The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-05-17

really be nerve-racking to go home
from business daily with the disquiet-
ing uncertainty as to whether one will
meet ones wife Wearing {; fresh white
froc!l and a smile at the door, or find
her behind it, dangling by a rope from
a stout nail. How exciting 1t must be
never to feel quite sure that one will
see delicious meal on the dining
table, or discover q three-cornered note
on the pincushion, containing the
cheerful information that one will find
the wife OF his bosom in the river.
Aside even from religious scruples, I
have never been able TO assume the
mental attitude which will cause me to
understand the desire to take ones own
life. 1t is too sweet and beautiful. and
too much of it to desire its sudden end
at ones own hand. Then, as a woman.
it seems to me that I have too much
curiosity as to what is coming next,
from day to day. to shut off the posi-
bilities at such short notice. Why. to-
morrow some happy, radiant surprise
may come TO me. Tomorrow / may
make new friends or meet old ones, who
may tell me they are glad ! am alive.
Tomorrow, there may be awaiting me
just around the corner, q joy I have
never had. The day after tomorrow
perhaps someone. whose name I have
never heard, will leave me a fortune
How annoying it would be II / should
impersonate destiny and take myself
out OF the world first. Perhaps next
week some great publisher will forget
to return my last story and absent
mindedly send me u check instead.
Perhaps next year some smiling Fate
will inadvertently leave door ajar
that opens into II pleasant land, where
art and music and travel, and the de-
MED riches of aspiration and hope stay
enshrined. What u stupid thing for me
to miss it all by going forever past the
door while it Is shut today Perhaps
next month I can do some kind thing
for some poor body far worse off than
myself. From the grave one cannot
say the kind words left unsaid. All,
no! If ever I am found hanging be-
hind the pantry door, or drowned in
the Lackawanna river. or dead from
an overdose of carbolic acid, and they
say l did it myself, don't you believe
it, not word; but send for Sherlock
Holmes and set him on the track of
some rascally printer or city editor, or
proof-reader driven mad by my hand
writing, but remember this. never did
it myself, for l love life too we'll, and
this spring the world Is so beautiful
that l don't care to leave 1t ever, ever.
1t has always been my opinion that
the man who invented the phonograph
might better have been devoting his
superfluous time and energy to some-
thing less pernicious-discoveri new
methods of making golf balls or safety
valves for automobiles or the eXter-
mination of mosquitoes. The charms OF
Il phonograph never appealed to me.
] have always thought its song should
be like that Of the swan. once sung
and ne y 4 repeated; its speeches should
never have been spoken in the first
place, and altogether 1t has seemed like
an irritating, ill-bred and generally Of
fensive instrument.
But ! have changed my mind about
the phonograph. 1t really has its adj
vantages. AS a professor of languages
IL beats the real thing. Now II you en-
gage u tea&,er to give you lessons in
French or German or japanese, he is