deliberation with which this wretched woman approached the awful