Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-02-07
SUICIDE WITH OPIUM.

SUICIDE WITH OPIUM.
On Friday morning of last week a
man called at DIR. Robinson's Office
and requested him to go and see
man who was described as being
asleep and could not be awoke The
caller said it was an urgent case as the
man was breathing loud and hard.
The DR.. Immediately proceeded to
the place, some six miles northwest of
the city On arriving at the house he
found the so called sick man to be Mr..
Dane Peterson, an intelligent and well
to do farmer of SigeI A short ex-
animation of the symptoms and con-
dition of the patient satisfied him that
it was a case of opium poisoning He
had probably taken the opium some
eight hours before and was now totally
insensible. His pockets were search
ed and a small paper was found with a
few grains of opium in it. The DR..
returned to the city for some extra
medicine and instruments and on the
way he learned that the day before
Mr.. Dane Peterson had purchased
enough opium to kill forty men.
Before he got back to the house again
he had died. Circumstances fully
prove that Mr.. Peterson had intended
to kill himself
He had sold his team. The day
before his death he had four photo
graphs Of himself taken and on re
turning home the same evening re
quested his wife to give each of his
children one Of them when they grew
up His wife Immediately asked him
if he would not be living when the
children grew up, whereupon he
laughingly responded II don't know"
Why the deed was done is a mystery.
Mr. Peterson was comfortable in this
worlds goods, a hard working, eco
nomical farmer. He was some 35 years
of age, had a good frame and fair
intelligence He had been respondent
for few days and the winter of his
discomfort excluded from his life
every summers Joy. He had lived
through the green spring of man
hoods early youth with bright hopes
and prospects but in the golden
autumn of life when the fruit of
loves labor was springing up by his
Preside, when the little chubby hands
should have nerved him a hundred
fold to love of life, hope sIackened,
ambition grew apace and Dane Peter
son felt that this bundle of habits"
this mortal coil Of forces which resists
death must be shufied off. He had
jumped the life that is for that to
come. Life was not worth living to
him because he had forgotten that in
this world of physical decay
mans mental and spiritual power
must ever be on the increase to count
erbalance the blunted appetite and
sense of age. Dane Peterson had
failed 10 remember the field of i'm
mortality in which men can spend
their lives with increasing hope of its
continuance But his star of hope
went down the western horizon of des-
pair and set in the thick black clouds
of respondent misery. Hope is the
golden chain which holds life's vital
forces In activity. This chain, this
beautiful gossamer thread of hope
that weaves in the wool and warp of
human existence such unmeasured
pleasure and unlimited joys of am
bitten had lost its charm for him. The
setting of his hope was the setting of
his life. May the widow and the
four little orphaned hearts be sheltered
from the fierce tempest in the strug-
Gle of life which follows.