The Project Gutenberg eBook of Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum, by Rev. H. Chase

“Long years of outrage, calumny and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude,
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
And bare, at once, captivity displayed,
Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits save day
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone,
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave,
Which is my lair, and it may be—my grave.
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall.

I weep and inly bleed,
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
What is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear—and how?
I know not that, but in the innate force
Of my own spirits shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,
Nor cause for such—they called me mad—and why?
Oh, my judges! will not you reply?

Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry,
Of minds and bodies in captivity,
And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
And the half inarticulate blasphemy!
There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
Some who do still goad on the o'er labored mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind,
With needless torture, as their tyrant will
Is wound up to the lust of doing ill;
With these, and with their victims, am I classed,
'Mid sounds and sights like these, long years have passed.
'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close;
So let it be—for then I shall repose.

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
In this vast lazar-house of many woes?
Where laughter is not mirth, nor thoughts the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell—
For we are crowded in our solitude—
Many, but each, divided by the wall,
Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;
While all can hear, none heeds his neighbors call—
None! save that one, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between distraction and disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts, as things to shun and fear?
Would I not pay them back those pangs again,
And teach them inward sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our stoical success?
No! still too proud to be vindictive, I
Have pardoned tyrant's insults, and would die
Rather than be vindictive—yes, I weed all bitterness
From out my breast; it hath no business there.

I once was quick in feeling—that is o'er—
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd
My brains against these bars, as the sun flash'd
In mockery through them—if I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more
Which hath no words, 'tis that I would not die
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame
Stamp madness deep into my memory,
And woo compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No, it shall be immortal!—and I make
A future temple of my present cell.”

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Lord Byron, in his travels, found in the library at Ferrara the letters of Tasso, and saw the cell in the hospital at St. Ann's, where Tasso was confined. His enemies charged him with insanity, and threw him into this prison. The manner of treating insane persons in the Old World has been awfully cruel, so far as history gives any clue to the subject. Byron's Lament of Tasso is, no doubt, correct; but this is no reason why in this enlightened age, in a Christian country like ours, that lunatics should be treated as you would treat a mad dog or mad bear.

TESTIMONIALS.

This is to certify that the Rev. Hiram Chase, a supernumerary member of the Troy Annual Conference of the M.E. Church, resided at Saratoga Springs for one year preceding the spring of 1867; that at the session of his Conference, held that spring, he took an effective relation, and, at the request of the Catharine Street church, Saratoga Springs, was appointed its pastor, and that he faithfully and efficiently discharged the duties of his pastorate—facts, these, which speak for themselves regarding both his mental and his moral status.

I have this day listened attentively, and not without as deep emotion as my nature is susceptible of, to Rev. H. Chase's two years and four months in the asylum. I regard said narrative as the unvarnished statement of facts as they occurred during his residence there. I have enjoyed a pleasant acquaintance with the Rev. H. Chase for the last thirty years, and have ever known him to be the same truthful, ingenuous and trustworthy friend, faithful and successful minister of Christ, and a Christian gentleman of more than ordinary culture and refinement. It is an occasion of most devout thanksgiving to Almighty God that he has been mercifully preserved during the past and restored again to his family and many friends, to the fellowship of the church in which he has spent half a century of sacrifice and toil, to her pulpits and altars, and a large place in the best affections of thousands of brethren and fellow-laborers in the church of the living God.

FOOTNOTES:

TESTIMONIALS.

Transcriber's note: