When she came to me, for she had been in various places previous to this period, she was in a state of religious melancholia. Her conscientious fears were dreadful, and her misery extreme. She conceived herself condemned to eternal punishment—she was already in torture. When in this terrible state, she had more power to engage one’s commiseration, than any patient I ever had. Her descriptions of her own state were extremely eloquent and affecting, and her appeals for sympathy were overpowering and irresistible, and I was absolutely worn out and overcome by the fatigue and misery I endured in my efforts to console and restore her. I shall always continue to feel the painful effects of my anxious exertions in this and several similar cases of melancholia; but no case and perhaps no number of cases, shook and overwhelmed my nervous system as this did, (unless it be one through whom I had a nervous fever); not merely because of her extreme agony, but my own health and spirits were then in a very depressed state, having been for years a martyr to chronic enteritis and gastritis. I mention this to account for the obligation I felt myself under, to dissever my sympathies from this overwhelming influence, and to transfer her to the kind care of Mrs. Allen, to whose lively and cheerful disposition, uniform and judicious kindness, combined with great firmness and gentleness, soothed and softened her melancholy state, and, in time, tempered the extremes to which she had been subject, and kept her spirits in a better direction.