Shaw. (Kicking violently.) Murder! murder! murder!
Rustics. It won’t do no good; we got yer; you may as well come fust as last. You’re crazy as a coot, and wuss now than when we fus see you. Your eyes shows it.
Shaw. I’ll go with you, my friends, but don’t kill me; oh! I beseech you don’t kill me!
Rustics. No, we wont hurt you; only come along to the house. Come along.
Shaw. Take your knuckles out of my throat, please. Aside. Their hallucination is extreme; the symptoms of their disease have taken a form the most vindictive. Yes, my friends, conduct me safe. We shall soon reach the house; then all will be explained.
At this very hour an amusing scene was enacting among the lunatics in the large hall of the asylum. One who professed magnetism was trying his skill upon a subject, to the great entertainment of his fellows. He was making the passes after a singular fashion, upon a docile fellow who sat bolt upright in a chair with a face of the most stolid gravity. Standing at a distance, he would rush up with long strides, make a wavy flourish with his hands over the face of the subject, and retreat as rapidly. Then with eager, swelling eyes, aiming with the fore-finger of each hand, he would run up and point at some phrenological bump upon the cranium. But the patient sat immovable, and was neither to be soothed into slumber, nor coaxed into giving any indication that the organs were excited; as is the case with the well-drilled protegés of your itinerant lecturers.
Nearly all the inmates were witnesses of this scene, except a few who were restricted, and one fair girl who walked in the garden sobbing; and never did tears fall out of more beautiful eyes, or shed over such a sweet face the interest of sorrow. They gushed profusely on the rosebud in her hand; fit emblem of herself; for she had not yet broke into the bloom of womanhood. Where tears flow, despair has been already softened to sorrow, and smiles may yet shine out of the darkness, as the bow of promise bridges only a firmament of cloud. This poor creature, frightened at a disturbance at the gate, fled like a fawn to her own apartment. The professor was lugged in by the head and ears, with unnecessary roughness. Appearances were much against him, as he always had a crazy look. His strange dress and equipments, his unshaven beard, his long hair straggling over his forehead, his long nose and long legs, his much-abused and bunged-up hat, which yawned wide open at the crown and showed the lining, wore the external tokens of a mind ill at ease. Added to this, a sickly smile shed a yellow glare over his features, of which the effect was neither natural nor pleasant; and as the lunatics pressed around, and the clowns still clutched him by the throat, even that passed away, and left an expression of bewilderment and undisguised dismay. At that moment the physician arrived, and glancing at the new subject just brought to the establishment, and concluding that his present wildness would need some coercion at first, requested him to be brought into the nearest apartment. The four formed a singular group. ‘Sit down,’ said the doctor, nodding calmly to the professor, as he prepared to study the case. ‘Ha! ha!’ exclaimed Professor Shaw, dropping into a chair, and striving hard to be amused at his predicament, ‘ha! ha! ha! My dear Sir, ha! ha! yes, I think I may say ha! ha! ha!’—and he laughed so obstreperously as to set the whole company in a roar. ‘This excursion for scientific purposes; near coming to an unpleasant termination; some of your poor fellows, doctor,’ casting a knowing look at the clowns, ‘are strongly possessed they brought me here against my will.’
The doctor smiled.
‘Let me explain all,’ said Mr. Shaw, recovering breath, and speaking with preternatural calmness. ‘Oblige me first by having those men removed. Their presence disturbs me. I pity them from my lowest soul; but they have—it is ridiculous—ha! ha! ha! yes, it is ridiculous—but they have hurt me very much and disturbed my equanimity. You should confine them more strictly, Sir, and not let them go at large to murder strangers by the way-side.’
The doctor smiled.