ng
before dinner about the danger incurred in the old system of soothing.
How is that?"

"Yes," he replied, "there was, occasionally, very great danger indeed.
There is no accounting for the caprices of madmen; and, in my opinion
as well as in that of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, it is never safe to
permit them to run at large unattended. A lunatic may be 'soothed,'
as it is called, for a time, but, in the end, he is very apt to become
obstreperous. His cunning, too, is proverbial and great. If he has a
project in view, he conceals his design with a marvellous wisdom;
and the dexterity with which he counterfeits sanity, presents, to the
metaphysician, one of the most singular problems in the study of mind.
When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put
him in a straitjacket."

"But the danger, my dear sir, of which you were speaking, in your own
experience--during your control of this house--have you had practical
reason to think liberty hazardous in the case of a lunatic?"

"Here?--in my own experience?--why, I may say, yes. For example:--no
very long while ago, a singular circumstance occurred in this very
house. The 'soothing system,' you know, was then in operation, and the
patients were at large. They behaved remarkably well-especially so, any
one of sense might have known that some devilish scheme was brewing from
that particular fact, that the fellows behaved so remarkably well. And,
sure enough, one fine morning the keepers found themselves pinioned hand
and foot, and thrown into the cells, where they were attended, as if
they were the lunatics, by the lunatics themselves, who had usurped the
offices of the keepers."

"You don't tell me so! I never heard of any thing so absurd in my life!"

"Fact--it all came to pass by means of a stupid fellow--a lunatic--who,
by some means, had taken it into his head that he had invented a
better system of government than any ever heard of before--of lunatic
government, I mean. He wished to give his invention a trial, I suppose,
and so he persuaded the rest of the patients to join him in a conspiracy
for the overthrow of the reigning powers."

"And he really succeeded?"

"No doubt of it. The keepers and kept were soon made to exchange places.
Not that exactly either--for the madmen had been free, but the keepers
were shut up in cells forthwith, and treated, I am sorry to say, in a
very cavalier manner."

"But I presume a counter-revolution wa