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The last letter I wrote to Mr. Packard, I told him plainly on what conditions I would return to him. But it seems Dr. McFarland was not willing we should be reconciled on such a basis, for he would not send the letter although Mr. Packard was calling most persistently for letters from me.

But he called in vain, as I said in this letter, I should never answer any more of his letters, nor write to him again until this letter was answered.

He begged of the Superintendent to get me to write, and he would show me these letters, when I would tell him:

"When I get a reply to my last letter I will write, but not before, and if you, Doctor, ever wish me to write to him again, send that letter first!"

But like the deaf adder, he heard as though he heard not, and that ever repeated question would come:

"Why don't you write to Mr. Packard?"

"If you cannot understand my reason, and will not report it to Mr. Packard, he must ever remain in ignorance of the reason I do not write to him."

But it seems he never communicated these messages, nor would he send the letter, but simply told him:

"I cannot persuade her to write to you."

Finally, Dr. Sturtevant informed me, that Mr. Packard had wished him to try to persuade me to write to him, and he asked me why I could not grant his request. I told him I had written, and the Doctor had the letter but he would not send it, and just as soon as that letter was satisfactorily answered, I would open a free correspondence with him.

Whether the Doctor allowed him to report my only true reason I know not, but after that, the Doctor told me he had burned my letter because he considered it "worthless."

I know not whether this was the letter he thus disposed of, or some of my many others I had given him to send to other friends. This fact I do know, that so long as my letters were sent through this post-office, my friends never received them, with one or two exceptions. My journal contains copies of all these letters, which I have shown to those family friends to whom they were written, and they tell me they never received them.

Now here is a branch of the United States mail established within this public Institution, and the mail carrier transports it regularly, protected by lock and key, and yet I could not get a letter into it, nor get one from it, although directed directly to me.

Indeed, I felt most keenly the truth of the remark the mail carrier made me, when I once met him and inquired if he had any letters for me.

Said he, "Mrs. Packard, you have just as good a right to your mail as any other citizen of the United States."

"Why then is not this right granted me?"

Because one man chooses to say:

"I will superintend this inalienable right, and usurp it when I please, and no one can harm me in so doing."

I ask this Republican Government, is this protecting the post-office rights of all its citizens?

Who has a right to say, while I am not a criminal:

You shall be restricted in this right. You shall have this right usurped and ignored to any extent, as a punishment for being numbered among the most afflicted class of American citizens!"

These terrible despotisms would be a far less dangerous institution, were the boarders allowed their post-office rights.

If this right had not been usurped, in my case, it might have saved one family from the wreck of disunion. But Dr. McFarland would not allow a reasonable basis of reconciliation to be even presented for his consideration.

Why was this? Was he unwilling there should he a reconciliation? Why should he wish to stand between me and my husband?

These questions I leave my readers to answer. He talked as though he wished I would go to my husband, but he acted as though he had determined to make an impassable gulf between us.

Well, if my husband will voluntarily resign his right to be the protector of his own wife, exclusively into the hands of a stranger man, can he blame this man for misusing this irresponsible trust?

This voluntary resignation of the marital right into the absolute, irresponsible control of another, is an unnatural act, and therefore must be deleterious in its consequence. Dr. McFarland had become an adept in this nefarious work, and therefore he found ways and means of disbanding this hitherto happy family, forever.

Although Mr. Packard is not responsible for Dr. McFarland's sins, yet, like the drunkard, he is responsible for allowing this exposure to exist. He should have exercised some sort of supervision over his own wife's destiny, so far, at least, as to retain his own rights unmolested.

So should the State exercise such a supervision over their own institution as not to allow their own State rights to be trampled under foot by it, as it now does, in thus suffering the dearest of all human rights to be utterly ignored.

The following are the terms I tried to send to my husband as the basis of a just union -- the only kind of union that would ever receive my sanction again.