The Daily Dispatch

A Kiss Before Suicide.

[From the St. Louis Post, July 28th.]

Evalena Garbett, a bright girl of fourteen years, and her mother were sleeping at half-past 3 o'clock this morning in the front room down stairs at No. 2208 Jackson street, when they were awakened by a rapping at the window shutter. When Mrs. Garbett called out, "Who is there?" a voice on the sidewalk replied, "It's John; let me in." In a few moments the door was opened and John T. Garbett, the husband and father, was admitted. A few words were exchanged, when the man began to undress, thoughtfully placing his clothes on a chair near the bed. When he had undressed and his wife thought he was going to bed he turned to her and said, "Come and kiss me once before I say good-bye." She well knew the meaning of those few words, for she had often heard her unhappy husband say he would end his own life. She rushed to him as he took the revolver from his clothes, and, raising her arm, attempted to hold him. From the bed in which the little girl was lying helpless with fright she called to her father not to kill himself. Strengthened with the determination to save her husband's life Mrs. Garbett struggled with him, but he quietly held her at arm's distance from himself. Finding her strength failing and her husband intent on ending his existence, she released her hold on him and ran to the door to call for help. He watched her as she turned the key, and turning to his daughter, looked at her for a moment, and then lying down on the floor, placed the barrel of the revolver just over his right ear and discharged the contents of one of the chambers into his brain, killing himself instantly. The girl closed her eyes in horror and the mother rushed to the side of her prostrate husband's form, vainly calling him. Life was extinct, but the blood, still warm, poured out of the ghastly hole and formed a pool about the dead man's head. The neighbors rushed into the room, but were too late to be of any assistance.