Perfect civility, no reproaches, no lecture, practical help of the kind needed and at the time needed. Observe, too, that the man was in the condition of mind in which patients usually are when they make the confession implied in entering an asylum. He was at the end of his tether. He was—to use the language of the bar-room—"dead beat."
When Mr. Day called the next morning, the family had had their breakfast, and Jack Watts smiled benedictions on the man whom he had been wont to regard as his enemy, because he was the declared enemy of Jack Watts's enemy. Now the time had come for a little talk. Jack Watts explained his circumstances; he had been out of work for a long time, and he had consumed all his substance in drink. Mr. Day listened with respectful attention, spoke to him of various plans for the future, and said that for that day he could give him a dollar's worth of wood-chopping to do. Then they got upon the liquor question. In the softened, receptive mind of Jack Watts, Albert Day deposited the substance of a rational temperance lecture. He spoke to him kindly, respectfully, hopefully, strongly. Jack Watts's mind was convinced; he said he had done with drink forever. He meant it too; and thus he was brought to the second stage on the road to deliverance. In this particular case, resting from labor was out of the question and unnecessary, for the man had been resting too long already, and must needs go to work. The wood was chopped. The dollar to be paid for the work at the close of the day was a fearful ordeal for poor Jack, living fifteen yards from a bar-room. Mr. Day called round in the evening, paid him the dollar without remark, fell into ordinary conversation with the family, and took leave. John stood the test; not a cent of the money found its way into the till of the bar-keeper. Next morning Mr. Day was there again, and, seeing that the patient was going on well, spoke to him further about the future, and glided again into the main topic, dwelling much upon the absolute necessity of total and eternal abstinence. He got the man a place, visited him, held him up, fortified his mind, and so helped him to complete and lasting recovery. Jack Watts never drank again. He died a year or two ago in Maine at a good age, having brought up his family respectably.
This was an extreme case, for the man had been a drunkard many years; it was a difficult case, for he was poor and ignorant; and it made upon the mind of Albert Day an impression that nothing could efface. He was living in Boston in 1857, exercising his trade, when the Washingtonian Home was opened. He was indeed one of the originators of the movement, and took the post of superintendent because no one else seemed capable of conducting the experiment. Having now to deal with the diseased bodies of men, he joined the medical department of Harvard University, and went through the usual course, making a particular study of the malady he was attempting to cure. After nine years' service he was transferred to the Asylum at Binghamton, where he pursues the system practised with success at Boston.
I visited the Binghamton Asylum in June of the present year. The situation combines many advantages. Of the younger cities that have sprung into importance along the line of leading railroads there is not one of more vigorous growth or more inviting appearance than Binghamton. Indications of spirit and civilization meet the eye at every turn. There are long streets of elegant cottages and villas, surrounded by nicely kept gardens and lawns, and containing churches in the construction of which the established barbarisms have been avoided. There is a general tidiness and attention to appearances that we notice in the beautiful towns and villages of New England; such as picturesque Northampton, romantic Brattleboro', and enchanting Stockbridge, peerless among villages. The Chenango River unites here with the Susquehanna; so that the people who have not a river within sight of their front doors are likely to have one flowing peacefully along at the back of their gardens. It is a town, the existence of which in a State governed as New York is governed shows how powerless a government is to corrupt a virtuous and intelligent people, and speaks of the time when governments will be reduced to their natural and proper insignificance. Such communities require little of the central power; and it is a great pity that that little is indispensable, and that Albany cannot be simply wiped out.
Two miles from Binghamton, on a high hill rising from the bank of the Susquehanna, and commanding an extensive view of the beautiful valleys of both rivers, stands the castellated palace which an adventurer had the impudence to build with money intrusted to him for a better purpose. The Erie Railroad coils itself about the base of this eminence, from the summit of which the white puffs of the locomotive can be descried in one direction nine miles, and in the other fifteen miles. On reaching this summit about nine o'clock on a fine morning in June, I found myself in front of a building of light-colored stone, presenting a front of three hundred and sixty-five feet, in a style of architecture that unites well the useful and the pleasing. Those numerous towers which relieve the monotony of so extensive a front serve an excellent purpose in providing small apartments for various purposes, which, but for them, could not be contrived without wasting space. At present the first view of the building is not inviting, for the burnt wing remains roofless and void,—the insurance money not having been applied to refitting it,—and the main edifice is still unfinished. Not a tree has yet been planted, and the grounds about the building are little more pleasing to the eye than fifty acres of desert. On a level space in front of the edifice a number of young men were playing a game of base-ball, and playing it badly. Their intentions were excellent, but their skill was small. Sitting on the steps and upon the blocks of stone scattered about were fifty or sixty well-dressed, well-looking gentlemen of various ages, watching the game. In general appearance and bearing these persons were so decidedly superior to the average of mortals, that few visitors fail to remark the fact. Living up there in that keen, pure air, and living in a rational manner, amusing themselves with games of ball, rowing, sailing, gardening, bowling, billiards, and gymnastic exercises, they are as brown and robust as David Copperfield was when he came home from the Continent and visited his friend Traddles. Take any hundred men from the educated classes, and give them a few months of such a life as this, and the improvement in their appearance will be striking. Among these on-lookers of the game were a few men with gray hairs, but the majority were under thirty, perhaps thirty-two or thirty-five was about the average age.
When I looked upon this most unexpected scene, it did not for a moment occur to me that these serene and healthy-looking men could be the inmates of the Asylum. The insensate name of the institution prepares the visitor to see the patients lying about in various stages of intoxication. The question has sometimes been asked of the superintendent by visitors looking about them and peering into remote corners, "But, Doctor, where do you keep your drunkards?" The astonishment of such inquirers is great indeed when they are informed that the polite and well-dressed gentlemen standing about, and in whose hearing the question was uttered, are the inmates of the institution; every individual of whom was till very recently, not merely a drunkard, but a drunkard of the most advanced character, for whose deliverance from that miserable bondage almost every one had ceased to hope. A large majority of the present inmates are persons of education and respectable position, who pay for their residence here at rates varying from ten to twenty dollars a week, and who are co-operating ardently with the superintendent for their recovery. More than half of them were officers of the army or navy during the late war, and lost control of themselves then. One in ten must be by law a free patient; and whenever an inebriate really desires to break his chain, he is met half-way by the trustees, and his board is fixed at a rate that accords with his circumstances. A few patients have been taken as low as five dollars a week. When once the building has been completed, the grounds laid out, and the farms disposed of, the trustees hope never to turn from the door of the institution any proper applicant who desires to avail himself of its assistance. The present number of patients is something less than one hundred, which is about fifty less than can be accommodated. When the burnt wing is restored, there will be room for four hundred.
Upon entering the building, we find ourselves in a spacious, handsome, well-arranged, and well-furnished hotel. The musical click of billiard-balls, and the distant thunder of the bowling-alley, salute the ear; one of the inmates may be performing brilliantly on the piano, or trying over a new piece for next Sunday on the cabinet organ in the temporary chapel. The billiard-room, we soon discover, contains three tables. There is a reading-room always open, in which the principal periodicals of both continents, and plenty of newspapers, are accessible to all the patients. A small library, which ought to be a larger one, is open at a certain hour every day. A conservatory is near completion, and there is a garden of ten acres near by in which a number of the inmates may usually be seen at work. A croquet-ground is not wanting, and the apparatus of cricket is visible in one of the halls. The chapel is still far from being finished, but enough is done to show that it will be elegant and inviting soon after the next instalment of excise-money comes in. The dining-room is lofty and large, as indeed are all the public rooms. The private rooms are equal, both in size and furniture, to those of good city hotels. The arrangements for warming, lighting, washing, bathing, cooking, are such as we should expect to find in so stately an edifice. We have not yet reached the point when housework will do itself; but in great establishments like this, where one man, working ten minutes an hour, warms two or three hundred rooms, menial labor is hopefully reduced. In walking about the wide halls and airy public apartments, the visitor sees nothing to destroy the impression that the building is a very liberally arranged summer hotel. To complete the illusion, he will perhaps see toddling about a lovely child with its beautiful mother, and in the large parlor some ladies visiting inmates or officers of the institution. The table also is good and well served. A stranger, not knowing the nature of the institution, might, however, be puzzled to decide whether it is a hotel or a college. No one, it is true, ever saw a college so handsomely arranged and provided; but the tone of the thing is college-like, especially when you get about among the rooms of the inmates, and see them cramming for next Monday's debate, or writing a lecture for the Asylum course.
This institution is in fact, as in appearance, a rationally conducted hotel or Temporary Home and resting-place for men diseased by the excessive use of alcoholic drinks. It is a place where they can pause and reflect, and gather strength and knowledge for the final victorious struggle with themselves. Temptation is not so remote that their resolution is not in continual exercise, nor so near that it is tasked beyond its strength. There lies Binghamton in its valley below them in plain sight, among its rivers and its trees, with its thousand pretty homes and its dozen nasty bar-rooms. They can go down there and drink, if they can get any one to risk the fifty dollars' fine imposed by the law of the State upon any one who sells liquor to an inmate of the Asylum. Generally there is some poor mercenary wretch who will do it. Until it has been proved that the sight of Binghamton is too much for a patient, the only restraint upon his liberty is, that he must not enter the town without the consent of the superintendent. This consent is not regarded in the light of a permission, but in that of a physician's opinion. The patient is supposed to mean: "Dr. Day, would you, as my medical adviser, recommend me to go to Binghamton this morning to be measured for a pair of shoes? Do you think it would be salutary? Am I far enough advanced in convalescence to trust myself to breathe the air of the valley for an hour?" The doctor gives his opinion on the point, and it is etiquette to accept that opinion without remark. Not one patient has yet visited the town, with the consent of the superintendent, who has proved unequal to the temptation. If an inmate steals away and yields to his craving, he is placed in confinement for a day or two, or longer if necessary. It occasionally happens that a patient, conscious of the coming on of a paroxysm of desire, asks to have the key of his room turned upon him till it is over. It is desired that this turning of the key, and those few barred rooms in one of the wards, shall be regarded as mere remedial appliances, as much so as the bottles of medicine in the medicine-chest. It is, however, understood that no one is to be released from confinement who does not manifest a renewed purpose to refrain. Such a purpose is sometimes indicated by a note addressed to the superintendent like the following, which I happened to see placed in his hands:—
"Dr. Day:—
"Dear Sir: I cannot let the circumstance which happened yesterday pass by without assuring you that I am truly sorry for the disgrace I have brought on the institution, as well as myself. I certainly appreciate your efforts to guide us all in the right direction, and more especially the interest that you have taken in my own welfare. Let me assure you now, that hereafter, as long as I remain with you, I shall use every endeavor to conduct myself as I should, and cause you no further trouble."