Alexandria Gazette

MELANCHOLY SUICIDE.

Last Monday, the Coroner held an inquest on the body of Augustus Pommer, who had come to his death in this city, on Sunday last, by suicide. Pommer was a young German, only 17 or 18 years old, of a studious turn, and melancholy temperament. He lodged at the house of a brother, named Frederick Pommer, a manufacturer of piano fortes, on Sixth street, between Franklin and Washington avenues. The suicide took place at this house on the night of Sunday last. On that night, taking advantage of the absence of a brother who usually slept with him, he rose, about 2 o'clock, as was conjectured from some sounds which were heard to proceed from his chamber about that hour; and, having wound round his neck a strip of cloth torn from his bed quilt, which he carried round several times and drew tight, he, with a razor, gashed both his wrists in a frightful manner, and expired from loss of blood.

No other cause can be assigned for this fatal act than a distempered imagination, given to brood over life as a burden.

The interest in this tragic occurrence is heightened by the fact that precisely six years ago, and exactly at the same hour, a young man named Metzgar, of Herman, in this State, where the Pommer family resided, put an end to his life in exactly the same way! Probably the gloomy fancy of young Pommer had been busy with all the particulars of the Herman suicide—and through the influence of that strange fascination which so often leads one suicide to travel in the same path to the grave which has been pursued by another, had purposely chosen the anniversary and the manner of Metzgar's death for his own.—St. Louis New Era