A JUVENILE SUICIDE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 17, 1876

A JUVENILE SUICIDE.

Those who read the newspapers know that suicides by very young persons are not infrequent. In this city, on Sunday night, a mere lad of sixteen years, William McDowell, shot himself. He was employed in a down-town banking-house; but the family refused to give even the reason which they conjectured for the deed. The Coroner's investigation may throw light upon it. The almost inevitable conclusion, in considering such cases, seems to be that they result from a morbid and probably congenital propensity. We can understand how an adult, worn out by misfortune, harassed by want, and with nothing but the gloomiest prospects, may shuffle off this mortal coil in a pseudo-philosophical way. It is difficult, however, to comprehend how an experience of only sixteen years can make life utterly distasteful; for it can hardly have been very tragical, and scarcely such as to preclude the prospect of relief and of a change of fortune. If we remember, too, how children of even seven or eight years have done the same deed of self-slaughter, we shall better comprehend that a natural propensity may have impelled the irresponsible youth to an act the nature of which was not fully comprehended.

The moral of such a tragedy is easily seen. It complicates the problem of education, and shows the necessity of specially allowing for individual temperaments. Many a boy has been ruined for life by a misunderstanding of his idiosyncrasies on the part of those to whom his culture was confided. If he has naturally a bad temper, or is continually desponding, or if there is an abnormal development of his imagination or of his curiosity, he may, whenever sufficiently and peculiarly excited, seek gratification or relief through a resource about which he does not stop to

reason. This may specially be the case with children of an epileptic diathesis. It is for parents carefully to watch their charges, and fully to comprehend, if possible, their peculiarities, adapting culture and discipline to each particular case.—N. Y. Tribune.