THE DARK DAY.
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set about the work, and had just completed it, when my door was unlocked, and my father and one or two other persons, of great strength, entered. I was sitting partly naked upon the floor, surrounded by the remnants of bed clothes, which I had torn. I was certainly in my right mindbut if there ever was a representation of insanity, it was then. I saw it-I knew resistance or argument would be fruitless : the men took hold of me, and conducted me to a narrow apartment provided for me at a distance from the dwelling; they firmly secured the door and left me. I think from that awful night of darkness, on the bay, my mind had gradually yielded to my griefs; I certainly was not what I had been-but when I was thrust into that den, I was shut out alike from commerce with my kind, and that which makes the commerce valuable-reason. I know when I yielded; I know how long I grappled, how I tried to connect my thoughts; how I talked on in solitude and darkness, only that I might satisfy myself that I could talk reasonably-and I remember when the last link of hope was severed-when I felt myself a lunatic.
“Oh! how little do they understand of lunacy, who have not suffered its horrors; step by step to see it coming, closer and thicker every day, like the accumulating misfortunes of the unsuccessful merchant; and to feel, like him, more and more anxious to conceal their approach, as they come nearer and more heavy. Oh God! how have I wished for one kindred mind, one soul who could feel-not with, but for me; one on whose breast I might lean-to tell my sufferings, to whom I might open up my heart, and have him pity and heal; any thing would have been preferable to the cold suspicion I endured; a settled prejudice, a determination to believe me crazy-till they made me so.
“Could I have met a foe-one who would have dared me to the proof of reason, by argumenthe should have found my grasp dangerous and effective; but no, I was hedged in by the determination of my friends-aye, friends! I had not an enemy on earth-but those friends knew nothing of the mind-with them, to see it bent, was to believe it destroyed. Could they have reasoned with me, could they have employed my mind, perhaps, I should have been saved; though hallucination, it was said, was not uncommon among the members of my mother's family. But there was none to befriend, and in the first symptoms of my mental aberration, I was thrust, like those suspected of a plague, where restoration would be a miracle.
“From the narrow aperture in front of the box in which I was confined, I could look forth upon the expanse of Heavens; I could see men going about the business of life, with an indifference to every object but the single one upon which they were bent. Could I have shared with them their freedom, I would, I thought, have taken the aggregate of their labours upon my single self. I stretched out my arms and bared my bosom to every breeze that found its way to my confinement. I desired-but no, I will not
weary you with their detail; I will not tell you, how day after day I tried to beguile the hours; books in such a place have no power. I stepped round my narrow room, counting my steps; then renewing my course to see whether I had numbered the paces exactly; I counted the crevices in the ceiling, prognosticated my release by the coincidence, with my previous guess, of the number of persons who should pass along the distant highway. How busy, how necessarily active the human mind is, no one can tell, until he ceases to afford it cause for operation by change of place, or by corporeal exercise.
Among the worst evils of my confinement, was the impertinent gaze and questioning of neighbours, and their thoughtless children. I can distinctly remember, when I have placed myself at the window of my room, with a hope to still the busy working of the mind by attention to passing objects, and cool the fever of my brain, by feeling the blessed wind of heaven, I have suffered from the intrusion of those who think insanity deprives its object of feeling as well as of liberty. They have questioned and I have answered, not with a desire to please them, but satisfy myself, that I could give categorical replies; but they, instead of aiding by withdraw. ing my thoughts from myself, would continually direct their questions towards my own situation; and my replies would, I was sensible then of the fact, and I remember it now, sometimes wander far from the interrogation, and at length, word after word would escape, till the whole was incoherency and raving. The echo of my own voice has occasionally misled me, and I have replied with dreadful eagerness to the imaginary mockeries that started at evening from the untenanted buildings in the vicinity, as if my unsettled mind discovered in them a cause of offence.
“Do not mistake me; I was then crazy. I knew that that caused my confinement; I felt the wanderings of my mind as plainly as I now feel the breeze from the swelling tide; and when I approached the recollection of those hours of unmingled happiness that I had once enjoyed with her who had been to me my all of lifewhen I remembered the bitterness of my loss, and conjured up the thick feeling, aye, the palpable darkness of that night upon the watersthen, indeed, I felt the withering blast of a mental siroc. There are no words to tell what I have felt in years of confinement, and not one day of all its long, long course of misery was blank. I remember with a horrid distinctness every moment of its tedious passage.
“On the evening of a day marked by excessive heat, my mind was just gaining repose from a violent agitation produced by the unkind, the wicked interference of unfeeling visitors, I dragged a seat to my narrow window, and sat down to look out upon nature, and endeavour to hush the tumult of my mind, by contemplating the calmness of the scene before me.
“How often, on such an evening, had Miriam gathered the children of the family around her,
