CURIOSITY AND DEATH

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

CURIOSITY AND DEATH

PnoxE to building castles hi the air, a young Bristol schcol teacher mimed George Sargent, wrote a remarkable letter to his mother and then wont into a field and shot himself with a revolver he had recently purchased. "It would be better for me in die," ho stated in the letter, " than to spend my life in this manner." The missive went on: --"And yet how 1 love life. Oh, the beauty of it, "the happiness of it*; its possibilities. I can control myself; but I am wilful, wilful, wilful. ( I am reckless. I need not be a. failure if I care to be sensible. But I would rather die, I think, and curiosity to visit, the unknown land impels me onward rather ; it may ho fifty times better there; dare say 'tis. Let mo be forgotten. J have nought a revolver, thank God—and shall be living one instant, and dead, as far as this world is concerned, the next. Hooray! This world is a grand place, and may you all drink of its pleasures. Amen. Love is the mightiest force in nature. It is." When picked up wounded in the left lung Sargent —-who was 22 years of ageexclaimed, "J. shall be better dead than living," and to the doctor who was called to his aid he said he wished to go to a better land quickly. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of " Filicide whilst of unsound mind." t