Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Georgian
August 4th, 1913
Wife and Mother of the Accused Pencil Factory Superintendent Sit Calmly Through Trial.
By TARLETON COLLIER
Women are brought into a court room, as all the world knows, for one of two purposes. Their presence may have a moral effect in softening the heart of a juror, particularly if they be young, pretty or wistful of countenance. Or they may be there on the affectionate mission of cheering and encouraging a beloved defendant.
Two women sat with Leo Frank through all the hot, weary days of last week. Their object was the one or the other. Which?
A study of these women was the answer. Everybody studied them. Everybody knew that love and trust inspired them. Whether Frank be innocent or guilty, to his credit be it said that he is loved by the women closest to him.
His mother was one of the two, a woman on whose face was written plainly the story of a life in which there was much of grief, much of the tenderest joy, much of loving and being loved.
Tragedy in Mother’s Face.
Her eyes were sad. Her features never lost their tragic composure. But it was plain that smiles had come often to her in the course of her life. The face is common to mothers.
The other woman was his wife, a robust, wholesome young woman. Her face was the placid face of one whose life has been pleasant. No unhappy event had come to mar a single feature. None of the troubles that had been the mother’s had come to her until this calamity.
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