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One day the Doctor found a carpet upon my floor, and as he stood upon the threshold of my room, looking at it for the first time, he exclaimed:

"Who has been putting a carpet on Mrs. Packard's room?"

My attendant, Miss Tomlin, standing by, replied in her very mild tone:

"I believe it is your wife's work."

He said nothing more, but the carpet remained on the floor until I left.

It was through her influence that I was allowed to have a room by myself, after one year's confinement to the dormitory. I had sent a written request to the Doctor to let me have a wash bowl and pitcher, but he did not notice it so much as to refuse it.

But Mrs. McFarland contrived to get one, and gave me, also, a nice curtain for my window, and a chair for my room -- a great, but rare privilege in the Eighth ward.

There was one time that the Doctor tried to so torment my feelings, that I felt self-defence required me to withdraw all communication of thought with him, to save them.

Therefore, for months, I would not speak to him, not even so much as to answer the most common question. Mrs. McFarland approved of this course, by saying to me:

"Well, Mrs. Packard, I would not speak to him if I were in your place. If a man treated me as he has you, I would let him alone."

And she told my attendants not to treat me as they did the other patients.

I will here give an extract from a letter I wrote to her about April 30, 1862; "Mrs. McFarland, I have almost unbounded confidence in your womanly nature; I believe its instincts are a safe guide in dictating your duty so far as it goes; yet, I do not regard your judgment as so mature, that experience may not improve it.

Will you therefore allow me to make a suggestion, when I assure you it is made with the purest motives, and the kindest feelings. I am prompted to do this, from the assurance I feel that you will allow the suggestion all the influence which truth, reason and common sense, urge in its support." * * *

With regard to the suggestion I then made, together with many others, I will only say that Mrs. McFarland almost always heeded them, and often consulted me, in relation to her family matters and the interests of the institution.

The reform thus inaugurated, through her agency, led to the expression often made during these better days of prison life:

"This house is a paradise compared with what it has been."

Dr. McFarland seemed to be the last and the hardest one to move in this direction; but satisfied he could not stop the wheel of revolution by opposing it, he after a while, allowed himself to simply hang as a dead weight upon it, until the aristocratic ladies from Jacksonville insulted and ridiculed me in my room, when all at once a new spirit seemed to hold him, for a time, to be our co-worker, instead of an antagonist.

There seemed to be something in his wife's increasing popularity which convinced him that it would not be policy to oppose her openly, for if he did, she told me she should do as I had done, "appeal to the Trustees" to sustain her!

Finally, from the influence of the outside pressure in favor of reform, the Doctor himself thanked me for giving him the reproof, and freely acknowledged, that I intended it for his good.

Through Mrs. McFarland, as the principal agent of this reform, the tide of popular influence seemed to undergo an entire change. Instead of its being popular to abuse the patients, it became more popular to treat them with respect and even kindness. And finally, by a change of some bad attendants for good ones, I began to feel that the evils were becoming greatly lessened.

And so it did appear for awhile. But I was everywhere told:

"There will be a relapse if you ever leave this house, for the Doctor is afraid of you, as the only reason why he is making this spasmodic attempt to co-operate with his wife."

From the Committee's report, and that of my personal friends I left in the Asylum, I have too much reason to fear that so it proved. My friends have assured me that the "reign of terror" commenced anew when I left, so that abuse and cruelty again became the rule of the house, to a greater degree even than ever before.

Now I am fully convinced that this temporary reform, so far as Dr. McFarland was concerned, was merely the effect of policy, rather than principle -- that he assumed this appearance merely to satisfy me he had repented, so that I might be induced to represent him to the public as worthy of confidence, on that ground; for he knew full well, that my conscience would not allow me to expose a penitent man's sins, however great the magnitude of his previous guilt.

I find, therefore, in my journal, from the time I began to hope he was treating the patients on the principles of justice, I have been exceedingly careful not to "Break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax;" that is, I encouraged every hopeful manifestation to the highest and fullest extent, consistency and truth would permit.

Many blamed me on this ground, that I was too charitable to the poor sinner; but dictated as I was by the promptings of my own forgiving nature, I was thus inclined to cover more sins with this mantle of charity, than some would have thought proper or allowable.