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Cheering as it was to my fond heart to receive their true sympathy, it was saddening, also, to know that every effort they were making for my deliverance was abortive -- that no possible hope of relief could be expected through them until they were twenty-one.

Their father, knowing their determination to help me to liberty as soon as they attained this age, tried to guard this avenue of escape, by negotiating with an Asylum in Massa-chusetts, to take me under their lock and key, hoping thus to elude their action. But ere this plan was consummated, Mr. Packard was notified by the Trustees that he must remove me in June.

Theophilus not knowing of this arrangement, made applica-tion to his father to consent to his removing me from my prison, assuring him that if he would allow him this privilege, he would cheerfully support me himself, from his own hard earnings. Knowing he could not legally remove me without his father's consent, he made this proposal to induce him to do so, and his father knowing, too, that he must take me out soon, consented to let him thus assume this responsibility.

Therefore, with a light heart, he sought his mother's cell for the fourth time, and was most politely introduced into my room by the Doctor as a "new man," just espousing the rights, privileges, and powers of an individual man, subject to no dictation but that of law and conscience; said he:

"Here is a man who proposes to assume the responsibility of being your protector -- he has had his father's consent to do so, and I have given him my own, and do hereby discharge you into the hands of this new man. Mrs. Packard, you are at liberty to go with your son where you please, and I do hereby discharge you into his hands."

Thanking him, as the Superintendent, for this discharge, I begged the privilege of consulting with him as our mutual friend, respecting the best course to be pursued. Said I:

"You know, Doctor, that the law holds me still subject to my husband, and therefore my son has no legal power to protect my liberty only so far as his father's promise goes as its security. Now I have no confidence in that man's word or honor, and therefore I consider myself eminently exposed to be kidnapped again, and put into the Asylum, at Northampton; so that without some other guarantee of safety than his promise, I prefer to remain here until I can finish my book, which will take about six weeks, and then I can have a means of self-defense in my own hands, which I can use independent of any legal process. Now I must be boarded somewhere these six weeks; why cannot my son pay my board here, as well as any other place, and thus let me complete my book, unmo-lested by any change until then?"

The Doctor replied, "I see no objection to your doing so if your son has none."

Theophilus replied, "I wish mother to do just as she thinks best, and I am satisfied."

Accordingly it was decided, by the consent of all parties, that I should remain there until my book was finished, and that my son should pay my board during this time.

I then, as a boarder, not as a prisoner, accompanied my son on foot to Jacksonville, (the Asylum being about one mile distant) where we consulted printers, respecting the terms on which they would print my first volume -- bought some paper with my son's money and returned to my boarding-house -- but not to a prison -- because I was not now an involuntary prisoner, although the bolts still confined me, with no key or pass of my own to unbolt them.

In this sense, my prison life terminated four weeks before I was removed from the Asylum, and I really felt safer under the gallant protection of Dr. McFarland, than I could have then felt in any other situation.

CHAPTER LIX.
The Trustees Force Me into the Hands of Mr. Packard.

In about four weeks from the time of my discharge into the hands of my son, the Trustees counter-ordered this Superin-tendent's action, and claimed me as their prisoner still, by ordering me to be put into the custody of my husband on the 18th of June, which time completed my three years term of false imprisonment!

Although the Trustees had told me through their chairman, Mr. Brown, that I might do just as Dr. McFarland and I should think best, and although the Doctor had already discharged me, and he had agreed to the arrangements above mentioned, yet regardless of all these claims of honor and justice, they deliberately trampled my every right into the dust, and treated me as the law does, as a legal nonentity, whose rights no one is bound to respect.

Yes, this is the respect which the identity of woman receives in America, by assuming the bonds of the marriage union!

When will the time arrive, when the marriage law will re-spect the identity of the woman as well as the man?

On the 17th of June, Doctor's orders were sent to my room, by Miss Sallie Summers, the Supervisoress, that:

"Mrs. Packard's trunk must be taken out of her room and packed."

Against this order I entered a protest in these words: