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"That I have sad reason to fear my wife's mind is getting out of order; she is becoming insane on the subject of woman's rights; but be sure to keep this fact a profound secret -- especially, never let Elizabeth hear that I ever intimated such a thing."

I presume this is not the first time an opponent in argument has called his conqueror insane, or lost to reason, simply because his logic was too sound for him to grapple with, and the will of the accuser was too obstinate to yield, when conscientiously convinced.

But it certainly is more honorable and manly, to accuse him of insanity to his face, than it is to thus secretly plot against him an imprisonable offence, without giving him the least chance for self-defense.

Again, I visited Hon. Gerrit Smith, of Peterborough, New York, about three years before this secret plot culminated, to get light on this subject of woman's rights, as I had great confidence in the deductions of his noble, capacious mind; and here I found my positions were each, and all, indorsed most fully by him. Said he:

"Mrs. Packard, it is high time that you assert your rights, there is no other way for you to live a Christian life with such a man."

And as I left, while he held my hand in his, he remarked:

"You may give my love to Mr. Packard, and say to him, if he is as developed a man as I consider his wife to be a woman, I should esteem it an "honor to form his acquaintance."

So it appears that Mr. Smith did not consider my views on this subject as in conflict either with reason or common sense.

Again, his physician, Dr. Fordice Rice, of Cazenovia, New York, to whom I opened my whole mind on this subject said to me in conclusion:

"I can unravel the whole secret of your family trouble. Mr. Packard is a monomaniac on the treatment of woman. I don't see how you have ever lived with so unreasonable a man."

I replied, "Doctor, I can live with any man -- for I will never quarrel with any one, especially a man, and much less with my husband. I can respect Mr. Packard enough, notwithstanding, to do him good all the days of my life, and no evil do I desire to do him; and moreover, I would not exchange him for any man I know of, even if I could do so, simply by turning over my hand; for I believe he is just the man God appointed from all eternity to be my husband. Therefore, I am content with my appointed portion and lot of conjugal happiness."

Again. It was only about four years before I was kidnapped, that Mr. O. S. Fowler, the great Phrenologist, examined his head, and expressed his opinion of his mental condition in nearly these words:

"Mr. Packard, you are losing your mind -- your faculties are all dwindling -- your mind is fast running out -- in a few years you will not even know your own name, unless your tread-mill habits are broken up. Your mind now is only working like an old worn out horse in a tread mill."

Thus our differences of opinion can be accounted for on scientific principles. Here we see his sluggish, conservative temperament, rejecting light, which costs any effort to obtain or use -- clinging, serf-like to the old paths, as with a death grasp -- while my active, radical temperament, calls for light to bear me onward and upward, never satisfied until all available means are faithfully used to reach a more progressive state.

Now comes the question. Is activity and progression in knowledge and intelligence, an indication of a sane, natural condition or is it an unnatural, insane indication?

And is a stagnant, torpid, and retrogressive state of mentality a natural or an unnatural condition -- a sane, or an insane state?

In our mental states we simply grew apart, instead of together. He was dwindling, dying -- I was living, growing, expanding.

And this natural development of intellectual power in me, seemed to arouse this morbid feeling of jealousy towards me, lest I outshine him. That is, it stimulated his monomania into exercise, by determining to annihilate or crush the victim in whose mental and moral magnetism he felt so uneasy and dissatisfied with himself.

I have every reason to believe he ever regarded me as a model wife, and model mother and housekeeper. He often made this remark to me:

"I never knew a woman who I think could equal you in womanly virtues."

While on this recruiting tour, I made it my home for several weeks at Mr. David Fields's, who married my adopted sister, then living in Lyons, New York. I made his wife my confidant of my family trials, to a fuller degree than I ever had to any other human being, little dreaming or suspecting that she was noting my every word and act, to detect if possible, some insane manifestations.

But to her surprise, eleven weeks observation failed to develop the first indication of insanity.

The reason she was thus on the alert, was, that my arrival was preceded by a letter from Mr. Packard, saying his wife was insane, and urged her to regard all my representations of family matters as insane statements. Then he added: