Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — Suicide not Heroic. [ARTICLE]

Suicide not Heroic.

Suicide, as an escape from tha earthly consequences of one’s own misdeeds, is much affected nowadays, and it must be confessed that if escape is all that is desired no surer expedient could be adopted. But if one cares for character or name, it is the least worthy of all expedients. When a man loses his fortune which he has hnrdly earned, necessity compels him to go to work to earn another, or at least he tries to keep himself out of the poorhouse. But when he loses his character, which is worth more than fortune, he has a more imperative motive for reearning what he foolishly parted from. True it is easier to build up a shattered fortune than regain a geod name, but the greater prize is worth the greater effort. • Besides, to quit life at such a time is to repudiate every obligation imposed by natural affection to parents, wife and children, who have the right to demand that no taint be put upon them. The individual himself may escape by suicide. But the children he has brought into the world cannot. He simply handicaps them in the struggle for existence and slips away, leaving them a heritage of shame. To live down wrong-doing and right one’s self after having wandered so far out of the one true way is hard to do, but the manly man will not hesitate to live and undertake the task.—[St. Louis Post-Dispatch.