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Modern Persecution, or Insane Asylums Unveiled

From: Modern Persecution
Creator: Elizabeth P. W. Packard (author)
Date: 1873
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1  Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16

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1539  

"Where is the paper?"

1540  

"With my things."

1541  

We then passed each other, he going to my room to attend to his business, and I to the opposite end of the hall to attend to mine.

1542  

When I returned, I found the Doctor searching the table drawer where I kept my choice things, the key to which I carried in my own pocket; but it seemed the Doctor had opened it with some other key. I wonder if there are any locks which Dr. McFarland's keys cannot lawfully open!

1543  

After watching his movements, while he stood bent over my drawer, carefully opening every box, large and small, and pocketing such articles as he chose, such as bits of pencils, and old pens, and any articles of stationery he could find, I left the room, while he was ransacking the paraphernalia of woman's toilet, remarking to my dormitory companions as I left:

1544  

"Ladies, bear witness to this robbery!"

1545  

Failing to find the paper he was in search of, he closed and locked the drawer, then asked the ladies if they knew of any other place where Mrs. Packard kept her things.

1546  

Miss Goldsby replied, "She keeps some in this box, I believe," pointing to a cushioned covered seat near by.

1547  

This box, the size of a common trunk, was full of my larger articles of wearing apparel, which he carefully searched throughout.

1548  

But failing to find the roll of foolscap, because in such plain sight, near the top! he left, chagrined and mortified at his failure, and locking the door of my room as he passed out, he left me alone in the hall, while he, with a quick, anxious tread, passed speechlessly by me, out of the hall, closing the dead-lock upon me.

1549  

As I alone paced the hall, silently ruminating upon my prob-able fate, I saw the hall door open, and the Doctor entered, followed by his porter. "Now," thought I, "I am to be trans-ported off to some dungeon or secret cell, to suffer the penalty for telling the truth to him and my attendant."

1550  

And stepping up deliberately, in front of the porter, I dauntlessly stood, with folded arms, ready to be unresistingly borne to my place of torture.

1551  

The friendly porter, who had more than twenty times put the reins of the carriage horse into my hands, and received my "thank you," as often, just gave me a smile, and a respectful bow of recognition, and passing me, followed the Doctor into my room.

1552  

He soon appeared again with what the Doctor supposed was my trunk, in his hands, and followed the Doctor with it up to the trunk-room, where it was left beyond the reach of Mrs. Packard's accommodation.

1553  

Thus the Doctor had the satisfaction of feeling that if Mrs. Packard has baffled him in finding the paper, he has been able to annoy her by taking her trunk! But as the event proved, the Doctor, upon a second overhauling of my things in the trunk-room, found the roll of foolscap; and being five sheets, he felt that this amount answered to the five cent's worth Miss Lynch told him I had bought, so that, after unlocking my large trunk in the trunk-room, and robbing it of all my letters, and papers, and manuscripts of every kind, he felt satisfied, that, at last, his plan to defeat his prisoner of her rights had succeeded, even in my case.

1554  

But don't let the great Doctor feel too confident that he has gamed the laurels of victory, after all, for he did not know that his wife furnished me with a better trunk, and more of my wardrobe than ever before, with a key to it also.

1555  

And besides, the Doctor did not know that I still kept and faithfully used, the three large sheets of foolscap, from which I am now copying for the public advertising of himself, through this record of his own actions!

1556  

No, neither did he know that this ungallant assault upon a defenseless woman's rights, aroused the just indignation of the house in sympathy with his victim; so that it came to be regarded as a part of the code of honor in that house afterwards, to evade the mandate to "keep all stationery from Mrs. Pack-ard," so that the employees willingly followed the example which Mrs. McFarland set them, to furnish me with supplies, clandestinely, whenever they could safely do so.

1557  

In this way, he, himself, furnished me with sufficient mate-rial to print a volume quadruple this size when it is all printed! Can not God cause the "wrath of man to praise him?"

1558  

CHAPTER XXX.
How Mr. Packard gave me Paper, and how Dr. McFarland stole it.

1559  

Mr. Packard visited the Institution twice during the three years I was imprisoned in it.

1560  

But these visits were not designed to comfort and cheer me with the hope of deliverance from my prison life at some future time, but to perpetuate it, through his influence over the Superintendent and the Trustees.

1561  

He visited me in my cell -- saw my companions -- the howling, raving maniacs -- and although he feared for his own life while among them, he expressed no fears for my own.

1562  

He tried to raise his voice so much above the roar of this tempest of human passions and seething hate, as to make me understand that I was under obligations of gratitude to him for replenishing my wardrobe for a longer campaign!

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