ill
be sure to be made to get over to the men's side before the meal is over.
You see enough to sadden you, but the worst cases you do not see--they
are wisely concealed from the curious eye; it is enough to know that they
are humanely tended. Why should we care to look on such? Going down a
stair-case, I saw through a glass door a poor creature suffering from
suicidal monomania; night and day she had to be watched, and such had
been the case for years. In her sad face there was visible to the most
superficial observer

"The settled gloom
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore."

Well might she wish to lay down her life, that her crazed brain had
rendered insupportable.

It is a sad sight that of an assembly of insane men and women. At the
asylum to which I refer they are very humane people, and very successful
in their treatment of the distressing cases constantly occurring, and
twice a year--at Christmas and Midsummer--they give an entertainment, at
which the better-behaved lunatics attend, and seemingly enjoy themselves
very much. I was recently at one, and when I arrived, found that a field
adjoining the asylum had been set apart for the purpose. There were
about five hundred lunatics, male and female, present, and besides there
were several gentlemen and ladies present, spectators like myself. It
was a lovely afternoon, and there was music and dancing, and playing
cricket, and battledore and shuttlecock, and all the various enjoyments
of out-door life; but in all these matters I found the attendants
appeared to take the initiative; still the poor creatures seemed to enjoy
themselves much, and were happy in their way. Yet the pleasure-seeker
will not go to such a spectacle again. I do not say the vulgar idea of
the maniac was realized; on the contrary, the poor creatures seemed
decent and very well behaved--but there was a pitiable want of fine
physical development, there were in abundance crooked forms and stunted
figures. You do not like to see what a poor thing is man when his reason
is dethroned. Of course the refractory patients we do not see on such
occasions, but, looking up at a window, I saw one woman's face--as she
viewed the scene in which she might not participate--so wild in its anger
and hopeless in its despair, that that face haunts me yet. It set me
thinking how a woman could get into that state. Perhaps her father and
mother, ignorant of physiological laws, had married, and