extraordinary variety and novelty of the methods to which man has
resorted in his efforts to escape from the sufferings and misfortunes of
life. One would naturally suppose that a person who had made up his mind
to commit suicide would do so in the easiest, most convenient, and least
painful way; but the literature of the subject proves conclusively that
hundreds of suicides, every year, take their lives in the most
difficult, agonizing, and extraordinary ways; and that there is hardly a
possible or conceivable method of self-destruction that has not been
tried. When I clipped from a newspaper my first case of self-cremation
with kerosene and a match, I regarded it as rather a remarkable and
unusual method of taking life; but I soon discovered that self-cremation
is comparatively common. When I learned that Mary Reinhardt, of New
York, had sung "Rock of Ages" and had then killed herself by inhaling
gas in a barrel stuffed with pillows, I thought it a curious and
noteworthy case; but when I compared it with suicides that came to my
knowledge later, it seemed quite simple and natural. I have
well-authenticated cases in which men or women have committed suicide by
hanging themselves, or taking poison, in the tops of high trees; by
throwing themselves upon swiftly revolving circular saws; by exploding
dynamite in their mouths; by thrusting red-hot pokers down their
throats; by hugging red-hot stoves; by stripping themselves naked and
allowing themselves to freeze to death on winter snow-drifts out of
doors, or on piles of ice in refrigerator-cars; by lacerating their
throats on barbed-wire fences; by drowning themselves head downward in
barrels; by suffocating themselves head downward in chimneys; by diving
into white-hot coke-ovens; by throwing themselves into craters of
volcanoes; by shooting themselves with ingenious combinations of a rifle
with a sewing-machine; by strangling themselves with their hair; by
swallowing poisonous spiders; by piercing their hearts with corkscrews
and darning-needles; by cutting their throats with hand-saws and
sheep-shears; by hanging themselves with grape vines; by swallowing
strips of under-clothing and buckles of suspenders; by forcing teams of
horses to tear their heads off; by drowning themselves in vats of soft
soap; by plunging into retorts of molten glass; by jumping into
slaughter-house tanks of blood; by decapitation with home-made
guillotines; and by self-crucifixion.
Of course, persons who resort to such methods as these are, in most
cases, mentally unsound. A man who shoots, hangs, poisons, or drowns
himself may be sane; but the man who crucifies himself, buries himself
alive, cuts his throat on a barbed-wire fence, or climbs into the top of
a tree to take poison, is evidently on the border-line of insanity, even
if he be not a recognized lunatic.
The most prevalent methods of suicide in Europe are, first, hanging,
second, drowning. In the United States they are, first, poisoning,
second, shooting. About three fourths of all the persons who commit
suicide in the United States use pistol or poison. The difference
between European and American methods is probably due to the fact that
on the other side of the Atlantic drugs and fire-arms are not so easily
obtainable as they are here, and Europeans therefore resort to water and
the rope as the best and surest means accessible. Police restrictions
and regulations make it almost impossible for a Russian peasant to get
either poison or a pistol; but all the police in the empire cannot
prevent him from drowning himself in a pond, or hanging himself in his
own barn.
A careful comparison of all the facts accessible seems to show that in
Europe, at least, suicide bears a certain definite relation to education
and manufactures; and that, as I have already said, it is a by-product
of the great, complicated world-machine that we call modern
civilization. Its specific causes, so far as they can be ascertained,
are, on the educational side, the development of increased nervous and
psychic sensibility, which makes men feel more acutely all wants,
deprivations, misfortunes, and sufferings; and, on the manufacturing
side, a monotony of employment which wearies and exhausts the body while
it gives little exercise to the educated mind and leaves the latter free
to brood over its unsatisfied longings and desires, as well as its many
trials and disappointments. There are other causes, such as the growing
disproportion between wants generally and the means of gratification
generally; alcoholism; unhealthful work, especially in manufacturing
districts; barrack and tenement-house life; and all the evils incident
to poverty, overcrowding, and bad sanitary conditions in cities. So far
as I can see, these causes, at present, are not removable. Education
must continue to intensify sensibility and increase the number of men's
wants, and the great economic machine must grind on, even though it
crush thousands of human beings, every year, in the cogs of its
innumerable wheels. A high suicide rate is part of the price that we pay
for the educational and material achievements upon which we pride
ourselves. We have greatly multiplied the means of human happiness, but
whether, on the whole, we have increased the sum total of human
happiness is perhaps an open question. In any event, the high and
rapidly increasing suicide rate shows that we are pushing the weaklings
to the wall.
The question of what can be done to lessen the suicide tendency and
check this great waste of human power and energy brings me to the only
important cause of self-destruction which seems to me removable, and
that is newspaper publicity. No argument is needed to prove that man is
essentially an imitative animal. In dress, in behavior, in speech, in
modes of thought, and in social conventions, we are all prone to do what
we see others do; and when unhappy men and women learn, from the
newspapers, that scores of other unhappy people are daily escaping from
their troubles through the always open door of suicide, when familiarity
with the idea of self-destruction deprives the act of all its natural
terror, it is not at all surprising that they yield to what seems to be
the general current of their social environment. I have, in my own
collection of material, a surprisingly large number of cases in which
the suicidal act may be traced directly to newspaper publicity and
imitation; but I must limit myself to a single striking
illustration--the suicidal epidemic in Emporia, Kansas, in the summer of
1901. As a result, apparently, of the publication of the details of two
or three suicides of people prominent in that little Kansas town, there
broke out an epidemic of self-destruction which culminated in the
sunny, flowery month of June, and which carried the annual suicide rate
from about 90 per million to 1,665 per million--a rate five times
greater than that of Saxony. Mr. Morse, the mayor of the city, consulted
the Board of Health, and decided to stop the publication of the details
of suicides in the local papers, even if it should require the
employment of force. He issued a proclamation, on the 16th of June, in
which he said: "I have consulted the Board of Health, and if the Emporia
papers do not comply with my request, I shall have a right to stop, and
I will stop summarily, the publication of these suicide details, under
the law providing for the suppression of epidemics. There is clearly an
epidemic in this city, and although it is mental, it is none the less
deadly. Its contagion may be clearly shown to come from what is known in
medicine as the psychic suggestion, found in the publication of the
details of suicides. If the paper on which the local journals are
printed had been kept in a place infected with small-pox, I could demand
that the journals stop using that paper, or stop publication. If they
spread another contagion--the contagious suggestion of suicide--I
believe the liberty of the press is not to be considered before the
public welfare, and that the courts would sustain me in using force to
prevent the publication of newspapers containing matter clearly
deleterious to the public health."
I believe that the reasoning of Mayor Morse is perfectly sound, and that
the position taken by him is absolutely impregnable. The prevention of
the publication of suicides in the newspapers of a State would require a
special legislative act, but it would probably do more to lessen the
suicidal tendency than any other single measure that could be taken. In
the winter of 1902, Representative Jenkins introduced in the National
House of Representatives a bill making periodicals containing details of
suicides unmailable; but I think it was never reported from committee.
_The Emotional Temperament as a Cause_
There is one other way in which the suicide rate may possibly be
lowered, or at least held in check, and that is through the cultivation
of what may be called the heroic spirit. We are becoming too emotional
and sentimental, and too much inclined to regard weakness with sympathy,
instead of with the contempt that it generally deserves. In the language
of the prize ring, the pugilist who lies down while he can yet stand and
see is called a "quitter." It would be harsh and unjust to apply to all
suicides this opprobrious name; but there can be little doubt, I think,
that the majority of them are weaklings who give up and lie down while
they still have a fighting chance.
Readers of shipping news may still remember the wreck of a German
kerosene steamer on the wildest, most precipitous part of the coast of
Newfoundland, in February, 1901. The steamer took fire during a heavy
winter gale, and the captain ran her ashore, at the nearest point of
land, with the hope of saving the lives of the crew. She struck on a
submerged reef in a little cove, about an eighth of a mile from a coast
which was three or four hundred feet high and as precipitous as a wall.
When she was first seen by a few fishermen at daylight, her boats were
gone, and all of her crew had apparently perished except three men. Two
were standing on the bridge, and one was lashed aloft in the
fore-rigging. About ten o'clock in the forenoon a tremendous sea carried
away the bridge and the two men on it, and they were seen no more. At
three o'clock in the afternoon the solitary survivor,--the man in the
fore-rigging,--who was evidently suffering intensely from hunger and
cold, unlashed himself, threshed his arms against his body for five
minutes to restore the circulation in them, and then took off his coat,
waved his hand to the fishermen on top of the cliff, climbed down the
shrouds, and plunged into the sea--but not to commit suicide. He swam to
the shore, made three attempts in different places to get a footing
among the rocks at the base of the cliff, but was swept away every time
by the surf, and finally abandoned the attempt as hopeless. At that
crisis in the struggle ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have given
up and allowed themselves to drown; but this man was not a "quitter." He
turned his face again seaward, struck out for the half-submerged ship,
and after a long and desperate struggle succeeded in reaching her and
getting on board. He climbed the fore-shrouds, waved his hand to the
pitying but powerless fishermen on the edge of the cliff, and lashed
himself again in the rigging. At intervals, until dark, he made signals
to the fishermen to show that he was yet alive. At daybreak on the
following morning he could still be seen in the fore-rigging, but his
head had fallen on his breast and he was motionless. He had frozen to
death in the night. That man died, as a man in adverse circumstances
ought to die, fighting to the last. You may call it foolish, and say
that he might better have ended his sufferings by allowing himself to
drown when he found that he could not make a landing at the base of the
cliff; but deep down in your hearts you pay secret homage to his
courage, his endurance, and his indomitable will. He was defeated at
last, but, so long as he had consciousness, neither fire nor cold nor
tempest could break down his manhood.
The Caucasian mountaineers have a proverb which says: "Heroism is
endurance for one moment more." That proverb recognizes the fact that in
this world the human spirit, with its dominating force, the will, may be
and ought to be superior to all bodily sensations and all accidents of
environment. We should not only feel, but we should teach, by our
conversation and by our literature, that, in the struggle of life, it is
essentially a noble thing and a heroic thing to die fighting. In a
recent psychological story called "My Friend Will," Charles F. Lummis
pays a striking tribute to the power of the human mind over the
accidents of life and chance when he makes his "friend Will" say: "I am
bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things--sorrow,
misfortune, and suffering--are outside my door. I'm in the house and
I've got the key!"
PRAIRIE DAWN
BY WILLA SIBERT CATHER
A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;
A pungent odor from the dusty sage;
A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;
A breaking of the distant table-lands
Through purple mists ascending, and the flare
Of water ditches silver in the light;
A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;
A sudden sickness for the hills of home.
--_From April Twilights._
THE DOINGS OF THE DEVIL
BY HARVEY J. O'HIGGINS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY
Mrs. Cregan wept, and her tears were ludicrous. She was as fat as a
Falstaff. Her features were as ill-suited for the expression of grief as
a circus clown's. She had not even a channel in her plump cheeks to
drain the tears from the corners of her eyes; and the slow drops, large
and unctuous, trickled down her round jowl and soaked into her
bonnet-strings, leaving her cheeks as fresh and as ruddy in the sunlight
as if they had been merely wet with perspiration. Her eyes stared,
unpuckered, apparently unconscious that they wept. Her mouth was tight
in an expression of resentful determination. Only her little round chin
trembled--like a child's.
And yet Mrs. Cregan was as nearly heart-broken as she had ever been in
her life. She was leaving her husband; what was more grievous to her,
she was leaving her home; she was on the streets of New York, with her
small savings in her greasy purse--clasped tightly in her two hands
under her "Sunday cape," that was trimmed with fringe and tassels in a
way to remind you of a lambrequin. She did not know where to go. There
was no one to whom she could turn for aid, and she would not go to any
one for pity. Behind her was the wreck of a breakfast table--the visible
symbol of her ruined home--with a cursing Irishman, whom nobody could
live with any longer, shouting, "_Your_ house, is it? I'll show yeh
whose house it is! I'll show yeh! I'll break ev'ry danged thing in the
place!" Before her were the crooked byways of what had once been
"Greenwich village," as quiet as a desert, and as indifferent, in the
early morning radiance, with shuttered windows and closed doors.
The domestic peace of those old streets made her own homelessness the
more pitiful to her. She felt as she had felt once before--years
before--in her childhood, when she had set sail with her parents for
America. It had been a cold day; and the mists had steamed up horridly
from the water, with a desolate, wet sea-odor; and the memory of the
sunlight on green fields and the warm perfume of the land had been like
a longing for health and daylight to the darkness of a death-bed. The
future had threatened her with the terrors of an unknown world. The
past--despite its poverty and starvation--had been as dear as life. She
had suffered all those pangs of dissolution that assail the home-loving
Irish when they have to leave what association has made dear to them;
for, with the Irish, familiarity does not breed contempt but affection.
She suffered these same miseries now. She saw her home through tears of
regret, though unhappiness had driven her from it. And her lips were set
in a determination never to return to Cregan, though her chin trembled
with pity of herself in the determination.
Some distance behind her came a smaller woman, as shrunken, as withered,
and as yellow as an old leaf. Even her shoes seemed to have dried and
shriveled, curling up at the toes. And she fluttered along in the light
morning breeze, holding back against it, on her heels, with an odd
effect of being carried forward faster than she wished to go.
She was Mrs. Byrne, from the floor below Mrs. Cregan's flat, and she had
been starting out on a secret errand of her own when she heard the
quarrel overhead and stopped to hear the end of it. There was something
guilty in her manner, and she was evidently struggling between her
desire to reach the next street unseen by Mrs. Cregan and her desire to
know what had happened in the Cregan flat. Her curiosity proved the
stronger.
She let the wind blow her alongside her friend's portly despair. She
said, in the hoarse whisper that was all she had left of her voice: "Is
it yerself, Missus Cregan? Yuh're off to choorch early this mornin'."
Mrs. Cregan looked around, blinking to clear her eyes. "Choorch?" she
said, on the plaintiveness of a high note that broke in her throat.
"Yuh're cryin', woman!". Her look of craftiness had changed at once to
one of startled distress. "Come back out o' this with yuh." She caught
Mrs. Cregan's arm. "It's no thing to be doin' on the street! Come back,
now. Where're yuh goin'?"
Mrs. Cregan marched stolidly ahead and carried her neighbor with her.
"I've quit 'm."
"Quit who?"
"Himsilf.... Dinny."
Mrs. Byrne expressed her emotion and showed her tact by silently
compressing her lips.
"I've quit 'im, fer good an' all." She stroked a tear down her cheek
with a thick forefinger. "I'll niver go back. Niver!"
"Come away with yuh, Mary Cregan," Mrs. Byrne cried, in her breathy
huskiness. "At _your_ age! Faith, yuh're as flighty as one o' them girls
with the pink silk petticoats. He's yer husban', ain't he? D'yuh think
yuh were married over the broomstick? Come an' behave yerself like a
decent woman. What'd Father Dumphy say to _this_, think yuh?"
"He's a man. I know what he'd say. He'd tell me to go back to Cregan.
I'll niver go back. Niver!"
"Yuh won't! What'll yuh do, then? Where'll yuh go to?"
"I'll niver go back. Niver! He's broke me best chiny--an' kicked the leg
off the chair--an' overtoorned the table--an' ordered me out o' the
little bit o' home I been all these years puttin' together. The teapot
th' ol' man brought from Ireland--the very teapot--smashed to
smithereens! An' the little white dishes with the gilt trimmin's I had
to me weddin' day, Mrs. Byrne! There was the poor things all broke to
bits!" She stopped to point at the sidewalk, as if the wreckage lay
there before her. "All me little bit o' chiny. All of it. All of it,
Mrs. Byrne. Ev'ry bit! Boorsted!"
Her tears choked her. She could not express the piercing irreparability
of the injury. It would not have been so bad if he had beaten her; a
hurt will heal. But the innocent, wee cups--and the fat old brown
teapot--and the sweet little chair with its pretty legs, carved and
turned so daintily! She had washed them and wiped them, and dusted and
polished them, and been so careful of them and felt so proud of them,
for twenty years past. And, now, there they were lying, all in
bits--past mending--gone forever. And they so pretty and so harmless.
The crash as they fell on the floor had sounded in her ears like the
scream of a child murdered.
She started forward again, determinedly. "I'll niver go back to 'm. He
can have his house to himsilf.... What do I care for Father Dumphy? He
wants nothin' but the dime I leaves at the choorch doore, an' the dime I
drops on the plate! Whin me poorse's impty, he'll not bother his head
about me!"
"Shame _on_ yuh!" Mrs. Byrne wheezed, with her eye on the house she was
passing. "Yuh talk no better than a Prod'stunt."
"An' if I _was_ a Prod'stint," she cried, "I'd not have to pay money
iv'ry time I wanted to hear mass. I'd not be out on the street here, not
knowin' where I'm goin' to, ner how I'm to live. It's _thim_ that knows
how to take care o' their own--givin' the women worrk, an' takin' the
childer off to the farrms, an' all the like o' that. You Dogans----"
Mrs. Byrne glanced about her fearfully, "Stop yer talk, now. Stop yer
talk. Stop it before someone hears yuh makin' a big fool o' yerself."
"I'll not stop it. What do I care who hears me? I'm goin' off from here
fer good an' all. 'Twill know me no more. 'Twill not. I'm done with it
all. I'm done with it." She held out her purse. "I've got me bit o'
money. I'll hire me a little room up-town. I'm done with _him_ an'
Father Dumphy an' the whole dang lot o' yuz. Slavin' an' savin' fer
nothin' at all. I'll worrk fer mesilf now, an' none other. Neither
Cregan ner the choorch ner no one ilse 'll get a penny's good o' me no
more. I got no one in the wide worrld but mesilf to look to, an' I'll go
it alone."
Mrs. Byrne was a little woman of a somewhat sinister aspect, her dull
eyes very deep in their wrinkles, her nose pushed aside out of the
perpendicular, her long lips stretched tightly over protruding teeth.
She was as curious as an old monkey; but it was not only her curiosity
that made her the busiest gossip and the most charitable "good soul" in
the street; she had her share of human kindness, and if she was as
crafty as a hypocrite, it was because she enjoyed handling men and
women, like a politician.
Seeing that Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of shame or the appeal of
the priest, she said: "Well, I don't blame yuh, woman. Cregan's a
fool--like all the rest o' the men. An' yerself such a good manager.
Well, well! Yer rooms was that purty 't 'ud make yuh wistful. Where will
yuh be goin'?"
"I dunno."
"Have yuh had yer breakfast?"
Mrs. Cregan shook her head.
"Come back, then, an' have a bite with me."
"Niver! I'll niver go back."
Mrs. Byrne hitched up her shawl. "Come along then to the da-ary
restr'unt. There's no one home to miss me. Ill take a bit o' holiday,
this mornin', meself. I've been wantin' to taste one o' those batter
cakes they make in the restr'unt windahs, this long enough."
"Yuh've ate yer breakfast."
"I have not" Mrs. Byrne replied. "I was off to the grocer to buy some
sugar when yuh stopped me."
It was a lie. She had, in fact; started out, secretly, on a guilty
errand which she should not acknowledge.
"It's a lonely meal I'd 've been havin'," she said, "with Byrne down at
the boiler house an' the boy off on his run."
Mrs. Cregan did not reply, and they came to Sixth Avenue without more
words. They paused before a dairy restaurant that advertised its
"Surpassing Coffee" in white-enamel letters on its shop-front windows.
Mrs. Cregan's hunger drew her in, but slowly; and Mrs. Byrne followed,
coughing to conceal her embarrassment.
[Illustration: "'YOUR HOUSE, IS IT? I'LL SHOW YEH WHOSE HOUSE IT IS!'"]
II
It was the first time that Mrs. Byrne had ever sat down in any public
restaurant, except the eating-halls at Coney Island (where she went with
"basket parties") or the ice-cream "parlors" at Fort George. And she
glanced about her at tiled walls and mosaic floors with a furtiveness
that was none the less critical for being so sly. "It's eatin' in a
bathroom we are," she whispered. "An' will yuh look at the cup yonder.
The sides of it are that thick there's scarce room fer the coffee in it!
Well, well! It do beat the Dutch! They're drawin' the drink out of a
boiler big enough fer wash day." The approach of a waitress silenced
her. When she saw that Mrs. Cregan was not going to speak, she looked up
at the girl with a bargain-counter keenness. "Have y' any pancakes fit
t' eat? How much are they? Ten cents! Fer how many? Fer three pancakes?
Fer three! D'yuh hear that?" she appealed to Mrs. Cregan. "Come home
with me, that's a good woman. It's a sin to pay it. Three cents fer a
pancake! Aw, come along out o' this. Ten cents! We c'u'd get two loaves
o' bread fer the money an' live on it fer a week!"
But Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of practicalities, and she ordered
her buckwheat cakes and coffee with an air that was mournfully distrait.
Mrs. Byrne made a vain attempt to get her own cakes from the waitress
for five cents, and then resigned herself to the senseless extravagance.
"Yuh'll not make yer own livin' an' eat the likes o' this," she
grumbled asthmatically. "Yuh'd better be savin' yer money."
Mrs. Cregan was looking at the thick china with a sort of aggrieved
despondence. (It was almost the expression of a bereaved mother looking
at one of her neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat
whom nobody would have missed!) She stared at the bare walls and the
bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison with
her own cozy flat, as unhome-like as the waiting-room of a railroad
station--the waiting-room of a railroad station when you have said
good-bye to your past and the train has not yet arrived to carry you to
your future.
As her pancakes were served to her, she bent over the plate to hide a
tear that trickled down her nose. It splashed on the piece of food that
she raised to her mouth. She ate it--tear and all.
"An' them no bigger than the top of a tomato can!" Mrs. Byrne was
muttering.
Mrs. Cregan ate, and the food helped, to stop her tears. It was the
strong coffee, at last, that brought her back her voice. "If it'd b'en
_him_, he'd 'a' gone an' got drunk," she said, wiping her cheeks with
her napkin. "The men have the best of it. Us women have to take it all
starin' sober."
"They're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they're to be
treated as such. Sure, Cregan couldn't live without yuh. He'd have no
buttons to his pants in a week."