He has developed into a reasoning creature, and can intellectually cling to life or discard life just as life happens to promise great pleasure or pain.

I dare to assert that Ellen Hughes Hunt, defrauded and bilked of all the joys of life which fifty-two years' service in the world has earned, with nothing but the horrors of the workhouse before her, was very rational and level-headed when she elected to jump into the canal.

And I dare to assert, further, that the jury had done a wiser thing to bring in a verdict charging society with temporary insanity for allowing Ellen Hughes Hunt to be defrauded and bilked of all the joys of life which fifty-two years' service in the world had earned.
Temporary insanity! Oh, these cursed phrases, these lies of language, under which people with meat in their bellies and whole shirts on their backs shelter themselves, and evade the responsibility of their brothers and sisters, empty of belly and without whole shirts on their backs.
From one issue of the _Observer_, an East End paper, I quote the following commonplace events:- A ship's fireman, named Johnny King, was charged with attempting to commit suicide.

On Wednesday defendant went to Bow Police Station and stated that he had swallowed a quantity of phosphor paste, as he was hard up and unable to obtain work.

King was taken inside and an emetic administered, when he vomited up a quantity of the poison.
Defendant now said he was very sorry.