In the Ashtabula “Telegraph” appeared the following article:
“Our community received another shock on Saturday last, hardly less severe than that of the news of the disaster itself. The announcement that Charles Collins, the Chief Engineer of the L. S. & M. S. road was dead, without any cause but that he was found lifeless in his bed, carried every one back in mind to the bridge calamity, and there was an intense eagerness for an explanation. The evening papers brought that explanation, but with it an increased effect upon the sensibilities of our citizens. He was, to be sure, found dead in his bed, but beside him were the implements telling the manner of death. He died by his own hand. The story of his death we abstract and condense from the Cleveland dailies, as follows: Mr. Collins’ assistant--Mr. I. C. Brewer, of the Toledo division, sought his presence at his office on Water street, on Saturday morning, but not finding him or hearing of him, passed over to his residence, and being informed by the colored man in charge that he was not there, determined to make an examination of the house for the settlement of the question--whether he was in the house. Upon passing through the house everything indicated order and quiet, but loneliness, until the bedroom was reached. Here he found the person of his search, dead, and in the first stages of decomposition, marked with blood, a revolver at hand, with which the deed was done, and the handle of another just showed from his pillow. The determined purpose that controlled him was shown by the means for making his destruction sure. A razor was also found upon the bed. It was found that the muzzle of the revolver had been placed in his mouth, and the direction of the ball was upward through the roof of the mouth, and out through the upper and back part of his head. The first shot seems to be the fatal and only one.
“In casting about for a cause for this violent and shocking death, circumstances point to the effect upon his mind of the bridge accident at this place. We find that he laid it deeply to heart, and when he first beheld the scene, he wept over it in an outburst of grief. That effect he seems not to have been able to shake off. It followed him night and day, leaving no taste for food, and driving sleep from his pillow, until he was led to say to some of his more intimate friends, that he believed it would drive him crazy. His was a gentle, sensitive nature, and his profession carried to its utmost perfection and success, which was shown in the superior condition of the road, and all its appointments were his chief pride. This pride, we apprehend, never extended to this bridge, as his rather guarded observations in reference to it, from the beginning, sufficiently indicate. In the minds of many of the best informed in this community, he rather shrank from the responsibility of it. The special care of it, therefore, seems to have been in a great measure, at least, committed to other hands. Whatever his feelings, however, he could not in his position escape responsibility. The sense of that responsibility seems to have had a striking effect upon him in the recent examinations by the Legislative Committee, and conferences in which he was present on Wednesday afternoon and evening--the night, probably, upon which the fatal act was committed. His state of mind was not unobserved by some of his intimate companions. We are told that Mr. Brewer, his trusted assistant, had, at his earnest solicitation, consented to remain with him during Monday and Tuesday nights, and was surprised at the alarming state into which his mind had fallen.