So good-by forever, my dear parents.
It is nobody's fault, but a strong desire of my own which I have
longed to fulfill for three or four years. I have always had a
hope that some day I might have an opportunity of fulfilling it,
and now it has come. . . . It is a wonder I have put this off so
long, but I thought perhaps I should cheer up a bit and put all
thought out of my head." To her brother she writes: "Good-by
forever, my own dearest brother. By the time you get this I
shall be gone forever. I know, dear love, there is no
forgiveness for what I am going to do. . . . I am tired of
living, so am willing to die. . . . Life may be sweet to some,
but death to me is sweeter." S. A. K. Strahan: Suicide and
Insanity, 2d edition, London, 1894, p. 131.
So much for melancholy in the sense of incapacity for joyous
feeling. A much worse form of it is positive and active anguish,
a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to healthy life.
Such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes
more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and
exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of
suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear.
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