One circumstance connected with my captivity, I cannot pass over. I found when I arrived at Utica that I had no glasses, and although they were in my trunk, I did not know it, as they had taken charge of my trunk, with all its contents, which I never saw again until it was brought down at the time I finally left. I asked for glasses, that I might occupy my time in reading. This was denied me, and the doctor forbade my reading anything whatever. I thought this a hard case. I could not see the point, inasmuch as I saw others reading who were not half as strong as I was—patients who were confined to their beds had their books and papers to read, while I was waiting on them. I came to the conclusion that it was done to punish me, or to let me know that I must obey orders. So I spent the winter the best I could, straining my eyes to read whenever I could get out of the sight of the attendants, that they might not report me to the doctor; and it was quite remarkable that I could read so well without glasses.
Six months perhaps passed away before I was furnished with glasses. I then took to reading, asking no questions, and no one forbade me. Many a volume, could they speak, in that library, could testify that I searched their contents.
Soon after I went to the first hall I commenced walking out with the patients, accompanied by an attendant. It was our custom to go into the street that leads from Utica to Whitesborough, and follow up that road until we came to the bridge which crosses the canal, a distance of about a mile and a half; here we would stop a few minutes and walk back. This we repeated almost every day through the winter.
After I went on to the first hall, I was a constant attendant at church, either in the chapel in the asylum, or in the city, or both. I generally attended the State Street Methodist Episcopal Church in the city. The services in the chapel are generally Episcopal, Dr. Gibson, of Utica, being the chaplain. I confess that I did not enjoy public worship while in the asylum as I have since I left it.
There was one idea that constantly haunted my mind during the most of the time that I was in the asylum: that was, that I should never get away from that place alive, and this I often expressed to others. This, perhaps, may be regarded by others as a freak of insanity, but I could not help it—I had my own reasons for thinking so.
I never saw the day, from the time I entered the asylum until I left it, but I would have been willing to have crawled upon my hands and feet a hundred miles, and lived on bread and water, could I by that means have got away; and yet I was resolved that I would never run away if I died in the institution. Here I think I was in an error; I have no doubt but a man is justifiable in running away when he sees and knows he is receiving no benefit from staying there. I think it would be very difficult to keep me there again as long under the same circumstances. Why should a man feel any conscientious scruples about leaving a place into which he is forced against his will, especially if he was not sent there for crime?
My conscientious scruples about running away from that place, is to me one of the strongest evidences that I can think of, that my mind, some of the time, was not right.
At the time I was changed to the first hall, I was placed at the table by the side of Dr. Noise, who had been in the institution for three or four years. He carried the keys of the house, went in and out at his will, and served as usher to the asylum. I supposed he was employed by the doctor as an helper in the institution, and had no idea that he was a patient. I observed he acted very independently, and was quite dictatorial.
I did not take pains to make his acquaintance, so I said nothing to him for perhaps two weeks. In the meantime I had learned his history—that he was a patient, and that in consequence of his being an active kind of a man, and being a physician at the same time, and not much, if any, insane, was granted privileges that but few patients enjoyed.