The Trial of Laura Hawkins in The Gilded Age

Abstract

In the gilded age laura hawkins¹ of missouri was tricked into a fake marriage by Colonel Selby, handsome Confederate officer, who already had a wife in New Orleans. Some time after the Colonel had deserted her, she went to Washington at the invitation of Senator Dilworthy and aided him in his attempt to lobby a bill through Congress. Later she saw Colonel Selby at a reception in Washington, to which city he had come to press a claim for cotton lost during the war. At sight of him her eyes blazed with “fire and hatred,” and on the pretext that she had heard a night prowler trying to enter the house she got a pistol from her foster brother Washington Hawkins and instructions for loading and firing it. After an interview with the Colonel, however, in which he swore away his soul in protestation of his love, she decided that she loved him as much as ever.