ers of a State would require a
special legislative act, but it would probably do more to lessen the
suicidal tendency than any other single measure that could be taken. In
the winter of 1902, Representative Jenkins introduced in the National
House of Representatives a bill making periodicals containing details of
suicides unmailable; but I think it was never reported from committee.

_The Emotional Temperament as a Cause_

There is one other way in which the suicide rate may possibly be
lowered, or at least held in check, and that is through the cultivation
of what may be called the heroic spirit. We are becoming too emotional
and sentimental, and too much inclined to regard weakness with sympathy,
instead of with the contempt that it generally deserves. In the language
of the prize ring, the pugilist who lies down while he can yet stand and
see is called a "quitter." It would be harsh and unjust to apply to all
suicides this opprobrious name; but there can be little doubt, I think,
that the majority of them are weaklings who give up and lie down while
they still have a fighting chance.

Readers of shipping news may still remember the wreck of a German
kerosene steamer on the wildest, most precipitous part of the coast of
Newfoundland, in February, 1901. The steamer took fire during a heavy
winter gale, and the captain ran her ashore, at the nearest point of
land, with the hope of saving the lives of the crew. She struck on a
submerged reef in a little cove, about an eighth of a mile from a coast
which was three or four hundred feet high and as precipitous as a wall.
When she was first seen by a few fishermen at daylight, her boats were
gone, and all of her crew had apparently perished except three men. Two
were standing on the bridge, and one was lashed aloft in the
fore-rigging. About ten o'clock in the forenoon a tremendous sea carried
away the bridge and the two men on it, and they were seen no more. At
three o'clock in the afternoon the solitary survivor,--the man in the
fore-rigging,--who was evidently suffering intensely from hunger and
cold, unlashed himself, threshed his arms against his body for five
minutes to restore the circulation in them, and then took off his coat,
waved his hand to the fishermen on top of the cliff, climbed down the
shrouds, and plunged into the sea--but not to commit suicide. He swam to
the shore, made three attempts in different places to get a footing
among the rocks at the base