The day was warm and fine; had a fine shower. After brother B. and
myself were seated in the vehicle in came Esq. Warren who volunteered
his services. Weak as I was I had no pains or aches until they were
brought on by the treatment I received in the asylums. We rode forty
miles the first day, the Esquire kindly holding a shade over me to keep
off the heat of the sun. Going through Bennington, soon we arrived
at the top of the Green mountain, where I laid down waiting for
refreshment in the Fox hotel, in the neighborhood where I preached in
the summer of 1841, while attending school at Bennington. Paul verily
thought he was doing God's service when he was persecuting the church;
his mind changed. After trying to serve the Lord many years I verily
thought I should be forever lost, and was unhappy ten years and more.
A mistake is no sin, though we suffer by it. But to my story; after
we left the hotel we proceeded slowly onward, and when the heavens
blackened and the rain descended, we hauled into a barn by the wayside.
After the shower we continued our journey onward, and, as is common to
nature, the esquire had occasion to leave the wagon; we halted. Here,
I thought, was a chance to elope and shun the dreaded asylum, but my
better judgment forbade it on account of the weakness of my body, and I
sat in the wagon. After the esquire returned we made our way onward and
arrived in a village some eight or ten miles from Brattleborough. Here,
in the hotel, we staid. Supper being over, I was shown to my bed by
my guides and the landlord who says "I sleep under this room, if any
thing is wanting." Two beds in the room, the esquire pushed his against
the door. I lay with B., did not sleep sound; was not a strong believer
in dreams, but here I saw, in a vision or dream, the bottomless pit, as
I thought, while unconscious of all else around me. The unbeliever may
argue, there is no place of torment "where the worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched," but Christ told his disciples to say, "he that
believeth not shall be damned."
WHAT I SAW IN MY VISION DESCRIBED.
Here, as I was lying within a few miles of the great and popular
institution, Vermont asylum, here I saw an awful pit below. Naught but
the inner side did I see; it was made of fire-brick as it appeared to
me, round at the top, broad as the eye could extend, the depth was the
same as the breadth at the top, running to a point below. Cast one
beast into such a pit and where is the bottom for his foot? Fill this
to the brim and one torments the other. I awoke from my visionary
state and the sun was shining through the window from the east. Soon I
was on my way to that earthly hell, Vermont asylum, similar to the Troy
asylum, that place of torment and slave depot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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