Anonymous

“ The young man made a mistake about the newspapers. One inch was all he got, tucked snugly between a patent medicine advertisement and the notice of a sheriff's sale. It read:
"An unidentified youth attempted to take his life in a North Side rooming-house last night by inhaling gas. The landlady smelled the odor of gas and called the police. Miss Lily May Kettering, a nurse at the National Emergency Hospital, who seems to know the young man, although refusing to divulge his identity, reports that he is on the road to recovery." ”

“ At last satisfied that the room was as near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:
"As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to know why I did it. I'll tell them. And they may scarehead it as much as they like. I don't care. I've destroyed every clue to my identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not one who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead. "A love motive? ”

“ I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from childhood, but always there has been this thing that stood between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am about to do. It is not drink—nor gambling, nor hereditary disease. ”

“ I've an idea I'll find happiness there I have never known on this earth. "In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: 'Rich young man, seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to despair and kills himself.' If the girl is found next door, without money to buy food or pay her room rent—" He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written. Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full. and then lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room . ”