Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-05-22
PLUCK ARD SUICIDE.

duty is only another name for difficulty,
and the man or woman who consents to
suicide or moral self-surrender whenever
some scoundrel makes them suffer senti-
mentally, or calamity cuts the cable of
their business anchor, is an invalid
subject for debate among doctors, who
sometimes heal such people, rather than
candidate for the worlds elusive sympathy
and sorrowp That is a charitable view to
take of it. The man whose mentality has
not been demoralized by physical ailments,
who, in the bloom of health commits
suicide, is cowardly. To say that he was
insane is the charity of human kindness.
We agree with our contemporary that
there is more sympathy justly due the
promises and repents, than for the senti-
mental doll who takes poison because "a
fool man" changes his mind about marry
ing her. There is more poetry in the sui
eide, but more practical sense and squared
up sound Judgment in the horsewhip or
the verdict for damages. There is a per-
feet food-waste of human sympathy for
the people who commit suicide because
things have gone wrong. When Il faithless
one deserts the one-time object of his af-
fections, the woman, if sensible and reason
able and appreciative of her duty in life,
will offer heaven thanks that she has been
delivered from a fraud But this kind of
woman somehow gets very little sympathy.
To enjoy that luxury she ought to pine
and go into a decline and melt away in
consumption. Pluck in one is worth all
the sadness, sentimentality and misfortune
and weakness in a thousand suicides A
North Carolina girl hanged herself be-
cause a rascal refused her Marin county
charged him with completely in bribery
Il widow in Iaporte county, Indiana, took
prussic acid because her lover married the
other girl husband in Albany jumped
into a canal and drowned because his wife
had spoken Grossly to him; rich specu-
lator in New York committed suicide be-
cause Of a fall in grain prices-all these
recent examples of intellectual paralysis
and moral cowardice ought to serve as ex-
amples to those tempted to let go their
grip. The great army of tiled and
tempted who do not lose faith
in themselves, who, though sorely |
pressed and grievously beset with trials
and tribulations and sorrows, still set their
teeth and pluckily hold on and fight it out
on the line set them, have not the worlds
applause, for the world knows very little
of the valorous deeds of these everyday
heroes. They have cause to roundly be-
rate society when it signs and weeps over
the poor wretches who have not the self
respect to live, or the courage to face re-
lection and wrestle with misfortune. The
world is full of heroes; we meet them
daily on the crowded highways; they
smile above aching breasts or "coinless
pockets, and cheerily mask bruised souls
or empty stomachs. They lay no burdens
down, and confess no life failures. They
keep their shoulders to the wheel and help
| the world revolve and move with it, God
| bless these heroic men and women, and
God pity the poor, selfish wretches who
murder those they love but cannot possess,
and cowardly escape the gallows that
groans for them, by pistoling their own
lives away. God help and lift up the
tried and suffering who have grit and will
not to let go. Heaven cover with the merci-
| full mantle the memory of the dastards
who desert their posts because man or
a woman smiles on more than one. OF
course, we fairly pity the suicides; they
are beyond human reproach; but the flood
gate of our sympathy is clear uplifted for
those they leave behind, and on whose in
nocent hearts they grave shame and sor-
row bv their cowardly acts. We extend
sincere concurrence to the Oregonioa in its
protest against the waste of human SYM
pathy for self-murderers. 1t rounds up the
subject well when it saws: "Inyincible
pugnacity is the natural impulse of the
healthy man. Hotspur, Iago, Richard the
Third, Coriolanus, fight to the last, but
minds sick through sensuality, through
misfortune, through love or jealousy, sur
render, like Richard the Second, Antony,
| Timon Romeo and OtbalIon