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Here he paused for a reply. A silence ensued.

I saw he was in the possession of his "evil spirit," and I dared not to contradict him, or even to assert my rights of opinion, lest, by so doing, I tempt him to commit himself still more strongly on the wrong or Calvinistic side of truth; for I have found that opposition is apt to give the "old man" strength.

But at length, with the innocent fearlessness and composure of truth, I took part in the discussion, hitherto so unsatisfactory to me, by remarking:

"It is a prison to me, and I have based all my book upon this truth. I do not intend to exaggerate or overstep the bounds of truth in what I say, but I intend to clothe truth in its own drapery, and to call things by their true names, as I apprehend them. I profess to report no one's opinions but my own; and I do say, that Mrs. Chapman is as much a prisoner as Mrs. Packard is; and Mrs. Packard is no more a prisoner now than she was when she first came, when she used her parole of honor as Mrs. Chapman now does. When I took the patients to ride fourteen times, and took a dollar from your own hands, and went up town and expended it alone or according to my own judgment, I was as much the State's prisoner as I have been for the last eighteen months, though I have not stepped my foot out of this house, as my protest forbids my doing so. I am not your prisoner, nor the trustees' prisoner, but the State's or the Government's prisoner."

"But you will acknowledge, Mrs. Packard, that the penitentiary inmates are on a different plane as prisoners, from what you are?"

"As to our both being prisoners, we are on one and the same plane. The inmates in each institution are alike prisoners under keepers, who hold our personal liberty entirely under subjection to bolts, grates, bars, and keys. Those in each, whom their keepers can trust, are allowed their paroles of honor, extending from the liberty of the yard, to the furlough of a conditional absence upon mutual terms of agreement. But should either prisoners use their furloughs or paroles of honor as a means of escape from their place of involuntary confinement, each are alike sought as a fugitive from justice, and the laws uphold the keepers in pursuing the fugitive, and forcing his return to his place of "involuntary confinement," which expression, according to Webster, means a prison.

"In these respects we are alike, but in another respect we are unlike. The convicts are imprisoned in the penitentiary for doing wrong; the afflicted, persecuted, oppressed and innocent, are here imprisoned for doing right.

"The penitentiary is our government's place of punishing the guilty; insane asylums are our government's place of punishing the innocent -- for to me it is capital punishment to be thus hopelessly imprisoned.

"This general rule has its exceptions. Some innocent ones are punished there; some guilty ones are punished here. Insane Asylums are the "Inquisitions" of the American government. My imprisonment is as hopeless as is my sinning to escape from it.

"I report opinions from the stand-point of a patient -- a victim of this Inquisition; and not from the stand-point of a governmental officer, appointed as guardian of this institution. It is the government, not its officers, who are responsible for the basis on which our Inquisitions are placed.

"I, for one, should altogether prefer to be a penitentiary prisoner, to being an insane prisoner; for there my accountability is recognized, but here it is not, by the laws of the institution. It is in defiance of these laws, that you recognize it in me. And besides, my sense of justice would not be so outraged by a false imprisonment there, as here. And as to treatment, no criminals ought to be treated worse than the insane are treated here, and it would not hurt them to be treated even better!

"For to be lost to reason, is a greater misfortune than to be lost to virtue; and the contumely and scorn which the world attaches to the former are greater; just in proportion as the slander is more deadly to the moral influence of the injured party."

"You would not, in writing a dictionary, describe each as alike, would you?"

"I should say they are one and the same thing, as to being prisoners."

Another pause ensued:

"Shall I read on?"

"Yes."

I finished it, and he remarked:

"It is very good."

I responded to this opinion. On this point we agreed as strongly as we differed on the point under discussion!

The subject was not again alluded to.

I felt, after he left, that something was wrong. I could not put up with this interference, or dictation of the contents of my book.

But what could be done that would not make the matter worse?

I knew too well, that to beg of Dr. McFarland was not the way to succeed. For he is almost as hard to be entreated as he is to be driven. Neither is it right for me to beg for my liberty to write my thoughts. It would degrade my self respect to do so.