s a
great crime."

"Broadly, and without qualification, to say that suicide is a crime, is
speaking somewhat unphilosophically. No doubt suicide, under many
circumstances, is a crime, a very heinous one. When the father of a
family, for example, to escape from certain difficulties, commits
suicide, he commits a crime; there are those around him who look to him
for support, by the law of nature, and he has no right to withdraw
himself from those who have a claim upon his exertions; he is a person
who decamps with other people's goods as well as his own. Indeed, there
can be no crime which is not founded upon the depriving others of
something which belongs to them. A man is hanged for setting fire to his
house in a crowded city, for he burns at the same time or damages those
of other people; but if a man who has a house on a heath sets fire to it,
he is not hanged, for he has not damaged or endangered any other
individual's property, and the principle of revenge, upon which all
punishment is founded, has not been aroused. Similar to such a case is
that of the man who, without any family ties, commits suicide; for
example, were I to do the thing this evening, who would have a right to
call me to account? I am alone in the world, have no family to support,
and, so far from damaging any one, should even benefit my heir by my
accelerated death. However, I am no advocate for suicide under any
circumstances; there is something undignified in it, unheroic,
un-Germanic. But if you must commit suicide--and there is no knowing to
what people may be brought--always contrive to do it as decorously as
possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be
lost sight of. I remember a female Quaker who committed suicide by
cutting her throat, but she did it decorously and decently: kneeling down
over a pail, so that not one drop fell upon the floor; thus exhibiting in
her last act that nice sense of sweetness for which Quakers are
distinguished. I have always had a respect for that woman's memory."

And here, filling his pipe from the canister, and lighting it at the
taper, he recommenced smoking calmly and sedately.

"But is not suicide forbidden in the Bible?" the youth demanded.

"Why, no; but what though it were!--the Bible is a respectable book, but
I should hardly call it one whose philosophy is of the soundest. I have
said that it is a respectable book; I mean respectable from its
antiquity, and from