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Of course, I have long since most freely forgiven them, for to me, they are like what Lazarus was to his sisters, "raised from the dead." This temporary death of their natural affec-tions seems to have been quickened into a new, higher, deeper, and tenderer love for me than ever before.

But to sister Mary, my brother Samuel's wife, is due the highest compliment, for she is one of the precious few who escaped the psychological influence of this learned and popu-lar minister, my husband, in that he could never, for one mo-ment, convince her that I was an insane person.

She, with my adopted sister, Mrs. Angeline Field, of Granville, Illinois, both stood erect before this minister, on their version of his statements, in maintaining their own individual opinions respecting my sanity.

But sister Angeline, I am happy to say, had her husband, Mr. David Field, to encourage and sustain her in defending my sanity; while sister Mary had her husband to combat, in defending me.

CHAPTER XXXII.
Old Mrs. Timmons Deserted by Her Children.

This lady was brought to the Asylum about one year and a half before I left. For several months she occupied the same ward with me, and from the day she was entered she was my daily companion. I took pleasure in her society as she seemed perfectly sane, and sorely afflicted at the fact that her friends would not let her remain with them at home. She was above sixty years of age, but showed no signs of premature old age or ill health. The longer I saw her, the greater was my as-tonishment that she should be called insane.

From her I learned the reason she was imprisoned was, that one night she got up in a somnambulic state and went to her son's bed, and inflicted two blows upon his cheek with an axe. This her friends regarded as evidence of insanity, although she had no recollection or knowledge of doing so.

This son brought her to the Asylum, and the dreadful scar on his cheek authenticated her statement. She always ex-pressed the keenest sorrow and the most true penitence for having done this dreadful deed, for this was her favorite son.

She was willing to do anything possible to atone for it, if she could but live at home with her dear children. She begged to be locked up nights by herself, lest she do an injury again to some one, but she could not bear to be put into this terrible place to spend her days as a criminal, when no one regretted the deed being done more than herself. The thought having thus harmed her darling child was agony enough, as she thought, to make atonement for the deed, without suffering this awful penalty.

Mrs. Timmons had already endured one term of nine months imprisonment for this act, in an Asylum in Indianapolis, where she assured me the inmates were treated no better than at Jacksonville, and her friends knew she had much rather be buried than to be put into another such Institution.

Yet, they could tell her she was not going into an Asylum, but only going to consult a physician about her health, and thus they decoyed her behind another "dead-lock," to be free no more!

As I listened to her expression of hopeless agony uttered when sure the Doctor could not hear, I could not but feel that the custom of professedly barbarous nations, which allows the aged and infirm to be left in the woods to be eaten by wild beasts, was not so barbarous as this mode of disposing of un-welcome citizens, which the civilization of the nineteenth cen-tury has rendered popular; for the lingering protracted tortures of dying in this institution are far more to be dreaded than the shorter, quicker mode of being devoured by wild beasts.

Indeed, I often heard this distressed woman express this preference in these words:

"Oh, if I could only live under a fence, for my home, rather than here, I would rejoice in the exchange! anything or every-thing would I give for my liberty! any death would be sweet to such a life as this!"

And yet this is a Christian institution.

"Yes, this is 'Modern Persecution!'"

Her maternal feelings reached such a pitch of agony that it was to relieve her I consented to write the following letter for her, which I sent to her friends on my "underground express."

"INSANE ASYLUM, January 29, 1862.

My Dear Children: My heart is almost broken in consequence of the course you have taken towards me. Do write and explain yourselves, or what would be better, come and tell me, for as I now feel, it seems to me I shall soon grieve myself to death.

Why could you not take care of your poor afflicted mother yourselves, and not again trust me with strangers where you know I have suffered so much? Oh, do tell me why you have treated me so!

You know I told you I was willing to live in a room by myself, locked up both day and night if you were afraid of me if you would only let me live at home and take care of me yourselves.

You know too, I have always done just as you told me without objecting in the least, and now how can you put me off so again? Did not John tell me he had forgiven me for injuring him? and have I ever attempted to injure any one else? Is it not punishing me more than I deserve to imprison me twice for the same thing, when you say I was not to blame for doing it as I did?