Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1877 — The Etiquette of Suicide. [ARTICLE]

The Etiquette of Suicide.

Suioule is becoming so common a feature of onr national mania for the startling and the hoirible that people have began to regard it as a mere every-duy matter of course. If Brown chooses to sever his femoral artery, or to take an occasional whack at one or both of Lis wrists, within a whitewashed bedroom at the Tildeii or the Tammany House; if Black goes off to a lonely field tor the purpose of passing in hia checks, and there experiments upon the few brains leit to him, with a shot-gun; if White hires a row-boat, for which he fails to reimburse the owrter, pulls out upon the bosom of the mighty waters, ties a couple of bricks to his legs, and drops over the side to rise no more—the world goes on moving just the same; the men continue to thirst for currency, 'the women to shop, the young then and maidens to flirt, and the babies to squall. People shrug their shoulders, and ask, “how much was it?” or, “who was she,” just as if no such frightful thing had ever occurred. The world has supped, in. fact, so full of horrors that it takes a very scientific and original suicide indeed to stir its pulses. When that original inventor chopped off his head at Lafayette with a new and improved patent guillotine, business men took an interest .in the thing, because here after ali was a chance for speculation. Other men might want their heads chopped off by the same process, and a new and improved article in guillotines was evidently a necessity. When that practical but unhappy youth arranged his scenery, and put himself out of the way in such a picturesque and melodramatic manner at the Palmer House last summer, he did it, poor youth, in the interests of Chicago journalism, and Chicago journalism was not ungnitelul—it published his poetry. But there is one phase of suicide to which we desire to call the attention of parties wearied with the world and indolence. It has often been remarked that a gentleman is a gentleman drunk or sober. The same rale applies to suicides. However bent a party may be upon ridding the world of his unhappy presence, no degree of melancholia pan prevent him displaying the blood or grain of which he ts composed. American suicides have a particular weakness for hotels. Now, unless the hotel proprietor has done the suicide sortie marked and irreparable injury he could not do the house, not to mention the walls and bedding, a greater, injustice than to disfigure them with his taking off. A gentleman desirous of death would naturally seek some “path by the river overshadowed by trees,” some lonely outhouse, or desert field. He would never dream of leaving behind him a phantom to disturb the slumbers of a respectable boardingestablishment. It is your common fellow who seeks such notoriety, even :n hi* exit from this earthly stage. We have no desire to take away any little pleasure which the unhappy man or woman may derive from perusing farewell poetry o.' last speeches and dying confessions, but we would merely suggest that if they have fully determined to shuffle off this mortal coil they should do so as quietly as possible,

and not attempt to lejan* the business of the man who gives them shelter and a good table at the trifling ooet of from 18 to $4 per day.—lnter- Ocean.