Public Suicide Of A Widow In China

The overland China mail gives au account of a strange suicide which was lately committed at Fuh-chow Foo. It seems that a young lady, an inhabitant of that city, who had the inisfertune to be left a widow while yet in her toens, was urged by some injudicious relatives to enter again into the bonds of wedlock. The thought thus suggested of supplying the place of her late husband was so ! repugnant to her feelings that, in order to escape from the persecution of her advisers, she determined to "ascend to heaven on the back of a stork," or, in other words, publicly to commit suicide. Having arrived at this determination, a day was fixed for the ceremony. Early on the fatal morning the lady, dressed as the Queen of Heaven and surrounded by a largo following of adniirmg relatives and friends, statted from her late I husband's honse in a sedan chair for the scène of her self-inflicted death. By the way she visited her parents to bid them farewell, and stopped occasionally on the way to taste the viands which were placed at intervals by the side of the road, as at a funeral. ' On arriving at an open space at the back ei the Hai-chaou Templo she mounted on a scaffolding which had been erected for the purpose, and, having bowed to tho vast crowd which had assembled to witness the proceedings, she cried with a loud voice, "Heaven and earth! and my friends ! I ara quite satisfied to die in this manner." Having said this, she stepped on to a chair on the platform and thrust hor head through the noose of a red cord, which hung suspended from a crossbeam abovc her. At the same moment a red cloth was placed over her head and face, and then, without the least hesitation, she jumped off the chair. Death was almost instantaneous, and sho expirod without the least apparent atruggle. Unfortunately the effects of this young lady's self-devotion did not end with her lifo. for so doep an impression did her conduct make on some boys who had witnessed the spectacle that thoy amused themselves on the following day by making believe to folio w her example. By a misadventure, while one of them was adjusting tho rope round his neck, his playmates ran off, and on their return they found that he likewise had "ascended to heaven on tneback of a stork."