"I find a monotony in madness. So many have inspirations, see phantoms,
are the victims of vast conspiracies (principalities and powers
combined against a fly); their food is poisoned, their wine is drugged,
etc., etc.

"These, I think, are all forms of that morbid egotism which is at the
bottom of insanity. So is their antipathy for each other. They keep
apart, because a madman is all self, and his talk is all self; thus
egotisms, clash, and an antipathy arises; yet it is not, I think, pure
antipathy, though so regarded, but a mere form of their boundless
egotism.

"If, in visiting an asylum, you see two or three different patients
buttonhole a fourth and pour their grievances into a listening ear, you
may safely suspect No. 4 of--sanity.

"On the whole, I think the doctor himself, and one of his attendants,
and Jones, a keeper, have more solid eccentricity and variety about
them than most of the patients."

Extract from Letter 2, written about a fortnight later:

"Some insane persons have a way of couching their nonsense in language
that sounds rational, and has a false air of logical connection. Their
periods seem stolen from sensible books, and forcibly fitted to
incongruous bosh. By this means the ear is confused, and a slow hearer
might fancy he was listening to sense.

"I have secured you one example of this. You must know that, in the
evening, I sometimes collect a few together, and try to get them to
tell their stories. Little comes of it in general but interruptions.
But, one night, a melancholy Bagman responded in good set terms, and
all in a moment; one would have thought I had put a torch to a barrel
of powder, he went off so quickly, in this style:

"'You ask my story: it is briefly told. Initiated in commerce from my
earliest years, and traveled in the cotton trade. As representative of
a large house in Manchester, I visited the United States.

"'Unfortunately for me, that country was then the chosen abode of
spirits; the very air was thick and humming with supernaturalia. Ere
long spirit-voices whispered in my ear, and suggested pious aspirations
at first. That was a blind, no doubt; for very soon they went on to
insinuate things profane and indelicate, and urged me to deliver them
in mixed companies; I forbore with difficulty, restrained by the early
lessons of a pious mother, and a disinclination to be kicked
downstairs, or flung out o' window.

"'I consulted a friend, a native of th