"I lived in the body thirty-five years and eight months. I went out by my own hand into the great beyond. I was a singularly constituted man, and a very unfortunate one. Self-love is said to be a great ruling passion, but I never loved myself, and of course could not be expected to love anybody else. My parents were in no way assimilated and lived very unhappily together. They quarreled and wrangled constantly, and this embodies my earliest recollection when a child, and it made an impression upon me from the influence of which I never recovered. They seemed to hate each other, and I was created and grew up under the same influence of hate, and hate accompanied by a feeling of vengeance and revenge became a predominating trait of my character. My parents both belonged to church, and I have seen them both shout in church (they were Methodists) and go home, quarrel and fight for hours afterwards. Father would get drunk and mother would eat opium. I tell you this disgusted me with religion, and I concluded it was all a farce. I believed death ended all, and that religion was either a delusion or downright hypocrisy. Besides I had a very delicate and feeble physical organization which made me more morose and sullen. Melancholy finally seized me as a victim, and in a moment of utter despondency I blew out my brains and ended life in the body. But I could not get away from life--death I found to be but the commencement of another life, and I had made the great blunder and committed the foul deed of taking my life into my own hands. Seventy-seven years have passed since, and the terrible shadow of the act of suicide still hovers over me and gives me pain and anguish. But thank God, I begin to climb up the mount of progression--but the summit is still far away. Oh, people of earth, I pray you become not the suicide. Wait with patience until nature's laws calls thee hence. Remember the fate of the suicide is terrible and hard to overcome. And in my sad history fathers and mothers may learn an instructive and profitable lesson, for my father and mother have suffered more than I. Thanks for your goodness. Good bye. "A SUICIDE." CHAPTER XX. COMMUNICATIONS FROM THOMAS PAINE, MARGARET FULLER, AND THANKS OF SPIRITS. Aug. 31, 1882. The following from the spirit of Thomas Paine, on capital punishment, was received: