(2362)
PESSIMISM IN LITERATURE
A few days ago Mr. Berth, a young New Yorker, committed suicide in a hotel at St. Paul, Minn. The explanation given for his rash act is that constant study of pessimistic literature had affected his mind. Among his books was found a melancholy tale by Edgar Saltus, in which Berth had marked many depressing passages. About eighty years ago fashionable society in London affected great admiration for Addison’s tragedy of “Cato.” After one of the stage renditions of the play a man named Budgell, imprest by the closing scene of the play, in which the hero commits suicide, left the theater and plunging into the Thames was drowned. On his body was found this couplet:
What Cato did and Addison approves
Must needs be right.
While such susceptibility to pessimistic writing as was shown by Berth and Budgell is, of course, extremely rare, it is nevertheless, a fact that an author who depicts life in dreary colors is sure to exert a most undesirable influence over many of his readers. The force of this applies to all kinds of writing. Whether a man pens an epic poem or a newspaper editorial, the tone of his philosophy is sure to leave its ultimate effect on those who peruse his words.—New York World.
(2363)
Pessimists, The, and the Optimists—See [Loads, Balking Under].
PEST, CONTAGIOUS
The Survey, in commenting on Dr. H. G. Beyer’s statement at a recent conference of the New York Academy of Medicine that the fly is “not merely a pest but an epidemic,” says: