The Washington herald., 1915-07-11

sOH VI thC SiCot POCts AohShOA-
low, to the strange and volun-
tary death of his ethical bride. Jessie
Holiday, the pretty little English paint
er and socialist who drowned herself re-
Gently in the waters off Nantucket be-
cause she felt she had made a failure Of
her effort to bring up her ye4r-old
son in q "free-thinking" and scientific
manner.
Like some weird story from the
gloomy pen of a Russian novelist, or like
q tale from the lives of the stoics Of an
cient Greece, is the strange love ahair,
the strange marriage and honeymoon
and the tragic death of the frail little
Englishwoman. The lives of these two
people, the bravery with which the wife
went to her death, the stoical calm, al
most indifference, with which the hus-
band identified the body, proclaimed that
her death was not accidental, but inten-
tional, and then without a single custo-
mary funeral rite or ceremony, buried
the little woman in a plain pine coffin
in bleak cemetery-all these things are
far beyond the understanding and appre-
citation of the workaday New Englander.
1t all strikes these people with especial
force, for the Dana family is one of the
oldest and most prominent of Now Eng
land families.
To the hero of this strange romance Of
love and ideals, the tragic ending is q
beautiful one. That she was as ma8nif-
cent in her tragic ending as she was as q
socialist and advanced thinker in the
ideal life they both strove to lead, is his
fearless tribute to her. They are these
ideals, their "intellectual'' life and love,
the belief of both in suicide, and finally
the dismal burial Of the little socialist"
as they called her, that the simple New
Englanders cannot understand.
No mourners save her husband-out-
wardly unperturbed-went with the
body on its last lonely journey. No serv-
ice. no word was spoken over 1t. And
when the last clod of earth struck upon
the coffin all that there was to tell the
story were these words scrubbed upon a
tiny piece of broken slate by the hus-
band:
]. H. d. 's4-15.
JESSIE HOLIDAY DANA.
Little Comrade.
Dana. the husband, placed the rude
stone there, scrubbed the words. Then
he gathered wild flowers and strewed
them over the fresh mound, placed a
rough hewn stone at its foot, red gera-
mum at its head. Jessie Holiday Dana
was at rest.
Dana took full charge Of the burial.
He called the undertaken, waved aside
the offer of a hearse, preferring an ordi-
nary wagon, had the body placed In
plain pine box, and himself, with only
the undertaken and an assistant, trun-
died It off to the little cemetery. Mrs.
Dana would not have wished any cere-
mony or elaborate funeral. he said. She
received none.
The Dana family, who had become
much attached to the little socialist"
offered family lot in Mt. Auburn ceme-
terry, but 1t was refused by the husband.
When the ultimate resting place of the
fair young English girl is considered,
people in Nantucket shake their heads
and recall the circumstances Of her
death.
They recall that Mrs. Dana left her
house at o'clock in the morning for the
harbor where she drowned herself. They
recall that her husband made no inquiry
for her-did not appear to note her alb
sence or seem alarmed. They remem-