On May 2, 1962, a dramatic advertisement appeared in the San Francisco examiner:
“I don’t want my husband to die in the gas chamber for a crime he did not commit. I will therefore offer my services for 10 years as a cook, maid, or housekeeper to any leading attorney who will defend him and bring about his vindication.”
One of San Francisco’s greatest attorneys, Vincent Hallinan, read or heard about the ad and contacted Gladys Kidd, who had placed it. Her husband, Robert Lee Kidd, was about to be tried for the slaying of an elderly antique dealer. Kidd’s fingerprints had been found on a bloodstained ornate sword in the victim’s shop.
During the trial, Hallinan proved that the antique dealer had not been killed by the sword, and that Kidd’s fingerprints and blood on the sword got there because Kidd had once toyed with it while playfully dueling with a friend when they were both out shopping. The jury, after 11 hours, found Kidd to be not guilty.
Attorney Hallinan refused Gladys Kidd’s offer of 10 years’ servitude.
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British Prime Minister, William Gladstone (1809-1898), in announcing the death of Princess Alice to the House of Commons, related to them the following touching account that lead to her death.
The little daughter of the Princess Alice was seriously ill with diphtheria.
The doctors told her not to kiss her little girl and endanger her own life by breathing the child’s breath. Once when the child was struggling to breathe, the mother, forgetting herself entirely, took the little one into her arms to keep her from choking to death.
Rasping and struggling for her life, the child said, “Mummy, kiss me!” Without thinking of herself the mother tenderly kissed her daughter.
She got diphtheria and shortly after she died and went to be forever with the Lord.
Real love forgets self. Real love knows no danger. Real love doesn’t count the cost. Which is why the Bible says,
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”
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