Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches

by G. Frank Lydston

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What an atmosphere the chemical laboratory is for one of my temperament! What a fascination there is in the thought that the door of escape for the world weary,—which, as dear old Epictetus said, is always open,—is so near—so near that one must needs be careful lest he pass the portals ere he is ready. How many times have I wondered if what the text books say of arseniureted hydrogen, and of anhydrous hydrocyanic acid is really true. And how many times have I been tempted to—well, to put them to a test on a fellow worker. Not upon myself, for I am not yet ready, and I do not court death by accident. My own death must be philosophic when it comes, not sudden and devoid of impressions. Then, too, the slower things are more to my taste—morphine for example. When I am ready—when life becomes insupportable boredom, or an intolerable ache, I shall know just where and how to seek surcease of world tire. And what a record I will write of my impressions. How deliberate and scientific it will all be. And how sure I will make it. These amateurs, with their crude methods and cowardly shrinkings back from the brink—faugh! how I detest them. The idiots! what a mess some of them make of it, and how some of them suffer. As for the fools who do such bungling work that any cheap doctor called in a hurry can undo the thing—no words of mine can express my contempt for them. That doctor who swallowed six grains of morphine and then when the mist began to rise, sent for another fool of his own profession to succor him, was a coward and a bungler. But, I have said that a suicide is never a coward. Yes, and I meant it, too; that doctor was a pretender, and not born in the purple.

These love lorn servant girls and heart sick youths who drink to Death libations of carbolic acid are most amusing folk. They have courage, it is true, and doubtless mean well, but they lack the brains to be original and clever. They are faddists gone mad.

I have studied all of the methods of suicide in vogue and the more I see of them, the wiser I think I was in selecting chemistry as my life work. I have haunted the morgue; I have followed to that horrid, dripping, smelly slab, every case of suicide that has happened in this city. And such sights as I have seen! Bloated, festering masses of flesh that required great imagination to fashion into human semblance, fresh dragged from summer waters; distorted, blackened faces on agony twisted forms freshly cut down from self-made gibbets; heads blown open, brain-bespattered and powder-marked by the pistol; limbs crushed and torn into disgusting masses and shreds of ghastly flesh, the bones staring through in besplintered protest against the savagery of men who seek rest beneath the crunching wheels of locomotives; sickening, fresh made gashes in throats that were once fair to look upon—all these have I seen and marveled at.

Only yesterday I saw lying upon that familiar slab, an old, old man—found dead in bed with his throat cut from ear to ear, a letter in his hand saying only this: “I am tired, so tired.” “What a pity it is,” I thought, as I looked at the fearful gash through which swollen tongue and severed larynx protruded, at the blood bathed clod which perchance had once been loved, “that this man should have lived so long without learning a way.”

Then there was that dead man I saw taken from the river the other day. His friends knew of his business troubles and feared he had suicided. They sought for him for days and days, poor fools. They found him at last, and he went the way of all the others—to that vile slab. I was there when his sweetheart came to see his remains. They tried to keep her out, but she entered the room in spite of them. I was not surprised at what happened. The transition from her ideal, the lover of her memory, to that slimy, oozy, bloated thing with the maggots swarming from its nose and eyes and ears, was enough to shock a stronger heart than hers. She died in a mad house, screaming against the maggots that she fancied were devouring her.

Ah, there’s much of comfort in the thought that one has learned a way, and that my work in science has not all come to naught. How I admire that man of whom my friend Dr. X. told me this morning, who laughed at the doctors who worked a whole night over him, trying to save him from self poisoning. He would revive for a moment under their efforts and mutter, “No you don’t, d—n you,—you can’t do it!” and then lapse into coma again. He knew a way, did that man. The stupid doctors did not know. He, like myself, was a chemist. Was he merely defiant, or was it professional pride that animated him when he challenged those fool doctors, who came to interfere with his plans, but knew nothing of the symptoms produced by a clever admixture of laudanum and potassium cyanide? I glory in that noble man’s artistic achievement—I glory in his vindication of individual rights.

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Existence is growing absolutely insupportable to me. My synthetic experiments with organic elements which seemed so promising have come to naught. Another of my failures! I haven’t the energy to begin all over again, neither am I disposed to devise experiments in other fields. My brain is pumped out, like a dry well. My heart is dead. I suppose one might live with a dead heart, but what’s the use? I begin to believe that it is time to—well, to follow the way. There, in that bottle upon the shelf, are four grains of—I wonder if my figuring was correct? There’s surely enough. But suppose there should be too much? Pshaw! Why do I doubt? My experimental provings have been too carefully made to admit of suspicion of inaccuracy. That huge dog which—

Why not to-night? “If ’twere done, when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly.” There is no reason why I should not. My affairs—What affairs? I have no affairs. My family? There is none. My friends? Possibly there are some who will read the obituary in to-morrow’s paper, and sorrow over the necessity of going to the “crank professor’s” funeral. They will have no keener regret, for, thank the fates, there will be no funeral expenses, and no contributions will be levied; I have attended to all that. My friend, Dr. X., is a prosector at the university, and to him my body is willed. He has promised to wire the skeleton for the museum. Good fellow, X. No sentimental gush about him. I wonder how the skeleton will look. I hope X. knows the French method of cleaning bones. It would be some satisfaction to know that mine will be white and glistening, and nice to handle. I wonder what those French fellows use that gives that faint sweet smell to newly bleached human bones. I suppose I might have written and found out, but I never thought of that.