MY BOARD AND BEDDING.
As to my board in this house, I have no fault to find, in regard to myself I had enough and in good order, a few strawberries and grapes in their season and vegetables occasionally, also on thanksgiving and the holidays some nice meats from the poultry yard, this is customary. After I was taken from the dead-house cell or cell near the dead-house, I was changed from hall to hall and from bed-room to bed-room, and locked in by different attendants, treated roughly by room-mates, not by attendants personally, but inasmuch as they did not care they did it unto me. The bedsteads that I occupied were iron through, the beds were mattrasses; well supplied with suitable clothing; in this house, summer and winter, kept neat and clean (on my part) more so than of many others.
REMARKS.
There is a heaven where angels sing, there is an opposite where devils prowl. There is a paradise and there is a world of woe, and although a person be exalted to heaven in point of privilege he may be thrust down to hell. In this apparent paradise, my five Pittstown neighbors saw me once, and like the deluded man perhaps made up their minds this was the place for me. Be it known that I, Moses Swann, was never a proper subject for a lunatic asylum (only as a spy or for the sake of others), neither was the devil a christian when he met with the sons of God. Whoever complained against me or believed me a proper subject for such a lunatic asylum, was as greatly mistaken as I was in regard to my future happiness; ten years I was conscientiously mistaken, they might have been; our Saviour said first pull the beam out of thine own eye then thou canst see more clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye. Many there are who know their neighbors in their own estimation better than they know their own hearts.
MY WIFE'S LAST VISIT TO THE MAIN HOUSE.
In the spring of 1861, my wife visited me; that year the war broke out in the south. As we sat in the dining room I said to her, "there is a war." "O, yes," said she, "and many of the stores are shut in Troy." Our hearts were too sad to talk much about home and past time, our visit was short, she inquired of me something about my fare, to her I never complained, knew she was too weak to bear my burdens, therefore I made the best of it to her.
The separation time drew near, she says to a patient, "let me out" (supposing him to be the attendant or turnkey), "not so" said I, calling George Harrison (for he was attendant then), we took the parting hand once more in a lunatic asylum.
Soon after we took the parting hand at this time, I was removed to the south or dead-house hallway, having been shaved by Adkins, the lunatic barber; I was now afraid I should be shaved to death by others. When I returned to this hall I was met by a large, robust, muscular man, his name I did not learn, English by birth. Not long after he came into my bed-room with patient Gibbs and ordered me to change my own suit for others, I knew not whose, I was very loth to do so, fearing I should never get them again, and so it is as yet, my trunk, overcoat, and all I carried there were retained, although I asked the steward for them when I left the institution in 1871, Oct. 13.