A few days ago Mr. Berth, a young New Yorker, committed suicide
in a hotel at St. Paul, Minn. The explanation given for his
rash act is that constant study of pessimistic literature had
affected his mind. Among his books was found a melancholy tale
by Edgar Saltus, in which Berth had marked many depressing
passages. About eighty years ago fashionable society in London
affected great admiration for Addison’s tragedy of “Cato.” After
one of the stage renditions of the play a man named Budgell,
imprest by the closing scene of the play, in which the hero
commits suicide, left the theater and plunging into the Thames
was drowned. On his body was found this couplet:
What Cato did and Addison approves
Must needs be right.
While such susceptibility to pessimistic writing as was shown
by Berth and Budgell is, of course, extremely rare, it is
nevertheless, a fact that an author who depicts life in dreary
colors is sure to exert a most undesirable influence over
many of his readers. The force of this applies to all kinds
of writing. Whether a man pens an epic poem or a newspaper
editorial, the tone of his philosophy is sure to leave its
ultimate effect on those who peruse his words.--New York
_World_.
(2363)
=Pessimists, The, and the Optimists=--See LOADS, BALKING UNDER.