"MY mother died when I was an infant in arms," he began. "My father, from my earliest to my latest recollections, was always hard toward me. I have been told that I was an odd child, with strange ways of my own. My father detested anything that was strongly marked, anything out of the ordinary way, in the characters and habits of the persons about him. He himself lived (as the phrase is) by line and rule; and he determined to make his son follow his example. I was subjected to severe discipline at school, and I was carefully watched afterward at college. Looking back on my early life, I can see no traces of happiness, I can find no tokens of sympathy. Sad submission to a hard destiny, weary wayfaring over unfriendly roads--such is the story of my life, from ten years old to twenty.
"I passed one autumn vacation at the Cumberland lakes; and there I met by accident with a young French lady. The result of that meeting decided my whole after-life.
"She filled the position of nursery governess in the house of a wealthy Englishman. I had frequent opportunities of seeing her. We took an innocent pleasure in each other's society. Her little experience of life was strangely like mine. There was a perfect sympathy of thought and feeling between us. We loved, or thought we loved. I was not twenty-one, and she was not eighteen, when I asked her to be my wife.
"I can understand my folly now, and can laugh at it, or lament over it, as the humor moves me. And yet I can't help pitying myself when I look back at myself at that time--I was so young, so hungry for a little sympathy, so weary of my empty, friendless life. Well! everything is comparative in this world. I was soon to regret, bitterly to regret, that friendless life--wretched as it was.
"The poor girl's employer discovered our attachment, through his wife. He at once communicated with my father.
"My father had but one word to say--he insisted on my going abroad, and leaving it to him to release me from my absurd engagement in my absence. I answered him that I should be of age in a few months, and that I was determined to marry the girl. He gave me three days to reconsider that resolution. I held to my resolution. In a week afterward I was declared insane by two medical men; and I was placed by my father in a lunatic asylum.
"Was it an act of insanity for the son of a gentleman, with great expectations before him, to propose marriage to a nursery governess? I declare, as Heaven is my witness, I know of no other act of mine which could justify my father, and justify the doctors, in placing me under restraint.
"I was three years in that asylum. It was officially reported that the air did not agree with me. I was removed, for two years more, to another asylum in a remote part of England. For the five best years of my life I have been herded with madmen--and my reason has survived it. The impression I produce on you, on your father, on your brother, on all our friends at this picnic, is that I am as reasonable as the rest of my fellow-creatures. Am I rushing to a hasty conclusion when I assert myself to be now, and always to have been, a sane man?
"At the end of my five years of arbitrary imprisonment in a free country, happily for me--I am ashamed to say it, but I must speak the truth--happily for me, my merciless father died. His trustees, to whom I was now consigned, felt some pity for me. They could not take the responsibility of granting me my freedom. But they placed me under the care of a surgeon, who received me into his private residence, and who allowed me free exercise in the open air.
"A year's trial of this new mode of life satisfied the surgeon, and satisfied every one else who took the smallest interest in me, that I was perfectly fit to enjoy my liberty. I was freed from all restraint, and was permitted to reside with a near relative of mine, in that very Lake country which had been the scene of my fatal meeting with the French girl, six years before."