n!" I said, repeating his
words--"do I understand you, then, to say that the 'soothing system' of
which I have heard so much is no longer in force?"

"It is now," he replied, "several weeks since we have concluded to
renounce it forever."

"Indeed! you astonish me!"

"We found it, sir," he said, with a sigh, "absolutely necessary to
return to the old usages. The danger of the soothing system was, at
all times, appalling; and its advantages have been much overrated. I
believe, sir, that in this house it has been given a fair trial, if ever
in any. We did every thing that rational humanity could suggest. I am
sorry that you could not have paid us a visit at an earlier period, that
you might have judged for yourself. But I presume you are conversant
with the soothing practice--with its details."

"Not altogether. What I have heard has been at third or fourth hand."

"I may state the system, then, in general terms, as one in which the
patients were menages-humored. We contradicted no fancies which entered
the brains of the mad. On the contrary, we not only indulged but
encouraged them; and many of our most permanent cures have been thus
effected. There is no argument which so touches the feeble reason of the
madman as the argumentum ad absurdum. We have had men, for example, who
fancied themselves chickens. The cure was, to insist upon the thing as a
fact--to accuse the patient of stupidity in not sufficiently perceiving
it to be a fact--and thus to refuse him any other diet for a week than
that which properly appertains to a chicken. In this manner a little
corn and gravel were made to perform wonders."

"But was this species of acquiescence all?"

"By no means. We put much faith in amusements of a simple kind, such as
music, dancing, gymnastic exercises generally, cards, certain classes of
books, and so forth. We affected to treat each individual as if for some
ordinary physical disorder, and the word 'lunacy' was never employed.
A great point was to set each lunatic to guard the actions of all the
others. To repose confidence in the understanding or discretion of a
madman, is to gain him body and soul. In this way we were enabled to
dispense with an expensive body of keepers."

"And you had no punishments of any kind?"

"None."

"And you never confined your patients?"

"Very rarely. Now and then, the malady of some individual growing to
a crisis, or taking a sudden turn of fury, we conveyed him to a secret