He can converse rationally and with point on any other subject. He can see the failings and follies of others, but his devotion to this idea has ruined him, and he has become a penniless wanderer. He too seeks spirituous consolation, and gets into the hands of the police at varying intervals, when he defends himself with the skill of an accomplished lawyer, but also makes use of his opportunity to declare to the magistrate his kingship. Sometimes the magistrate has doubts of his sanity, and remands him to prison for a medical report. He wrote me from Holloway once, telling me that he was on a week’s remand and on such a day would be again at Westminster police court. He expected me to be there and give evidence on his behalf. ‘The magistrate thinks I am mad, and the prison doctor has orders to report on me,’ he wrote. ‘You can testify to my sanity as well as to other important matters, but as you have not seen me lately, I must now give you proof of my sanity. I prove it thus: Mad people think themselves sane. All the world beside may be mad, but they never doubt in the least their own sanity, but I find myself entertaining doubts as to my sanity. I sometimes say to myself, “Are you going mad?” Ergo, the very fact that I question my own sanity proves that sanity beyond doubt.’ I did not go to give the evidence asked for; he established his sanity without my aid, and he came to see me. Fortunately, he bears the deprivation of his rights with philosophic patience and imperturbable good-humour. He knows ‘it is only for a time!’ It is no use to say with regard to these men, ‘Get them to give up the drink,’ for they cannot, neither is drink the cause of their condition. Drink is the effect, not the cause, a symptom of something wrong, not the wrong itself. I confess my inability to get down to the bed-rock of their condition. CHAPTER XI THE ARCADIANS AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ‘GUBBINS’