This appreciative husband could hardly have furnished a more graphic delineation of the causes of his poor wife's illness if he had understood them ever so thoroughly, and I allude to the case as a type of many, and to the husband's statement as evincing how thoroughly ignorant many people, who may be shrewd and quite thrifty in worldly matters, may be as to the primary conditions of mental health. This woman's utter disregard of the simplest laws of health, had rendered her in her husband's eyes chief among women, had raised her so high on the pedestal of housewifery, that he could not conceive how it was possible for such a model of excellence ever to become insane. If, however, she had committed a few of the sins which were so heinous in her husband's sight; if she had gossipped more; if she had broken away from the spell of husband and children, forced herself from that ceaseless round of household care and duty; if she had taken herself out of the house, into the pure air and sunshine of heaven, even at the expense of much tattle and large gossip, and, if need be, at the expense of less cleanly floors and _boots_, and an occasional tear in her husband's shirt, or her children's frocks, the probabilities are largely indicative that she would never have come to the Retreat insane. This case, so homely in its presentation, is one representative of many, especially of persons who live in the country portions of New England, a little more pronounced in character perhaps, and a little more exaggerated in detail, but, nevertheless, it exhibits how insensibly and slowly operate many of the influences existing among the ignorant, which ultimately land victims in institutions for the insane. The currents of thought and care have gone on day after day, and month after month, from early morning until late at night in one ceaseless round; wakeful and anxious often for children sick, for children who are to be clothed and fed and schooled; anxious in reference to the thousand and one household cares, which never lift from the brain of such a mother; with no intellectual or social world outside the dark walls and many times illy ventillated rooms of her own house; with no range of thought on outside matters; with no one to interpose or even understand the danger; with no books to read, or, if she had, no time to read them;--in short, with no vision for time or eternity, beyond one unending contest with cooking and scrubbing and mending,--what wonder that the poor brain succumbs! The wonder rather is that it continues in working order so long as it does without becoming utterly wrecked. More fresh, health-giving air, more change, more holidays, more reading, more gossiping, more of almost any thing to change the monotony of such a life, to break the spell which so holds these poor women, and to lead their minds in pastures more green, and by rivers whose waters are less stagnant and bitter.