Ten Days in a Mad-House | Page 6

asleep and dream as pleasantly and peacefully as a child. I should, to
use a slang expression, be liable to "give myself dead away." So I
insisted on sitting on the side of the bed and staring blankly at vacancy.
My poor companion was put into a wretched state of unhappiness.
Every few moments she would rise up to look at me. She told me that
my eyes shone terribly brightly and then began to question me, asking
me where I had lived, how long I had been in New York, what I had

been doing, and many things besides. To all her questionings I had but
one response--I told her that I had forgotten everything, that ever since
my headache had come on I could not remember.
Poor soul! How cruelly I tortured her, and what a kind heart she had!
But how I tortured all of them! One of them dreamed of me--as a
nightmare. After I had been in the room an hour or so, I was myself
startled by hearing a woman screaming in the next room. I began to
imagine that I was really in an insane asylum.
Mrs. Caine woke up, looked around, frightened, and listened. She then
went out and into the next room, and I heard her asking another woman
some questions. When she came back she told me that the woman had
had a hideous nightmare. She had been dreaming of me. She had seen
me, she said, rushing at her with a knife in my hand, with the intention
of killing her. In trying to escape me she had fortunately been able to
scream, and so to awaken herself and scare off her nightmare. Then
Mrs. Caine got into bed again, considerably agitated, but very sleepy.
I was weary, too, but I had braced myself up to the work, and was
determined to keep awake all night so as to carry on my work of
impersonation to a successful end in the morning. I heard midnight. I
had yet six hours to wait for daylight. The time passed with
excruciating slowness. Minutes appeared hours. The noises in the
house and on the avenue ceased.
Fearing that sleep would coax me into its grasp, I commenced to
review my life. How strange it all seems! One incident, if never so
trifling, is but a link more to chain us to our unchangeable fate. I began
at the beginning, and lived again the story of my life. Old friends were
recalled with a pleasurable thrill; old enmities, old heartaches, old joys
were once again present. The turned-down pages of my life were turned
up, and the past was present.
When it was completed, I turned my thoughts bravely to the future,
wondering, first, what the next day would bring forth, then making
plans for the carrying out of my project. I wondered if I should be able
to pass over the river to the goal of my strange ambition, to become

eventually an inmate of the halls inhabited by my mentally wrecked
sisters. And then, once in, what would be my experience? And after?
How to get out? Bah! I said, they will get me out.
That was the greatest night of my existence. For a few hours I stood
face to face with "self!"
I looked out toward the window and hailed with joy the slight shimmer
of dawn. The light grew strong and gray, but the silence was strikingly
still. My companion slept. I had still an hour or two to pass over.
Fortunately I found some employment for my mental activity. Robert
Bruce in his captivity had won confidence in the future, and passed his
time as pleasantly as possible under the circumstances, by watching the
celebrated spider building his web. I had less noble vermin to interest
me. Yet I believe I made some valuable discoveries in natural history. I
was about to drop off to sleep in spite of myself when I was suddenly
startled to wakefulness. I thought I heard something crawl and fall
down upon the counterpane with an almost inaudible thud.
I had the opportunity of studying these interesting animals very
thoroughly. They had evidently come for breakfast, and were not a little
disappointed to find that their principal plat was not there. They
scampered up and down the pillow, came together, seemed to hold
interesting converse, and acted in every way as if they were puzzled by
the absence of an appetizing breakfast. After one consultation of some
length they finally disappeared, seeking victims elsewhere, and leaving
me to pass the long minutes by giving my attention to cockroaches,
whose size and agility were something of a surprise to me.
My room companion had been sound asleep for a long time, but she
now woke