Please tell Theophilus, my oft repeated attempts to send him a motherly letter, have been thwarted. And he, poor persecuted boy! cannot be allowed a mother’s tender, heartfelt sympathy. O, my God, protect my precious boy! and carry him safely through this pitiless storm of cruel persecution. Do be to him a mother and a sister, and God shall bless you. Please deliver this message, charged to overflowing with a mother’s undying love. Be true to Jesus. Ever believe me your true friend and sympathizing sister,
E. P. W. Packard.
Third Question.
“Do you think, Mrs. Packard, that your husband really believes you are an insane person?”
I do not. I really believe he knows I am a sane person; and still, he is struggling with all his might to make himself and others believe this delusion, because his own conscience is accusing him constantly with this lie against it. With all his accumulated testimonials that I am insane, and all his sophistries and reasoning upon false premises to establish this lie, he cannot silence this accusing monitor within himself, testifying to the contrary. Either this is in reality the case, or he has at last reached that point, where a person has made such a sinner of his own conscience as to believe his own lies; or, in other words, he has so perverted his conscience as to become conscientiously wrong. But it is not for me to judge his heart, only from the standpoint of his own actions, and from this basis, I give the above as my honest opinion on this point.
Two facts alone may be sufficient to give some corroboration in support of this opinion. After taking me from my asylum prison, and while his prisoner at my own house, he asked me to sign a deed for the transfer of some of his real estate in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and finding I could not be induced to do it, without returning to me my note of six hundred dollars he had robbed me of, and also some of my good clothing, he sought to transfer it, as the law allows one to do, in case the needed witness is legally incapacitated by insanity to give their signature; and for this purpose he was obliged to take an oath that I was insane. He did take this oath that I was insane, and thereby outlawed as a legal witness. It was administered by Justice Labrie. A few days after this, he called this same Justice in to our house to witness my signing this deed, and used it as a valid signature. Now to say under oath one thing one day, and to deny it the next, is rather crooked business for a healthy Christian conscience to sanction.
Another fact. When he was preparing to put me into an Insane Asylum, I asked him why he was so very anxious to put the stigma of insanity upon me, when he knew I was not insane? Said he, “I am doing it so that your opinions need not be believed. I must protect the cause of Christ.”
Cause of Christ! I felt like exclaiming, if your cause of Christ needs such a defence, I think it must be in a sad condition. If it can’t stand before the opinions of a woman, I shouldn’t think a man would attempt to protect it! The truth is, the cause of Christ to him is his creed—a set of human opinions. While the real cause of Christ is humanity; and a very important part of this cause of Christ to a true man, is the protection of his own wife.
Fourth Question.
“Could you forgive Mr. Packard, and live with him again as his wife?”