"What did they bring me here for?
I say, I want to go!
How shall I ever find her
When I am locked in so?
They lied to me—
'Twas once there in the street,
Where I sat on a doorstep
To rest my aching feet.
They say, 'We'll lead you to her,'
And many times said, 'Come,'
At last I followed, eager
To find my little one.
But when I bid them bring her.
They answer, 'By and by.'
Just turn the key, please, won't you,
And let me slip out sly?"
One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for the Insane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.
To look at her sitting very quiet—sometimes with her fair little hands meekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes—you would have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surely give any one trouble.
But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite a different story.
Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all the time to keep her from taking her own life.
These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people have some hobby that they ride industriously all the time.
There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, and amused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.
There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seen without a huge pasteboard crown.
There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowned disapproval on the claims of each other.
There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hat for pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than a gallon already.