The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-26
LIFE TRAGEDY IF
 ALEXANDER GOOD Author of Why Yeur Manu-
 scripts Return"
DIES HACKING PATIENCE
His Own Manuscripts Returned So Regularly That He Gave Up Hope and Died With His Wife
 In the Thames.
From the Washington Herald.

From the Washington Herald.
 Now the great need for the novice is patience, patience, and again patience; and he may be sure that if his work be meritorious it will eventually secure pub lication."
 Such was the concluding counsel given by Alexander Good, in a little book he published some years ago entitled Why Your Manuscripts Return." The other, day two bodies were discovered in Ted dington Lock-, on the English river Thames, tied together by a rope. They were those of Alexander Good and his wife. They had committed suicide to- gether.
 It was another proof of that trite truth that it is vastly easier to give good ad- vice than to follow 1t oneself. Had Good and his wife possessed a little more of that patience and hopefulness which he counseled as so essential to success one of the most pitiable tragedies that the Thames has yielded up in it's long and miserable toll of the dead never would have occurred
 Alexander Good was still on the bright side of 40 At one time he held re- munerative position as superintendent of an insurance company in Cardiff. But business, though he had made good liv- ing by it. was distasteful to him. He had the literary and artistic tempera ment.
 He wrote and he painted. And he mar ried charming young woman who wrote and painted and shared his aversion to the dull routine of office work. So Good decided to quit the insurance company that he and his wife might devote them selves to art and literature.
 They were passionately devoted to each other, and it was an ideal life they led for a time. They both worked, and by hat f4x,r- ox,1 fv1kI flo,, aged to make enough to support them selves comfortably.
 Filled with bright dreams of the field they would find fh the metropolis for their talents, they went to London--that graveyard of so many hopes and as- piratons-and London swallowed them up. The pictures they painted did not sell nearly so well as they did in the country. The dealers told them they would have to get regulations in order to command anything like decent prices for them. And their manuscripts came back to them with heart-breaking fre- quency.
 One Saturday night they walked out of their lodgings and disappeared. They left several letters behind them, stamped and addressed, for postage. One to friends In Greenwich contained these pathetic words: 'If ever you think of us in the future, do not do so sadly Re- member that We are asleep and that we are together, and what is better than sleep after long days work?''
 For nearly three weeks their disappear ance remained mystery. Then the river gave up their secret.
 In his little book already referred to Alexander Good wrote: Do not be tempt ed to resign your ordinary occupation to take up the literary life, unless you have at your command sufficient capital to render you independent in the event of failure.
 "The prospect of escaping from uncon- genial drudgery is so sdelightful." he continues, 'the sight of the fowery meads of literature with the favored children sporting under the shadow of Parnassus so enticing, that the tempta- tion occasionally 'oversets judgment. Re- member, though, that there are very many claimants for admission through a very narrow doorway, to which merit is not by any means ready passport, and that, even though you are immedi- ately successful. the remuneration is not gorgeous