Joel was a young man some twenty-two years of age; he was peaceable and quiet; assisted White to lead a blind man and scrubbing the floor. He once made a wooden false key to our room. I asked if he expected to get out: "Yes, some time," said he, "I am going back there some time, if the Lord will." The attendant made a mistake, and kept one of my shirts, sending one marked Joel Swain. Swain is not Swan, yet a Swan may be a little goosey.
JOHN EYCLESHYMER, OF PITTSTOWN.
Eycleshymer came to the asylum in 1859; think he might justly be classed with those spoken of without the kingdom. His habits were bad, and, no doubt, were the cause of his being in this lunatic hell.
For me to undertake to describe this asylum fully would be useless; to say the least it is a monster, and answers to the bottomless pit, I saw in my vision; beneath my window was a pit or yard, with from fifteen to twenty men; some bound; some up, and some down; some with naught but their shirt, and some with none—burnt to the quick by the rays of the sun. In this asylum hell I learn, by hearsay, there were five hundred patients, besides the bull-dog. I suppose the club attendants were reckoned in the number, at least the lunatic barber was, most assuredly.
The first night in this asylum I watered my couch with my tears, groaning with groans that could not be uttered; naught but air to encircle in my arms, and no dear wife, thought I, to smooth my pillow.
During my four months' stay at Brattleborough, my only friend, W. Robertson, visited me, and I whispered in his ear and told him they were killing me, and I wanted to go home. On the 29th of November Brother B. came, while tears of joy and sorrow were streaming from both my eyes. He asked me if I would like to go home. We were soon seated in the coach, and up we rise the Green mountain, and we stopped for the night; and now we are seated in a cutter; and now we are at the Fox Hotel, again waiting for refreshments; and now the 30th I am at Brother B.'s at bed-time; and now at home, sweet home, November, 1859; there is no place like home! In this asylum I was a private patient, my wife and brother paid $2 per week; in Troy Asylum the county paid $5 per week, if I am rightly informed. If Brattleborough Institution made $1 per week on my board, what did the stock company of the Troy Asylum make keeping me and others on shank beef more than nine years in the incurable house.
1. I answer, they wrong tax payers.
2. They wrong the poor.
Lastly, they wrong themselves.
Money is the root of all evil, and I fear the prayers of many stockholders connected with lunatic asylums are like the prayers of an aged doctor in Vermont, who said to me, in times of health: "I wish there were more sick." Said I: "Doctor, don't pray for me."