344 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [386 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

312 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

He appeared on the outside as a whited sepulcher, but was as rotten on the inside as it was possible to be.

So, he has no good character, I submit, and never had it; he has a reputation—that's what people say and think about you—and he has a reputation for good conduct only among those people who don't know his character. But suppose that he had a good character; that would amount to nothing. David of old was a great character until he put old Uriah in the forefront of battle in order that he might be killed—that Uriah might be killed, and David take his wife. Judas Iscariot was a good character, and one of the Twelve, until he took the thirty pieces of silver and betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ. Benedict Arnold was brave and enjoyed the confidence of all the people and those in charge of the management of the Revolutionary War until he betrayed his country. Since that day, his name has been a synonym for infamy.

Oscar Wilde, an Irish Knight, a literary man, brilliant, and the author of works that will go down the ages—Lady Windermere's Fan, De Profundis—which he wrote while confined in jail, had the effrontery and the boldness, when the Marquis of Queensbury saw that there was something wrong between this intellectual giant and his son and sought to break up their companionship, to sue the Marquis for damages. This brought retaliation on the part of the Marquis for criminal practices on the part of Wilde, this intellectual giant. Wherever the English language is read, the effrontery, the boldness, and the coolness of this man, Oscar Wilde, as he stood the cross-examination of the ablest lawyers of England—an effrontery that is characteristic of the man of his type—will remain the subject matter of study for lawyers and for people who are interested in the type of pervert like this man. Not even Oscar Wilde's wife—for he was married and had two children—suspected that he was guilty of such immoral practices, and, as I say, it never would have been brought to light, probably, because committed in secret, had not this man had the effrontery, the boldness, and the impudence himself to start the proceeding which led to his downfall.