It was a bleak winter day, the sleet was driving before a nor'-west wind, and I turned into the waiting-room at the station to warm myself at the fire until the engine with its two carriages came up the branch line. I happened to be the only passenger that had come by the train. As I sat on a chair with my feet on the fender at one side of the fire, a sturdy middle-aged man joined me, and seated himself also on a chair on the opposite side. "Good morning," said I, by way of introduction. He looked intently at me for a second or two, as if to take stock whether I was a possible lunatic on my way to the House, and then replied: "Same to yo," bending towards the fire and warming his hands. "I suppose that is the Lunatic Asylum that we can see over yonder," jerking my thumb towards the window through which the Asylum buildings were visible in the distance. "Yai, it is," he replied, again looking intently in my face. "There's a lot of mad folk in it, I suppose?" "Ay, there is," was the answer. "More than two thousand," I remarked. "Ay, mooar than two thousand." Here there was a pause for a minute in our conversation, when he blurted out with startling suddenness: "Aw'm one o' th' mad 'uns!" The information came upon me so unexpectedly, and was conveyed with such emphasis, and in such gruesome manner, that I could not help an involuntary start and an instinctive glance towards the waiting-room door to see whether it was open. Collecting myself, and pushing my chair back a bit to put a little more distance between us, I resumed: "You're one o' th' mad 'uns, are you?" "Ay, aw am." "You don't look like it, friend," I said. "Ay, but aw am, though!" "Well, and how do you happen to be here?" I inquired. "Why?" he replied, "Aw'm th' asylum poastman. Aw come to meet th' trains as brings th' poast-bags." Just then the lilliputian train from the Asylum ran into the siding at the station, and my mad friend, shouldering the letter-bags that he had placed at the waiting-room door, got into the lunatic carriage and I into the other. The engine whistled, and away we sped down the line towards the abode of sorrow. There was a pathetic humour in the conversation I had had with "one o' th' mad 'uns," and my reflections turned upon the varying degrees of madness that afflict not only the inmates of an asylum, but also we their more favoured brethren outside its walls. INDEX A Ab' o' th' Yate, 3, 18, 101 Abram, Mr, Historian of Blackburn, 61 Abram o' Bobs, 91 Ale-taster of Rossendale, the, 101, 103 Amen, Little, 99 Animal food, 66 Ann o' th' Kiln and Judie, 89 Apostles' Creed, the, 77 Aspirate, dropping the, 61, 62, 63 Astronomer, Crabtree, the, 21 Asylum, Whittingham Lunatic, 128 Authors in Lancashire Dialect, 2, 5 B Badger's shop, a, 123 Bailey, Sir William, 49 Ball, Canon, 122 Bamford, Samuel, 112 Barley Times, 85 Belmont Churchwardens, 67