Applegate, Harvey

APPLEGATE

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 8/22/2009 at 17:29:38

17 Sep 1902

As we went to press last week the shock occasioned by the suicide of Harvey Applegate, not quite sixteen years of age, had so wrought upon the community that there was no opportunity for reflection over the sad occurrence. The past week we have had an opportunity to investigate more closely the conditions surrounding the affair and this has only served to make the conduct of the boy the more inexplicable. T.S. Applegate, his grandfather, says that when school closed last June he asked Harvey what he was going to do during the summer vacation. He replied that he expected to have a good time. Mr. Applegate replied that he hoped he would, but thought he ought to go at someting and earn a little spending money. "Your mind is too active for you to remain idle all summer. Idleness leads to all manner of difficulties." Thus the grandfather talked to him and the boy concurred in the idea. Consequently he went to work in the button factory and earned considerable money during the summer. The money he earned was his own and with it he bought a bicycle, gold watch and some other useful articles, but no person ever put in a claim for a penny of his earning, and he was very saving. During the summer his grandfather reproved him in a good-natured way for reading so much fiction. "With that mind of yours which retains things so easily, I fear you will be injured by reading so much of that class of literature." "Oh, pshaw, grandpa, don't you suppose that I know it is fiction." After this manner the discussion went on and the boy continued to read a great amount, not especially trash, but after all it was fiction of an exciting character and the boy thoroughly enjoyed it and at all spare times would have a book in hand. He was industrious, neat and tidy in person and kept everything he owned in splendid form. Even the target gun with which he did the deadly work, was as bright as a dollar. The question of not wanting to go to school was purely incidental. In fact nothing was known concerning this until his sister stated that she guessed Harvey did not want to go to school, simply inferring as much from a remark he had made. There had been no discussion of the matter in the home and on the evening of the suicide the matter was only briefly discussed, the boy offering but little objection to the program mapped out by those older than he. He was a boy with a mind much more mature than is usual for one of his age. Mr. Applegate says that they never felt that they had complete authority over him, as his father was with them frequently and therefore they never attempted to insist on their ideas concerning his future. His grandfather says that he never felt uneasy about him because he had studied him so closely that he did not believe that the boy would go far astray no matter what conditions might face him. And this is the confidence reposed in him by those among whom he mingled daily. He was unusually bright. He would read a story and then tell his folks the whole plot and the exciting phrases of it all the way through, oft-times repeating whole pages of it, simply from having read it over a time or two. His home life was congenial and pleasant. While the boy had his peculiarities and one was a persistency in carrying out whatever he set about to accomplish yet he never rebelled and never placed himself in a position where cruel methods were necessary to discipline him. In fact all who are aquainted with the home life of the respected and honored grandparents and have seen the boy under their care, frequently and under varied circumstances agree that there was a most congenial atmosphere surrounding him. What, then led to his self-destruction? Looking back over the past and remembering things that the boy had quoted from some exciting escapade read of in a novel, his grandfather believes that in some way this influence had gotten possession of him for the moment and he became a victim to some of the fiction stored away in his memory. In no other way can the shadow of a motive be surmised.