Judge Normile died by his own hand. Certainly he was not afraid of the future. He was not appalled by death. He died by his own hand. Can anything be more pitiful—more terrible? How can a man in the flowing tide and noon of life destroy himself? What storms there must have been within the brain; what tempests must have raved and wrecked; what lightnings blinded and revealed; what hurrying clouds obscured and hid the stars; what monstrous shapes emerged from gloom; what darkness fell upon the day; what visions filled the night; how the light failed; how paths were lost; how highways disappeared; how chasms yawned; until one thought—the thought of death—swift, compassionate and endless—became the insane monarch of the mind.
Standing by the prostrate form of one who thus found death, it is far better to pity than to revile—to kiss the clay than curse the man.
The editor of the Watchman has done himself injustice. He has not injured the dead, but the living.
I am an infidel—an unbeliever—and yet I hope that all the children of men may find peace and joy. No matter how they leave this world, from altar or from scaffold, crowned with virtue or stained with crime, I hope that good may come to all.
R. G. Ingersoll.
IS SUICIDE A SIN?
* These letters were published in the New York World, 1894.
Col. Ingersoll's First Letter.