ything worth while? The world had treated
me very cruelly; a villain had lied away my reputation and the world
believed him, so that henceforth I must be one of its outcasts and
black sheep; an object of pity and contempt among the members of my
profession. It was doubtful whether, having been thus exposed and made
bankrupt, I could ever again obtain a respectable practice. Indeed, the
most that I might hope for would be some small appointment on the west
coast of Africa, or any other poisonous place, which no one else would
be inclined to accept, where I might live--until I died.

The question that occurred to me that evening was whether it would not
be wiser on the whole to accept defeat, own myself beaten, and ring
down the curtain--not a difficult matter for a doctor to deal with. The
arguments for such a course were patent; what were those against it?

The existence of my child? Well, by the time that she grew up, if she
lived to grow up, all the trouble and scandal would be forgotten, and
the effacement of a discredited parent could be no great loss to her.
Moreover, my life was insured for 3000 pounds in an office that took the
risk of suicide.

Considerations of religion? These had ceased to have any weight with me.
I was brought up to believe in a good and watching Providence, but the
events of the last few months had choked that belief. If there was a God
who guarded us, why should He have allowed the existence of my wife to
be sacrificed to the carelessness, and all my hopes to the villainy, of
Sir John Bell? The reasoning was inconclusive, perhaps--for who can know
the ends of the Divinity?--but it satisfied my mind at the time, and for
the rest I have never really troubled to reopen the question.

The natural love of life for its own sake? It had left me. What more had
life to offer? Further, what is called "love of life" frequently enough
is little more than fear of the hereafter or of death, and of the
physical act of death I had lost my terror, shattered as I was by sorrow
and shame. Indeed, at that moment I could have welcomed it gladly, since
to me it meant the perfect rest of oblivion.

So in the end I determined that I would leave this lighted house of Life
and go out into the dark night, and at once. Unhappy was it for me and
for hundreds of other human beings that the decree of fate, or chance,
brought my designs to nothing.

First I wrote a letter to be handed to the reporters at the inquest