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336 commiseration with the victim, but pity is sure to follow. For the Hara-kiri is always pathetic; and if the suicide be a woman, how tenderly the feeling of pity is intensified!

Take such a case, for instance, as that of Mary Aird. Happily married, a loving mother, she yet threw her young life away in a sudden impulse of groundless apprehension for the future.

Mary Aird’s letter, in which she announced. to her husband her dreadful intention, hardly reads like a suicide’s last word to those she loved best; and the miserably inadequate reason she gives for putting an end to her life makes the sad document intensely pathetic. “Do not think hardly of me, Will, when I tell you I am going to throw myself over Westminster Bridge. Look after our two poor little children. Pop and George, and tell Bessie I want her to look after them for you. Cheer up, dear Will; you will get on better without me. There will be one trouble less. God bless you!” Such a letter as that, had that been all, would have gone far to prove what some have asserted, that suicides are not of necessity, and from the fact alone, insane. But there was a saving sentence. The poor woman feared she could never meet her household expenses, because a pitiful debt of six shillings had “thrown out her accounts for the week. Moreover,” said she, “troubles are coming.” There really were no greater troubles than all mothers look forward to with hope, and back upon with pride. Yet Mary Aird was .dismayed for the moment at the thought of them, and seeing before her so easy a path to instant and never-ending rest, carried with her to the grave the infant that would soon have owed her the sweet debt of life.