The technique of murder, like the technique of love has its fashions. There are periods when fire-arms are all the rage, and there are periods when the vogue is for hammers, bludgeons, golf-clubs and sash-weights. Towards the end of the year 1898, the smart thing was to send poison through the mails- in a box of candy, a bottle of headache powders, a plug of chewing tobacco, or what not. Thus a Mrs. Dunning was dispatched in San Francisco. A Mrs. Wilkinson in Newark, and a Mrs. Adams and a Mr. Barnet in New York. There ensued a pother with the World and the Journal running a race in alarms.
From my never-ending pile of copies of "The American Mercury", November, 1929
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