A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone and of Her Persecutions: With an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charlestown McLean Assylum, Where She Was Confined Under the Pretence of InsanityStone, Elizabeth T.
Religion
A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone and of Her Persecutions: With an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charlestown McLean Assylum, Where She Was Confined Under the Pretence of Insanity
Stone, Elizabeth T.
McLean Hospital; Mental illness -- Personal narratives; Stone, Elizabeth T., 1811-
He said he had a line from Wheelock Graves,
and one from Elder Cole, my minister. This surprised me, that a leader
of God's people, to lead them out of sin, should give a line for a
poor girl to be carried into an Insane Assylum. He knew my case, and
had heard me tell how God had dealt with me. But I told Dr. Bell I did
not believe it, although it gave him the lie. I believed Elder Cole to
be too good a man and friend to humanity to wish to destroy a young
girl's character so much as to give a line for me to be carried into
an Insane Assylum, the third day of my leaving my work. I asked Mr.
Lowell to go and see my brother Stephen; but it availed nothing, for
they all understood the iniquity of that house. I had not seen any one
since I had been there that I ever saw before, excepting a Miss Dutton,
that I met at Elder Hime's meeting in Boston, who was there a private
attendant to a lady for a short time. In the month of May, Catharine,
brother Eben's wife, came to see me, I told her as much as possible
what I had suffered, and how destroyed I was, and asked her why she
did not tell me where I was going, and what was to be done to me. She
said she did not know it till I was just going out of the house, but
I did not believe it, for her husband was one of the bondsmen. This
brother's wife I had loved much for her strong virtuous principles and
piety. How she could have been accessory to this treatment towards me,
to screen them from public censure, I did not know; but the deed was
done. She stopped about ten minutes, and said she would come and see
me again. But the summer passed away without one coming to see me. I
often plead with Dr. Bell to let me see some one, but I was told that
they did not wish to see me. I of course thought they did not, for I
always was despised by the whole family, for what I did not know. But I
buried it all in my own heart, looking forward when I should be forced
from this world of trouble and sorrow, for my forerunner was a man of
sorrow, and acquainted with grief; and I must bear all things even as
he bore it. I had friends that were dear to me, and I thought I should
like to see them once more upon earth. The cruel mockery and ridicule
that I had heaped upon me there was enough to cause any female to be
sick of her life. They seemed to take delight in saying things to try
me.--Miss Barber and Dr. Fox were in the gallery together, the Doctor
stood laughing at me, for I was in violent distress and crying. He
said he thought I grew fat on it. Miss Barber said sneeringly, do you
not expect to enter the pearly gates and walk the golden streets of
the city of the New Jerusalem? I had lost all idea of holiness, and I
am utterly incapable of using good language. I thought of what I once
was, and to be brought to this low degraded state, to suffer thus in a
gospel land, grieved me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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