The Saint Paul globe., 1904-01-31
HOW IT FEELS TO
DIE BY GAS ROUTE
Prominent Physician Turns on
the Jet and Describes the
Sensation.

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal, Jan. S9-
Rarely, perhaps never before, In the
history of that gloomy institution
which marks the shore Of time for SO
many wasted lives has man gone
down into the valley OF the SHADOW
with SO full deliberation as DR.. f. II.
Stable, whose body was just parleo
from the morgue. Sitting in the deary
solitude of a room in cheap lodging
house all through a chill night OF jan
uary he recorded, with scientific ex-
actitude, his sensations as death stole
upon him, noting the symptoms, his
ebbing consciousness, with all the in
terest of a trained pathologist, coldly
examining an instructive case and In
spired even in his final hour by Ger
tain, sardonic, inexorable humor that
pursued him to the end, while his life
Iapsed, imprisoned In the Eiewless
wind that a niggard corporation DIS
penses at 81 per thousand.
DR.. Stable began life under favoring
circumstances. He was graduated from
the Annapolis naval academy, and
served in the navy for short time, re-
signing with the rank of ensign. Re-
turning to San Francisco. the city Of
his birth, he took the medical course OF
Cooper college, and took his degree with
honor.
Engaging in general practice with
success and taking an interest in poll
tics, DR.. Stable became superintendent
Of the city and county hospital in 1896.
After a term in that office he was
stricken with loeemotor ataxia, q spe-
cies of paralysis that leaves little to
hope for in life. This aff1iction seemed
fatal to his aspirations as physician,
but he was a man of high intelligence
and many talents. Shortly after the
adoption of the charter he took the
civil service examination for clerk
ship in the tax collectors office, COM
ing out at the head Of the eligible list.
In that Office he had served as deputy
since the ineumbency of Tax Collector
Scott until the day of his death. His
associates speak of him in the highest
terms, as a man more than commonly
competent, Notwithstanding his aff1ic-
ton.
On Monday afternoon between and
5 o'clock he hired a room on the top
story of the Bushwick hotel, at No. 146
Sixth street. and locked himself within.
1t was nearly dark at that hour and,
partially undressing, he turned on the
gas. On Some scraps Of wrapping pa
per he serawled with pencil a note, in
which with bold characters he describ-
ed his act as plain suicide" without
explanation or hint Of motive: Then, in
the same note, with the consideration
of a gentleman for the feelings Of the
landlady, Mrs. Keefe, he wrote an apol-
ogy for the Inconvenience which his
suicide on the premises must cause,
accompanied by a request that DR..
Bacigalupi, the autopsy surgeon of the
morgue, should notify his brother,
Charles Stable, who is employed as a
conductor on the California street rail-
way. This was the note:
Having discharged these obligations
he waited. His mind was actively in
terested in what was going on. The
only spectator of his own tragedy, he
took scientific interest in the drama
as if it might have been some person
Indifferent to him that was entering
the dim beyond by a tedious route.
Thus he noted his pulse beats as the
night for which no morning comes clos
ed in a round him:
''The gas has been escaping over one
hour, and l cannot feel any difference
except a fullness of the head; pulsa-
ton one hour after no material differ
ence; only about S5.''
1t must have been nearly o'clock in
the afternoon when he wrote these
words, and 1t may have been much
later. If one may judge from the notes
that follow, it was deep in the night
before he lost consciousness. Then, at
the last, as death approached, he made
a grim remark about the quality Of the
gas and it's inferiority as poison, and a
means of happy dispatch. These were
his last words:
"They must have improved the gas.
Can't see to write. / must be tough or
the gas is very good. can-3 o'clock"