Suicide of an oil Merchant.
--A feeling of the most intense excitement was occasioned among the business people in the lower part of the city by the suicide of
Mr. James T. Barker, one of the oldest and most respected oil merchants in this city, who shot himself through the head with a pistol in the office of his store, No. 148 Front street yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Barker has been in the oil business in this city for a number of years, for a long time in the firm of
Van Voornis &
Barker.
For several weeks past it was noticed by his immediate friends and the members of his family that he was in a depressed state of mind, supposed to have been caused by losses in business.
He appeared to be wandering in his mind for several days, but his relatives did not think it necessary to take any measures to restrain him. He came down to his store yesterday morning, as usual, and attended to business, but seemed absent-minded, as though pre- occupied by some unpleasant thoughts.
At about half-past 2 o'clock in the afternoon, he was sitting in a chair near the stove, in the office, while his son, Joseph, sat at a desk, busily engaged in writing.
Suddenly the latter was startled by the report of a pistol, and looking up, observed his father fall from the chair on which he had been sitting.
He ran to him, and found that he was dead, and the blood and brains were oozing out of a bullet wound in the head.
The unfortunate deceased must have applied the pistol, to his right temple; and the ball lodged in the brain, causing instant death.
The pistol used was a common single-barreled one.
Business difficulties are said to have been the only causes which prompted
Mr. Barker to self- destruction.--
New York World. 
