Negro Superstition

The power of superstition upon Southern negroos is fully illustrated in the eonfession of a Tboma ton (Ga.) oolored murderer, üick Dawson, who was hung on tlie 5th of July. He and his brotherin-law, Frank Cunningham, were hardworking farmers of Upson county, and the best of friends until Dawson cultivated an unlawful love for Cunningnam's wife. She determined to put her uneuspecting husband out of the way, and, as Dawson was loath to take his life, she urged him on with the accneation that Cunningham had hired an old negro, who liyed in the woods near by and was credited by all the darkies of the vieinity with possessing an evil eye, to bewitch him. This was the reason, as his mistress told Dawson, why his garden did not do well; wliy the flsh did not bite his hooks; why it was discovered that it was he who stole a goose from a neighbor's roost. Dawson was, of course, disturbed by the artful construction whioh Mrs. Cunningham placed upon every untoward incident, and was finally placed in terror of his life by her statement that at lier husband's direction sho had pulled nine hairs out of the mole of his head. She said that he would wind these around a rusty nail that the wizard had given him, and with one blow daily for nine days drive the nail into a tree; on the ninth day she persuaded Dawson that he would die an awful death. Dawson at once set himself at work to break the enchantment before the nine days should expire. He lured Cunningham to his house with a I promise to give him half a pig he should kill that evening, and then shot him, brained him with a hoe, and then hid his bodywhere it was found by accident. Dawson was arrested and sentenced to behung, on circumstantial evidence, and recently confessed his guilt, implicating Mrs. Cuuningham. The woman has been arrested while working in the flelds in another cnunty, and will be put on trial for her life at the next term of court.