An order is easily obtained, as the patient perhaps is not to be a county charge, but supported out of his or her own money. I have in my mind at this time a number of such cases, with which I have been acquainted; some of them are now in the asylum; others have died there, as most if not all of this class will do. And why should they not die there? They are not placed there to be cured of old age, nor their state of dotage, nor of a suicidal or revengeful spirit. These were not charged upon them, for they were harmless as children; they were placed there for the relief of other minds, and to lessen the cares of those who owe to them their lives and their tenderest watch-care in their declining years! Will such friends or relatives be anxious to know how the old gentleman or lady fares, away from home, locked up as in a prison, and confined by iron grates and bolts? Do such ones care whether their victim, who has always had his liberty, be locked into a cell at night alone, or whether he is locked in with a half dozen of raving mad men? Will such ones inquire whether he suffers with cold, or whether his food is suited to his appetite, and such as he has been used to at his own full board? Could the beams of these prison houses speak out, and could the stones cry out of the walls of some of those upper back halls in the asylum at Utica, the revelations of the woes and sufferings of humanity would so shock and astonish the outward world, that instead of classing this institution with the _humane_ and _benevolent_ institutions of the country, it would be classed with those ancient Bastilles which have furnished a history of the most cruel and bloody tragedies ever acted under the sun! I never conceived or realized, until on my way to Utica under keepers, on what a slender thread hangs the liberty of the people of the State of New York. Only the day before, I was feeling that the spell that had lain upon me for more than a month, was broken; all things began to appear more natural; my appetite became strong, though I was weak in body; I looked haggard, but I believed my system was thoroughly cleansed. I know now, and I knew then, that I understood my own case better than others. I only needed a word of encouragement and comfort to set me all right, instead of censure and cold neglect. My words of self-reproach, and confession of moral delinquency, had been taken advantage of, to charge me with crimes of which I was never guilty. It is true that I felt that I was a great sinner in general; that I never had done anything as I ought to have done it; yet when asked to define what I meant, and name the particulars in which my great sins consisted, I recollect how dumb and vacant my mind would be, and wondered why I could not frame an answer to their questions. It finally resolved itself into this, that I had done just nothing at all, all my days, and yet had been supported by the people for doing nothing, and that for this I should be damned.