I believe that the reasoning of Mayor Morse is perfectly sound, and that the position taken by him is absolutely impregnable. The prevention of the publication of suicides in the newspapers 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 of the cliff, but was swept away every time by the surf, and finally abandoned the attempt as hopeless. At that crisis in the struggle ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have given up and allowed themselves to drown; but this man was not a "quitter." He turned his face again seaward, struck out for the half-submerged ship,