Grayson County TXGenWeb

The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, August 10, 1902
pg. 4

THE OLD STORY
Another unfortunate traveled the suicide's route Monday night and is now sleeping among the many of her class at Oakwood. The unfortunates are all buried over there. Their dust has mingled with the earth and they were forgotten long, long ago. These poor creatures nearly all live under an assumed name, and when death takes them away, their memory is consigned to oblivion, their associates exhibit a pang of sorrow, and the next day the dancing, drinking, laughing and unthinking time goes on until their turn comes next, unknelled and unknown, and the grave hides all. Well may these creatures say with Hamlet:

"To die - to sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we and the heartache, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."

Perhaps a hundred of this class died by their own hands in the past thirty years, in this city, and only in two instances do we know of a single stone to mark their last resting place. Twenty-five years ago scarecely a week passed that potter's field did not receive a body from the gilded dens of vice on old Skiddy, now Chestnut street. There was an epidemic of suicide. It was fashinable to die.
It is a little singular, the spark of love is never extinguished in the hearts of women. They may drink the very dregs of vice; they may reach the bottom, but they must have some one to love - their "fellows," as the world calls them. This love sometimes awakens conscience and they marry a man who appreciates and makes them good husbands. The redeemed usually make the best and most loyal of wives.
There are several stories about the girl LaRue, who killed herself Monday night. One is that she had a lover, another a difference with her landlady, whom she owend a considerable sum of money, was behind her board, etc. Monday night the woman sent to a near-by saloon for a bottle of beer. In the meantime she made preparations to retire. She took a bottle of carbolic acid out of her trunk, poured a cup half full of it, and waited for the beer, She drank the latter first, and then swallowed the deadly posion. Her screams attracted the inmates. A physician was sent for, but when he arrived she was past medical aid, dying soon after.
In the last moments her thoughts turned toward home. In memory she perhaps might have been a little innocent girl again, and as the mists of death gathered about her couch, the happy face of childhood smiled on her.
The girl was buried at Oakwood. The future state is all speculation. The preachers don't know amy more about it than we do, but if there is a future and a just God, Viola LaRue will be at peace and receive the happiness which was denied her here.
The girl's parents reside in Kansas City. They had written her several letters recently imploring her to come home and receive a parent's forgiveness and begin life anew, but she answered that it was too late and preferred to die. Death at least would wipe out all the scores. She may have begun life anew in heaven.