"On ocean's peaceful bosom the annoyance ceased. But under this deceitful calm fresh dangers brooded. Two doctors had stolen into the ship, unseen by human eye, and bided their time. Unable to act at sea, owing to the combined effect of wind and current, they concealed themselves on deck under a black tarpaulinthat is to say, it had been black, but wind and weather had reduced it to a dirty brown-and there, adopting for the occasion the habits of the dormouse, the bear, the caterpillar, and other ephemeral productions, they lay torpid. But the moment the vessel touched the quay, profiting by the commotion, they emerged and signed certificates with chalk on my portmanteau, then vanished in the crowd. The custom-house read the certificates, and seized my luggage as contraband. I was too old a traveller to leave my luggage; so then they seized me, and sent us both down here. (With sudden and short-lived fury) that old hellhound at the Lodge asked them where I was booked for. "For the whole journey," said a sepulchral voice unseen. That means the grave, my boys, the silent grave.' "Notwithstanding this stern decree, Dr. Sauby expects to turn him out cured in a few months. "Miss Wieland, a very pretty girl, put her arm in mine, and drew me mysteriously apart. So you are collecting the villanies,' said she, sotto voce. 'It will take all your time. I'll tell you mine. There's a hideous old man wants me to marry him, and I won't. And he has put me in here and keeps me prisoner till I will. They are all on his side, especially that sanctified old guy, Sauby. They drug my wine; they stupefy me; they give me things to make me naughty and tipsy; but it is no use; I never will marry that old goat -that for his money and him—I'll die first.' "Of course my blood boiled; but I asked my nurse, Sally, and she assured me there was not one atom of truth in any part of the story. The young lady was put in here by her mother; none too soon, neither.' I asked her what she meant. Why, she came here with her throat cut, and strapping on it. She is a suicidal.” EGOTISM AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL POISON. In the foregoing correspondence at least one assertion is worthy of reflection: "That morbid egotism is at the bottom of insanity." A painstaking analysis, I am fully impressed, will concede to this "cause " a prominent place in the production and maintenance of mental ill-health. Egotism is often associated with traits that are shrinking and sensative. A calm and indifferent deportment is thrown, like a mantle of concealment, around a private, bleeding, self-fretting sorrow. A mortified pride is sometimes hidden with consummate skill from superficial observation. This disguise is sometimes a jovial flippancy. In some organizations it is covered with a rigidly calm and coldly tranquil exterior. But beneath all pretensions and studious vailings hung between yourself and the eyes of associates, there burns a settled fire which consumes the very life, blights the fairest hopes, poisons the circling ethers and fluids of the body, deranges the liver, depresses the action of the heart, makes the head ache, gives cold feet and hands, undermines the spiritual foundations of physical health, transforms proffered friendship into hatred, and slams the door of opportunity in the face of every visiting angel. The madness and blindness of selfishness strike deep into the affairs and perceptions of the heart. Lack of appreciation, or lack of success in society or business, failure to obtain life's coveted prizes, whether from unfavorable circumstances or from deficiency in talent and energy to win-all this, in intensely private and self-conscious natures, is certain to engender a morbid spiritual insanity, a silent disease of the mind most fatal to personal usefulness, and the direst foe to reasonable contentment. Sanity, as was shown in early chapters, comes from the fountains of the unselfish Spirit! Cast out the evils by the exorcising magnetism of a good, strong, active will-a will, rooted in a love for the welfare of others. Bodily functions and organal derangements can be measurably restored by external appliances; this I have 1 invariably admitted; but inasmuch as all radical (root) cures are direct from the Spirit, therefore let no man imagine that artificial medicines can save him from the diabolical dyspepsia of his affections, or cure the horrible distempers which people his unsound mind. No! Let him immediately turn from his morbid egotismescape honorably from his own black spiritual prisonand so walk forth redeemed, saved by the miracles of love and good-will! LUNACY CAUSED BY SUPPRESSION OF GRIEF. THE beautiful human heart, the seat and symbol of the affections, cannot safely conceal its sorrows. Open confession to some worthy person, notwithstanding the immediate pain and mortification, is often a perfect prevention of insanity. On this natural principle the Roman Catholic Church has for centuries opened its "confessional" to souls weary and heavily laden. Thousands of human hearts have thus been rescued from madness. Better than this religious scheme, however, is the confession made to a worthy and true companion. The poet Pollok relates the story of one female "loved by a father and mother's love"-an image of perfect womanhood, "so fair, so light of heart, so good," so full of bloom and loveliness and happiness--but who, in an evil hour, was sought and won, then ruined and forsook. Upon a hoary cliff, that watched the sea, her babe was found—dead; `and "Yet she had many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. |