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The reason which remains in exercise in my organization teaches me that there are truths and errors in all denominations and parties, and our reason is only normally exercised, in my opinion, when we use it in separating the good and true, from the evil and false.

Again, he says I call him the "son of perdition." I shall not plead guilty to this charge, for it is not strictly true.

I have oftentimes tried to convince Mr. Packard that he was not a "totally depraved" man. But all in vain. He seems strangely determined to cling to this crowning virtue of his Christian character, with a death-like grapple! It seems that all his hopes of heaven are built upon this foundation stone! In his creed, there can be no real virtue without it. So tenaciously does he cling to this position as the only redeeming trait of his character, that I have sometimes been tempted to say:

"Well, Mr. Packard, I do not know but that you are what you claim to be, a totally depraved man, or the 'son of perdition,' for whom there is not found a ransom."

When I come to admit his own position, and express an agreement of opinion with him, on this point, then he uses this concession as a weapon against me, as though I had accused him of being the "son of perdition."

Again, he accuses me of punishing the children for obeying their father.

This is not true.

I never did punish a child for obeying their father, but I have sometimes been compelled to enforce obedience to their father's authority, by interposing my own. Indeed, I think my children could never have reverenced their father's authority, without the maternal influence to inspire it, by requiring subjection to it; for the fitful, unstable, and arbitrary government he exercised over them, was only fitted, naturally, to inspire contempt, rather than reverence.

But Mr. Packard has tried to undermine my authority, by telling the children they need not obey their mother, and I have been obliged to counteract this influence, by enforcing obedience, sometimes, where he has interposed and forbid their obeying me.

This is what he calls punishing the children, for obeying their father, whereas, it is only requiring them to obey their mother.

Another evidence, and one which his sister, Mrs. Dole, presented to the jury on my trial, was, that I once made biscuit for dinner, when I had unexpected company call, and had not bread enough for the table.

The reason why this was mentioned, was because the counsel insisted on evidence being produced from my own actions, independent of opinions that I was insane, and she having been more intimate in our family than any other person, was compelled, under oath, to state what she saw. Being unwilling to own she had seen nothing insane in my conduct, and being bound to speak only the truth, she told this circumstance as the greatest act of insanity she had noticed.

But I trust my readers will be satisfied with this array of evidence which my persecutors brought against me, if I only add the sum total of proof as produced by Dr. Brown, an M.D. of Kankakee city, whom Mr. Packard bought to say I was insane, for the purpose of getting me incarcerated again for life in Northampton Asylum, Mass. This Doctor had left the wheelwright business and studied just long enough to experience the sophomorical feeling that his opinion would be entitled to infallibility, especially if given in the high-flown language of an expert; therefore, the last of fifteen reasons why he considered me insane, was in these words, as taken down by the reporter at the time, viz:

"I have founded my opinion that she is insane, from her viewing the subject of religion from the osteric standpoint of Christian exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism!"

The basis on which Dr. McFarland's argument rests can be best given in his own language, as given to members of the Legislature when called upon "to prove Mrs. Packard's insanity."

Said he, "in the first place, everybody is insane-the degrees are as various as the individuals of the human family. But in Mrs. Packard's case, the variation from sanity to insanity is so very slight, it can only be discerned by a thoroughly educated expert! There is not one in a thousand who can possibly detect it. In fact, the variation in her case is the slightest there can possibly be. Nevertheless, the slighter the variation the more hopeless the case!"

Thus, according to the opinion of this celebrated expert, I am the sanest of all human beings, since it is impossible for any one to be less insane than the "slightest there can possibly be! "If I am the "slightest," of course, every other human being is more so. And the sanest person in the world is the most hopeless case of Insanity!

The age would do well to immortalize Dr. Brown and Dr. McFarland, for their profound logic and sound common sense!

However, charity to this poor sinner compels me to add the testimony of one of the most intelligent employers in that institution, as a true index of Dr. McFarland's honest convictions on this subject, viz: