story
for you to go on and be guided by?"

"What else was needed?" he retorted angrily. "What motive could the
mother have except the motives that were prompted by mother love? That
was a devoted, desolated woman if ever I saw one. Look here! A daughter
without cause suddenly turns upon her mother and tries to kill her.
Well, then, either she's turned criminal or she has gone crazy!

"But why should I go on debating with you a matter which you don't know
anything about in the first place and in which you have no call to
interfere in the second place?

"I don't want to be sharp with you, young woman, but that's the plain
fact. The duty which I undertook under the law and as a reputable
physician was not a pleasant one, and it becomes all the less pleasant
when an unqualified layman--laywoman if you prefer to phrase it that
way--cross-examines me on my judgment."

"Doctor, let me repeat again I have not sought to cross-question you or
belittle your knowledge. But you speak of the law. Do you not think it a
monstrous thing that two men even though they be of high standing in
their profession as general practitioners, but without special
acquaintance with mental derangements--I am not speaking of this
particular case now but of hundreds of other cases--do you not think it
a wrong thing that two such persons may pass upon a third person's
sanity and upon the uncorroborated testimony of some fourth person
recommend the confinement of the accused third person in an asylum for
the insane?"

"I suppose you know a person so complained of--or accused, as you put
it--has the right to a jury trial in open court. This girl that you're
so worked up about had that right. She waived it."

"But is a presumably demented person a fit judge of his or her own best
course of conduct? In your opinion shouldn't there be other safeguards
in their interests to insure against what conceivably might be a
terrible error or a terrible injustice?"

He didn't exactly sneer, but he indulged himself in the first cousin of
a sneer.

"You've evidently been fortifying yourself to give me a battle--reading
up on the subject, eh?"

"I've been reading up on the subject--not, though, for the purpose of
entering into a joint debate on the subject with anyone. But, doctor, I
have read enough to startle me. I never knew before there were such laws
on the statute books. And I have learned about another case, the case of
that rich man--a multimillionair