QUESTION ANSWERED

Grey River Argus, 8 December 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

QUESTION ANSWERED

LIFE AFTER DEATH. AM E RICA N DBA MA. Last June, Cvril A. Plank. 27 years old. a bakery salesman with a fond- 1 ncss for profound literature, was divorced by his wife, Dorothy, 31 years old, a nurse, who after seven years of wedded life found him a matrimonial failure. Plank, out of his 50 dollars salary, contributed 15 dollars weekly to *the support o|’ his two ! children, 2 and 4 years old. living 1 alone while his wife found employ :

ment in the West Suburban Chieagr Hospital ami maintained an apartment rt 5950 West Lake Street. Plank tired of a bachelor’s life and married Lillian Len, with whom he set up housekeeping at 6021. Normal Avenue. Lillian apparently proved an unsatisfactory sub titute for the first Mrs Plank, for Plank telephoned the mother of his children and asked her t> m.‘(t him at the Morrison Hotel. The couple dined together and Plank complained of his new wife, regretting In* had no grounds for di- \ ( rcing her and remarrying Dorothy. When they parted. Plank was in a depressed mood. Dorothy had just rt ached home and tucked her children in bed when her former, husband t< lephoned again, from a rr.om he ha.i taken, n the Palmer house, asking her to or me down anti remain with him that night to banish his loneliness and <1 posion. Mrs Plank agreed. When she en t 'red his room at the hotel, he was

asleep but a reading light burned at 1 the head of his bed and an open book i 1; v on his lap. He aw ke, kissed her. | an 1 bqgan reading aloud from the, v lume —Essays on Pessimism. by ’ S'. hopenhauer—and showed a morose I satisfaction over the first chaptei I “The Suffering of the World.” When Plank finally fell asleep, his I former wife, fearing he would attempt I suicide, examined an unlabciled tin on I’m bureau which when she shook it, tattled as if it contained bullets. With- < .it op»ning the tin she searched the loom and when she found no gun x- ent to sleep. Plank again delv <1 into the essays. When his wifi* left to look after the children he was w. II forward in chapter two, entitled “The Vanity of Existence.” Late in the afternoon, after several telephone calls to Plank went unanswered, a hou e detective > ntered his room with a pass key. Plank was sitting on a chair, his head hanging as in sleep. The detective picked up the volume on his lap, opened at page 64 in chapter three which was entitled “On Suicide.” The first paragraph, scored in pencil, •ead as follows: ‘‘Suicide may be regarded as an experiment —a question which men put to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is: What change will death produce in a man’s exi tence and in his insight into the nature of things?’ ’ For Plank, the question as propounded by the German philosopher. Iras lieen answered. When rhe detective jogged his arm the volume fell from hfs rigid knees to the floor. He was dead, a physician said later, from the effects of cyanic chloride capsules, which had rattled in the tin when Mrs Plank shook it.