nough, she welcomed this circumstance as
offering a new encouragement to the design that she had in view. Mad Jack
could not only understand a responsibility, but could prove himself
worthy of it. The superintendent smiled, and said, in his finely ironical
way, "I never denied, madam, that Jack was cunning."

From that date, my aunt's venturesome enterprise advanced towards
completion with a rapidity that astonished us.

Applying, in the first instance, to the friend of her late husband,
holding a position in the Royal Household, she was met once more by the
inevitable objections to her design. She vainly pleaded that her purpose
was to try the experiment modestly in the one pitiable case of Jack
Straw, and that she would willingly leave any further development of her
husband's humane project to persons better qualified to encounter dangers
and difficulties than herself. The only concession that she could obtain
was an appointment for a second interview, in the presence of a gentleman
whose opinion it would be important to consult. He was one of the
physicians attached to the Court, and he was known to be a man of liberal
views in his profession. Mrs. Wagner would do well, in her own interests,
to be guided by his disinterested advice.

Keeping this second appointment, my aunt provided herself with a special
means of persuasion in the shape of her husband's diary, containing his
unfinished notes on the treatment of insanity by moral influence.

As she had anticipated, the physician invited to advise her was readier
to read the notes than to listen to her own imperfect explanation of the
object in view. He was strongly impressed by the novelty and good sense
of the ideas that her husband advocated, and was candid enough openly to
acknowledge it. But he, too, protested against any attempt on the part of
a woman to carry out any part of the proposed reform, even on the
smallest scale. Exasperated by these new remonstrances, my aunt's
patience gave way. Refusing to submit herself to the physician's advice,
she argued the question boldly from her own point of view. The discussion
was at its height, when the door of the room was suddenly opened from
without. A lady in walking-costume appeared, with two ladies in
attendance on her. The two gentlemen started to their feet, and whispered
to my aunt, "The Princess!"

This was the exalted personage whom the superintendent at Bethlehem had
been too discreet to describe more par