The Unlucky Suicide
A farmhand attempts to take his own life twice, only to find himself frustrated by his own survival and a change of heart.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Louis Batck, a farm hand on the Newaukum prairie, became tired of life one night last week and determined to commit suicide. He placed a 32-calibre revolver at his forehead and pulled the trigger. He was very much surprised a moment later to find himself on this side of the river Jordan. He tried again and had no better luck. This disgusted him, and he decided to live. He took a razor and cut out the two balls which had flattened out between the skin and the bones of the forehead, went out and fed the cattle, and then sent for a doctor. This story is vouched for exactly as it occurred here.
“He was very much surprised a moment later to find himself on this side of the river Jordan.”
While framed with the grim, detached irony typical of 19th-century journalism, this story highlights the isolation and mental health struggles faced by itinerant agricultural laborers—a demographic that remains a critical, often invisible part of Washington's rural economy today.
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