A Black List.
One readily collects such suggestive items in the newspapers as the following—typified by extracts:
"—He was found dead in his bed, last evening, with a bullet in his heart. But the cause of his suicide is utterly unexplainable.""—He was found hanging, dead, to a tree in the Park this morning. The identity of the suicide who appeared to be in professional life was not established.""The hotel-proprietor, on opening the door, discovered Mr. X— dead on the sofa, with a bottle of laudanum empty beside him. A few lines stated that private worries had ruined his life. The friends of the unhappy man cannot find the least reason for his being so depressed.""—The deceased young man had been in apparently excellent spirits on the preceding evening. Nothing yet is traced in his affairs to explain his act.""In the note left his brother, the dead man threw no light one his rash act, merely stating that for many years he had been burdened with life, and was tired of it. The deceased had occasionally appeared out of sorts, but not often.""—The friend to whom the dead young man wrote the letter declines to mention its contents; he states that the deceased had long suffered from an incurable nervous disorder. But this has not ever been known to his relatives, who cannot understand the allusion."
Such are the frequent phrases of suicides not accompanied by obvious facts. Too often, not money, not disease, not woman, anxieties, disappointments nor any other reasons are at the root of the action, so much as sheer weariness of a lonely, restless or conscience-burdened homosexual life. Or perhaps dread of a blackmailer's persecution due to some imprudence; or fear of unpardonable social scandal.
Conventional
Veiling of Causes
of Suicides.
Indeed the pallid conventionality of terms in reporting suicides must often have struck readers of such dolorous items. In certain countries, especially teutonic ones, there has come into usage a stock of phrases that deceive nobody who appreciates the wide prevalence of homosexualism; for these phrases have now set, if recondite, meanings; "chronic disease"—"incurable malady"—"severe nervous weakness"; and above all (a conventionalism almost ludicrous)—"on account of head-
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