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MEMOIRS 
 
 PLINY EARLE, M.D., 
 
 WITH 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM HIS DIARY AND LETTERS (1830-1892) 
 AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS (1839-1891). 
 
 ^iteb, &jit|[ a (General Introtitictfoti, 62 
 F. B. SANBORN, of Concord, 
 
 Former Chairman of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts and Inspector of Charities. 
 
 ' Genius must learn the language of facts." — Emerson. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 DAMRELL & UPHAM, 
 
 %\z ®Ii) dtoraw foobtorc, 
 
 283 Washington Street. 
 1898. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGES 
 
 Introduction vii-xvi 
 
 I. Birth, Ancestry, and Childhood 1-28 
 
 II. Observations in New England and Philadel- 
 phia (1827-37) 29-60 
 
 III. England Sixty Years Since 61-93 
 
 IV. France, Switzerland, and Italy 94-119 
 
 V. Greece, Turkey, and Malta (1838-39) .... 120-143 
 
 VI. Beginning Professional Life 144-153 
 
 VII. Asylum Labors and Experience 154-162 
 
 VIII. The German Asylums ^ 163-186 
 
 IX. Biding his Time 187-201 
 
 X. Cuba in Days of the Slave-trade 202-219 
 
 XI. New York and Washington 220-239 
 
 XII. Things seen and heard in War 240-260 
 
 XIII. Northampton and the Curability Controversy 261-279 
 
 XIV. Lessons and Incidents of a Long Life .... 280-315 
 
 APPENDIX 317-394 
 
 I. Publications of Dr. Earle 317-377 
 
 1. List of Writings 317-320 
 
 2. Selections from " Thirteen Visits " 321-333 
 
 3. German Asylums in 1852 334-341 
 
 4. Color-blindness in 1844-45 342-361 
 
 5. Popular Fallacies in Regard to Insanit}' .... 361-371 
 
 6. The Curability' of Insanity 372-377 
 
 II. Notes and Documents 378-394 
 
 7. The Artist Earles 378-382 
 
 8. Reminiscences by Dr. Earle, etc 383-386 
 
 9. Reminiscences by the Rev. S. IVIay 386-390 
 
 10. Last Will of Dr. Earle 390-394 
 
 Index 395-409 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In writing the life of an American alienist who began his 
 observations on his insane countrymen nearly sixty-five years 
 ago, and traversed Europe, inspecting asylums, in 1837-8-9, 
 one is reminded of the saying of that aged Roman who was 
 brought to trial before the third generation of his countrymen, 
 " It is hard to plead my cause when all the witnesses of my 
 life are dead." So great have been the changes, so incessant 
 the progress, in the study of insanity, its care and treatment, 
 that no single life, however prolonged, can be justly expected 
 to measure them or keep pace with them. That my friend Dr. 
 Earle did so in a marked degree, and was at his death in 1892 
 in advance of his survivors in some points, as during his life 
 he had been before his associates in nearly all, is one of his 
 chief claims to remembrance by those who knew not his firm, 
 gentle, and beneficent personality. But, in order to understand 
 how this was so, the reader needs to know something of the 
 history of insanity and its treatment in America up to the 
 present time. 
 
 Sydney Smith used to speak of certain events as occurring 
 "before the invention of common sense" ; and the traditional, 
 often the scientific, treatment of madness and melancholy in 
 centuries past fell within that absurd period. A curious 
 edition of ^sop's Fables in Latin, printed at Exeter, N.H., in 
 1799, contained, for the edification of Dr. Abbott's pupils at 
 the Phillips Academy, this account of " The Doctor who took 
 Care of Insane Men " : — 
 
 There was a doctor of medicine living at Milan who undertook to 
 cure the insane, if they were brought to him before a certain stage 
 in their malady ; and his treatment was after this sort. He had a 
 court-yard near his house, and in it a pool of filthy water, in which 
 
Vlll ABSURDITIES OF TREATING THE INSANE 
 
 he tied them to a post, naked. Some of them were in up to their 
 knees, some up to the middle, others deeper still, according to the 
 degree of their madness ; and he gave them water treatment in this 
 way until they appeared to be sane. Now one man was brought 
 to him among others, whom he set in the water up to his thighs. 
 After a fortnight he began to grow sane, and begged the doctor to 
 take him out of the puddle. This he did, and so relieved him of 
 the torment, but with the understanding that he should not go out- 
 side the court-yard. When this condition was complied with for a 
 few days, he allowed the patient to go all about the house, only he 
 must not go through the gate. His fellow-sufferers, not a few, re- 
 mained in the water ; but he took pains to obey the doctor, and so 
 recovered, remembering nothing of what he had seen before he was 
 crazy. 
 
 Stupid as this treatment was, it was reason itself when com- 
 pared with the exorcism of demons long practised by the rever- 
 end clergy, and with the mystic curative quality of the relics 
 of St. Dymphna at Gheel, in Belgium, first observed in the 
 eighth century. The New England Puritans, in the days of 
 Salem witchcraft, still believed in demoniac possession, and 
 had few remedies but the " dark house " of Malvolio, and 
 prayers by the parson, for the frequent insanity of ministers 
 and their wives.* Then came a change for the better, though 
 accompanied by Dr. Rush's profuse bleeding, and the aid of 
 cold water, chains, and the whip, all which seem to have 
 been in use in the first American asylum for the insane, 
 opened at Philadelphia, under Dr. Franklin's eye, in 1752. It 
 was there that Dr. Benjamin Rush, an acute and observant 
 physician, had his long experience with the insane, which bore 
 fruit in his once popular and still interesting work on 
 
 * The clerical profession give up very slowly their theories of mental and spiritual things. Dr. 
 Hirsch, in his "Genius and Degeneration" in answer to Max Nordau, cites this curious recent utter- 
 ance of German parsons : " At a meeting of the German ' Union of Evangelical Curates of the Insane ' 
 Rev. Von Bodelschwingh, while admitting that medico-scientific psychiatry had done good service in 
 the recognition, treatment, and cure of the insane, still censured it as at bottom materialistic and 
 temporal. ' It leaves sin and grace, conscience and guilt, quite out of sight, and does not recognize 
 that forgiveness of sins brings life and spiritual health. Speaking broadly, the less the bodily physi- 
 cian uses his vtateria mcdica in mental maladies, the better. .Such things, for the most part, only 
 damage body and soul. The bodily physician may Ije helpful in the care of tl;e insane, but the prime 
 thing is the care of the sick soul ; and this should not be intrusted to the physician in the main.' 
 There is an element of truth in the statement, but it would lead to practical absurdities." 
 
DR. RUSH ON INSANITY IX 
 
 "Diseases of the Mind," published in 1812. Few have made 
 more valuable observations in America on the manifestations 
 of insanity, yet his notion of treatment was but little in ad- 
 vance of the Milanese doctor's. In mania Dr. Rush recom- 
 mended the strait-waistcoat or the " tranquillizing chair," pri- 
 vation of food, pouring cold water into the coat-sleeves, and, 
 lastly, the shower-bath for fifteen or twenty minutes. This 
 was moral treatment, supplemental to bleeding. He adds, 
 " If all these modes oi pwiishmetit fail of their intended effects, 
 it will be proper to resort to the fear of death. By the proper 
 application of these mild and terrifying modes of punishment, 
 chains will seldom and the whip never be required to govern 
 mad people." 
 
 This was the height of the medical profession in 1812, after 
 the " humane revolution " of which Rush spoke had occurred 
 under Pinel in France and the Quakers of York in England. 
 He exulted in the fact that in the Pennsylvania Hospital "the 
 clanging of chains and the noise of the whip are no longer 
 heard in the cells of the insane. They now taste of the bless- 
 ings of air and light and motion in pleasant and shaded walks 
 in summer, and in spacious entries warmed by stoves in win- 
 ter." He favored separate hospitals for hard drinkers, and the 
 alternation of hot and cold baths to shock the insane into 
 sanity. But his great specific was blood-letting, which he car- 
 ried to high figures of weight and frequency of withdrawing 
 what he regarded as a noxious fluid. His example, and the 
 virility and vivacity of his truly benevolent mind, made his 
 doctrine pernicious for half a century. Dr. Tuke called him 
 "the American Fothergill," resembling that English Quaker, 
 he thought, "in the independence of his practice, in acuteness 
 of observation, in enthusiastic love of the art of healing, and in 
 popularity as a physician in a great city." 
 
 To Dr. Rush, who died in 181 3, succeeded physicians of less 
 mark, but who improved the treatment of insanity in some par- 
 ticulars, — Dr. Wyman of the McLean Asylum near Boston in 
 18 1 8, Dr. Todd of the Hartford Retreat in 1824, and Dr. S. B. 
 Woodward, a trustee of the Hartford Retreat, but in 1833 
 superintendent of the State Hospital at Worcester, estab- 
 
X AMERICAN ALIENISTS 
 
 lished by Horace Mann and others, a year or two earlier. 
 It was from Dr. Woodward that Dr. Earle drew his first in- 
 spiration as professional alienist, and he continued to regard 
 him as greatly instrumental in the instruction of physicians 
 and the guidance of the public respecting insanity and its 
 treatment. He retired before my time, and I had no oppor- 
 tunity to compare him with later alienists. The same is true of 
 Dr. Brigham, who succeeded Dr. Todd at Hartford, and was 
 the first superintendent of the New York State Asylum at 
 Utica. But I believe the superiority of both was less due to 
 special attainments than to a native vigor of mind, a power of 
 will, and an impressive personality. They looked forward, and 
 not backward. They bettered the practices which they found 
 in use, and they undertook popular instruction ; but they made 
 few discoveries, and left little written evidence of their great 
 usefulness. Dr. Brigham, indeed, left more of that than Dr. 
 Woodward ; for he founded the Journal of Insanity, and wrote 
 much for it. 
 
 The younger contemporaries and successors of these pioneers 
 were mostly known to me personally, with the exception of 
 Dr. Bell, whom I believe to have been gifted with the New 
 Hampshire traits of courage, energy, and good will to mankind, 
 along with a little more culture than often fell to his rural 
 contemporaries. I began my inspection of asylums in 1863 
 with the peculiar establishment of Dr. Rockwell, soon after 
 visited Dr. Ray in Providence and Dr. Butler at Hartford, 
 knew rather intimately Dr. Gray of Utica, often saw Dr. Kirk- 
 bride and Dr. Chapin, was intimate with Dr. Jarvis, Dr. Choate, 
 Dr. Tyler, Dr. Clement Walker, Dr. Chandler, and Dr. Ban- 
 croft, to mention no others. Few of these men had what 
 would now be thought a sufficient medical and philosophical 
 training for one of the most difficult and perplexing branches 
 of the medical and psychological art. The German psychi- 
 atrists, as Dr. Earle discovered in 1849, had far exceeded them 
 in preliminary studies and systematic thought. But most of 
 them were sensible, practical men, who had learned much as 
 assistant physicians or superintendents of asylums and hospi- 
 tals. Several of them were good administrative heads of what 
 
AMERICAN ALIENISTS XI 
 
 were, in one aspect, great hotels. A few were good organizers, 
 and still fewer were good writers. Dr. Ray was exceptional 
 in this last point. His mind was clear, and his style enviable. 
 
 None of these alienists, however, had comprehended the 
 statistical, economic, or even the sanatory relations of the 
 public care of the insane. It was still a new matter. Experi- 
 ence was wanting. Enumeration, even practical definition of 
 the insane, was lacking; and, while their number was much 
 underrated, the likelihood of their recovery was extremely 
 overestimated. The asylums were few and small, received but 
 a portion of the insane, and had no means of determining the 
 exact physical condition of the patients they treated. The 
 microscope had hardly begun to do its work in revolutionizing 
 medicine. The localization of function in the brain was in its 
 rudiments, and was obscured by the charlatanry of phrenology. 
 The classification of insanity by its external manifestations was 
 very little advanced, and had to be the study of each alienist 
 in his own narrow field of observation. They experimented 
 with medical and moral treatment ; and, like Dr. Rush, they 
 formed singular notions of what treatment was applicable to 
 the mass of the insane. Still, knowledge advanced under their 
 isolated experiences. They communicated facts to each other 
 and to the public. Unfortunately, like medical men in all ages, 
 with exception of a few physicians of genius, they took guesses 
 and traditions for fact, in too many matters, and were un- 
 reasonably sanguine of good results from specifics or hastily 
 formed systems of treatment. Naturally desirous of commend- 
 ing their beneficent mission to the great public, they propagated 
 the hypothesis that all the insane were easily curable, if only 
 intrusted early to their care. This was a pardonable illusion 
 at first. It passed with time into a delusion which they wished 
 the community to share with experts who began to have their 
 doubts and to color their facts. How long it continued to be 
 honestly held by superintendents who made careful observa- 
 tions would be hard to say ; but such men should have the 
 benefit of every doubt, since their purpose was good. 
 
 Meantime visible insanity increased amazingly; and the im- 
 pulse given to the public for its better treatment, by the mis- 
 
Xll DEFECTS OF AMERICAN ASYLUMS 
 
 sionary labors of Dr. Woodward, Miss Dix, and others, led to 
 the building of many new asylums, which must be medically 
 officered. By this time, though the real nature of insanity had 
 been but little studied, young physicians perceived that the 
 specialty gave an opening for them in a profession where it 
 was not easy to get a bread-winning position for general prac- 
 tice at the outset of their career. This led to ambition and 
 intrigue for places in the new hospitals and asylums. Personal 
 favor and political interest came in to promote the claims of 
 the inexperienced and self-seeking, and a class of physicians 
 was gradually introduced in important positions who had 
 neither the mental endowment nor the high moral purpose of 
 the pioneers in the American specialty. The pressure for ad- 
 mission to asylums increased with the growth of population 
 and wealth, and the manifest increase of insanity ; and the 
 sound principles of the elder alienists, favoring small asylums 
 and greater personal care, were soon set aside, at first on the 
 ground of economy or expediency, and then because great 
 asylums involved larger powers and wider " patronage " in the 
 hands of politicians, medical or administrative. Still, the 
 fiction of easy curability was kept up, and used as an argument 
 for extracting appropriations from legislative bodies, which 
 were then expended in costly structures, from which the insane 
 derived less advantage than did the officials who inhabited such 
 palace-hospitals. 
 
 Along with this phase of the specialty went a kind of trade- 
 unionism in the heads of hospitals and asylums, excluding 
 from their guild persons of high attainments and earnest pur- 
 pose, who might have raised the tone of their meetings and 
 improved the quality of the Journal of Insatiity, which was 
 their organ. Such was the state of things, concisely inter- 
 preted, when the first Boards of State Charities were created, 
 with a general power of inspecting hospitals and asylums, from 
 1863 to 1870. Ifi every instance, probably, the heads of those 
 establishments opposed the visitation and resented the criti- 
 cism of the earlier Boards of this class. Instead of welcom- 
 ing a new ally (which these boards soon became, in the 
 advancement of the true knowledge of insanity and an im- 
 
DR. EARLE S ADVANTAGES XIU 
 
 provement of its treatment), this medical trade-union of alien- 
 ists received them as meddlesome critics, and at first thought 
 to put them down. But from that day to this the question of 
 insanity has gradually acquired a fuller and wiser discussion in 
 America, though the treatment of patients still leaves much 
 to be desired. A superficial and often pompous display of 
 knowledge has given way to an earnest search for truth ; and 
 the difficulties of the situation (greatly increased as they are 
 by the trebling of our population, the muddy tides of immigra- 
 tion, and a fuller discovery of the statistical facts) are now faced 
 with a better scientific and practical preparation than was 
 possible a generation ago. 
 
 It was the peculiar merit of Dr. Earle — in some respects 
 a good fortune rather than a merit — that he began his special 
 career with a far more thorough outfit of experience than most 
 of his contemporaries, and never neglected the means of keep- 
 ing himself in line with the thought and experience of coun- 
 tries that preceded ours in the improved care of their insane. 
 He was what Lloyd called Sir Anthony Brown, "the best com- 
 pound in the world, — a learned, an honest, and a travelled man ; 
 a good nature, a large soul, and a settled mind." When 
 few Americans had the opportunity, and perhaps none the in- 
 clination, to examine the care of the insane in Europe, he ex- 
 plored it, and that twice, — in his first residence abroad and 
 again in his tour of discovery among the German asylums. 
 This placed him above our American weakness of boasting our- 
 selves the foremost in all things, as we are, no doubt, in some 
 things. It broadened his knowledge, and still more his recep- 
 tivity, so that he no longer took for granted the confident 
 statements of the narrow-minded, while he left a margin for 
 facts and theories that were new to him. His honesty of mind 
 and the habit of his religious sect, long accustomed to look on 
 the fashion of this world not only as transient, but as wrong, 
 kept him from swimming smoothly with the current, as so 
 many of his professional brethren did. His arithmetical turn 
 made him distrust statistics which would not "prove " the result 
 they were added up to show ; and his innate frugality caused 
 him to look at the wasting of public money on palatial poor- 
 
XIV FAMILY CARE OF THE INSANE 
 
 houses as worse than a blunder. All this, which kept him 
 back from advancement in the art he so well understood, was 
 his best equipment for the final success that he achieved. His 
 name will stand higher as time passes, because his work was 
 done, not for present fame and emolument, but for the future 
 good of a large and unhappily increasing class of mankind. A 
 part of it also, his refutation of the fallacy of easy curability, 
 will be remembered as one of the best contributions thus far 
 made to the science of insanity by the hundreds of American 
 alienists who have dealt with the subject. 
 
 To the new physiological investigation of insanity as a 
 corporeal disease, which promises better results than it has yet 
 furnished, Dr. Earle was perhaps a little unjust. He had seen 
 so many loud proclamations on this subject with so little real 
 accomplishment, that his practical good sense, joining with the 
 conservatism of added years, made him less hopeful than he 
 would have been before i860. But it will probably always re- 
 main true that his moral methods in dealing with insanity are 
 for the greatest good of all. 
 
 The accumulation of thousands of the chronic insane in huge 
 asylums (so foreign to all the principles of Dr. Earle and his 
 colleagues of thirty years ago) led him to modify his opinions 
 in some respects. In his address at the Chicago Conference 
 of Charities in 1879, ^^ admitted that chronic asylums are a 
 necessity, but pleaded for their better organization so as " to 
 preserve the advantages of the small institution with the 
 alleged economy of support in the large one." To do this, he 
 would group around the existing hospitals buildings of cheaper 
 construction ; and he would exclude from asylums the insane 
 who need no such restraint. " Many patients," he said, "are 
 now committed, from whom society has nothing to fear, and 
 whose best interests are thus promoted because they have no 
 suitable home." Hence a movement had arisen (in Massachu- 
 setts chiefly promoted at that time by Miss Dix's early friend. 
 Dr. S. G. Howe) for placing the insane in family homes, as was 
 then done in Belgium and Scotland only. While anticipating 
 little reduction in the over-population of asylums from this 
 movement. Dr. Earle with his native candor said: "We per- 
 
FAMILY CARE OF THE INSANE XV 
 
 ceive no serious objection to a trial of the experiment. Suc- 
 cess sometimes awaits the efforts of that enthusiasm which is 
 inspired by faith, even when the doubters least expect it." 
 As time elapsed and the Family Care system in Europe showed 
 increasingly good results, Dr. Earle's doubts gave way ; and he 
 joined in recommending that the hospitals, as well as the 
 central State authority, should place the insane in Massachu- 
 setts families. He went beyond existing opinion in 1890 (see 
 page 278) in suggesting this family care for convalescing 
 patients, — a measure he had found working well on a small 
 scale in the Duchy of Nassau in 1849. 
 
 Thus from 1835, when he may be said to have first seriously 
 considered the American problems of insanity, until 1890, — 
 more than half a century — Dr. Earle was foremost in favoring 
 improvements in its treatment ; and, where he doubted, he gave 
 the future the benefit of the doubt. I know of no other New 
 England reformers of whom this can be said except Dr. 
 Howe.* These three persons, Dr. Earle earliest and latest, 
 Dr. Howe with the quickest insight, and Miss Dix with the 
 most rapid success, appear to me to have done most to ad- 
 vance the cause in America. 
 
 As Dr. Earle's monumental work on " The Curability of In- 
 sanity " is still in print, and may be had of the publishers of 
 this Memoir, there seemed to be no occasion to quote largely 
 from it. For a similar reason the " Earle Genealogy," being 
 readily accessible, little has been said of the members of Dr. 
 Earle's family, except incidentally, in connection with his 
 letters and the events of his long life. From the interesting 
 communication of the Rev. Samuel May, a companion of Garri- 
 son, a college classmate of Dr. Holmes, and for many years a 
 townsman of the Leicester Earles, some additional information 
 can be had in the Appendix. It has been thought best to re- 
 print there some of Dr. Earle's publications of a time long 
 past, and a few of his later papers. So copious was the corre- 
 spondence left by him in the hands of his executors that only 
 a small part of it could be used in this volume. Our effort has 
 
 * Samuel Gridley Howe, bom Nov. lo, 1801, died Jan. 9, 1876, was the famous philanthropist 
 and revolutionist of Boston, friend of the blind, the poor, and all who needed help. 
 
XVI PORTRAITS, ERRATA, ETC. 
 
 been to reproduce in some degree the earlier circumstances of 
 his life, and the scenes in which he moved fifty or sixty years 
 ago, in order to give that interest to these pages which the 
 publication of a correspondence mainly professional or of 
 family significance could not so well impart. 
 
 It may be said, however, that his relations with his family, 
 and the mutual interchange of good offices between its mem- 
 bers, were such as might be expected from the cordial and 
 practical character of the Earles of Leicester, the Chases of 
 Worcester, and the Buffums of Rhode Island. The pecuniary 
 independence which the elder Pliny Earle secured, until re- 
 verses overtook him, was achieved by the diligence and good 
 sense of his son and namesake ; and his possessions were used 
 by Dr. Earle to encourage excellence in others, and to promote 
 pubHc interests. Portions of his last Will, at the end of the 
 Appendix, will prove his liberality to the public ; his care for 
 those who needed aid was no less liberal. 
 
 The portraits in this volume are from a daguerreotype taken 
 about 1846 and from a photograph of about forty years later. 
 The steel engraving prepared for the " Earle Genealogy " and 
 used in a portion of this edition is perhaps of 1875 or there- 
 about. Without being so speaking a likeness as the later 
 photograph, it has some merits not seen in the other two. 
 The early daguerreotype has suffered in expression from fading. 
 
 It may be added that an error of one month crept into the 
 pages that mention Dr. Earle's first voyage to Europe, which 
 began April 25, 1837, and not March 25, as printed. In Dr. 
 Earle's brief reminiscences, page 383, this is correctly stated. 
 
 F. B. s. 
 Concord, Sept. 12, 1898. 
 
MEMOIR OF PLINY EARLE, M.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH, ANCESTRY, AND CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Pliny Earle, second of that name, was the son of Pliny 
 Earle of Leicester, a rural town near Worcester, in Worcester 
 County, Mass., where the subject of this biography was born, 
 Dec. 31, 1809, at the residence of his father, then engaged 
 in manufactures and agriculture. His mother was Patience 
 Buffum, of Smithfield, R.I. ; and both she and her husband 
 were of the Society of Friends, which had early established 
 itself in the Plymouth Colony and the neighboring colony of 
 Roger Williams. The first of Dr. Earle's paternal ancestors in 
 America was Ralph Earle, who came from near Exeter, in 
 England, and may have been in Rhode Island as early as 1634. 
 His name appears among the signers of a political compact 
 made at Portsmouth, R.I., April 30, 1639. He married a wife, 
 Joan,* no doubt in England, and remained in Rhode Island until 
 his death in 1678. No successful effort has yet been made to 
 connect this Ralph Earle (Erie) with the distinguished English 
 family of Erles in Somerset and Devon, to which belonged Sir 
 Walter Erie of Charborough, of the generation immediately 
 preceding Ralph Earle. He was a member of Parliament in 
 the first years of Charles I.'s reign, and was arbitrarily impris- 
 oned by that king for refusing, with others, to pay a forced loan 
 under royal authority without warrant of law. A dozen knights, 
 of whom Sir Walter was one, and seventy-eight other English- 
 men of all ranks, were thus imprisoned. They were all re- 
 leased in February, 1628 ; and in the next March twenty-seven 
 
 * Her name was perhaps Savage. 
 
2 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN EARLES 
 
 of them, Sir Walter at their head, were returned to the new 
 Parliament. Others so elected were John Hampden, Sir Ed- 
 ward Hampden, Sir Nicholas Barnardiston, and Sir Thomas 
 Grantham, — all Puritans, and opposed to the arbitrary proceed- 
 ings of Charles and the bishops. It is every way probable that 
 the Earles of Rhode Island were distant cousins of these Eng- 
 lish Erles, — not only for the reasons given by Dr. Earle in his 
 genealogical volume, "Ralph Earle and his Descendants" 
 (Worcester, 1888), but also because these New England Earles, 
 like the English knight, were stanch defenders of liberty and 
 free speech, which Rhode Island was colonized to maintain. 
 Ten years later (1638), and about the time Ralph's name ap- 
 pears in Rhode Island, Hampden, Cromwell, and other Puritan 
 leaders, were entertaining a purpose of emigrating to New 
 England ; and Ralph Earle and his wife, like some of the 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut colonists, may have been sent 
 out in advance. 
 
 Be this as it may, their son Ralph, about 1660, removed to 
 Dartmouth, in the Plymouth Colony, but near Rhode Island, 
 and acquired a large estate in what is now New Bedford and 
 the Elizabeth Islands. William, another son, also lived in 
 Dartmouth, where his son Ralph was born; but about 1717 
 this third Ralph removed to Leicester, where he also acquired 
 much land, and where he declared himself a Quaker. His son 
 Robert, born in 1706, lived, vigorous and active, in Leicester 
 to the age of ninety. The first Pliny Earle was his great- 
 grandson. From farming Pliny turned to trade and manu- 
 factures, and established a mill in Leicester, where he made 
 cards for the early cotton-mills from a model of his own, for 
 which he got a patent early in this century. This gave him a 
 competence which enabled him to educate his nine children 
 well. Our Pliny was the youngest but one of these, and was 
 almost sixteen years younger than his eldest brother, John. 
 
 Leicester, when Ralph Earle followed his Indian guide, 
 Moses, from Grafton to its breezy hill-tops, included the present 
 towns of Leicester and Paxton, and adjoined Rutland. Within 
 its limits was the Indian hill, Asnebumskit, fourteen hundred 
 feet high ; and a portion of Ralph Earle's five hundred and fifty 
 
1809-1837 3 
 
 acres reached the west side of that hill. His homestead and 
 main farm lay on what is now called Earle Ridge, and on both 
 sides of Mulberry Street, extending towards Strawberry Hill, 
 where the churches and academy are, far enough to include the 
 quiet, wooded slope where the Quaker meeting-house stood for 
 more than one hundred years, and where the Friends' burying- 
 ground is ; the meeting-place of the society having been trans- 
 ferred to Worcester about the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. There were no Quakers in that region until Ralph Earle 
 arrived, nor did he declare himself one until 1732; but he was 
 probably the son of Quaker parents, and no doubt shared their 
 opinions, since he would not otherwise have been sufificiently 
 interested in William Penn to visit him in Philadelphia before 
 1701. The immediate occasion of professing himself a Quaker 
 in Leicester was to avoid the parish tax, then levied on all who 
 were not obviously exempt. Quakers had become practically 
 exempt by the decision of the English Privy Council in 1724, 
 upon the petition of Joseph Anthony, John Sisson (of Tiverton), 
 and John Akin and Philip Tabor (of Dartmouth), who were 
 Quakers, and had been imprisoned a year for failing to lay and 
 collect the ministerial tax in their two townships. This de- 
 cision set them free, and in substance said that Quakers need 
 not pay such taxes. Ralph Earle, formerly of Dartmouth, his 
 sons Robert and William, and four other men, — among them 
 Nathaniel Potter, — eight years after (1732) asked by petition 
 to be released from paying " any part of the tax for the seport 
 of the minister or ministers established by the laws of this 
 province of Massachusetts Bay," alleging that they were 
 Quakers, conscientiously scrupulous about such payment, and 
 claiming "the Privileges granted" to the people of that name. 
 Seven years later Benjamin Earle, the youngest of Ralph's 
 eleven children, and to whom he had given that part of the 
 farm where the graves now are, joined with Nathaniel Potter 
 in conveying a lot for the Quaker meeting-house in trust to 
 Samuel Thayer, of Mendon, who before the year ended recon- 
 veyed it to Earle, Potter, Thomas Smith, and John Wells, on 
 condition that it should be held in common, and should go by 
 shares to their heirs and assigns forever. A small meeting- 
 
4 LEICESTER AXD THE AMERICAN EARLES 
 
 house was built there in 1741, a larger one fifty years later; 
 and near them were buried Ralph Earle and his descendants 
 and kindred. 
 
 The Earle estates ran along where the present Earle Street, 
 leading towards Leicester Village, crosses Mulberry Street; 
 and there the great-grandfather (Robert) of Dr. Earle had his 
 house. A few rods further south, on Mulberry Street, Rob- 
 ert, Jr. (Dr. Earle's grandfather), built a small house in 1771, 
 afterwards owned by Dr. Earle himself, and now called "Earle 
 Ridge." In 1792 Pliny Earle, Sr., removed his grandfather's 
 house to the east side of Mulberry Street, and made it a factory 
 for his card manufacture, building the next year the larger 
 house, still standing, on the west side. Here his nine children 
 were born, and here both he and his wife died. The Quaker 
 Meeting between there and the village, which had counted but 
 eight male members in 1742, grew to have more than one hun- 
 dred, male and female ; and in the school district, including the 
 Earle, Potter, and Southwick Quaker farms, there were in 18 12 
 twenty-one grandchildren of Robert Earle, Jr., out of forty 
 pupils. At present no child named Earle is a pupil there, and 
 the broad acres of the Earles mostly pass under other names. 
 
 The country itself retains its picturesque features, except 
 that the forests are gone, and are replaced by fruit-trees and 
 well-tilled fields. Noble views are seen from the high hills, 
 and both Earle Ridge and the village hill are nearly twelve hun- 
 dred feet above the sea. The roads are steep or winding, — 
 sometimes both, — and in summer pleasant. Of his father Dr. 
 Earle thus wrote in his later years : — 
 
 My ancestors were mostly either yeomen or artisans, and, with the 
 exception of one or two, took no part that was prominent in public af- 
 fairs. My father, from whom I took my Christian name, was a man 
 of good intellectual powers, with a love for the science of mechanics, 
 and much inventive faculty. He received little literary education ; 
 but his ciphering-book (that once fashionable record of mathemati- 
 cal work), still in existence, is written in a fair, distinct hand, and 
 would not be discreditable to a good pupil in a country school at the 
 present day. He had a special turn for mathematics, without the 
 
1809-1837 5 
 
 opportunity of pursuing its higher branches ; and he acquired, though 
 not in the schools, such a knowledge of chemistry as the general 
 student rarely obtained in his active life. 
 
 With his habitual understatement, Dr. Earle hardly ren- 
 dered justice to the prominence of his father and uncles in the 
 early period of cotton and woollen manufacture by machinery 
 in New England, at the close of the last century. Judge Emory 
 Washburn, the historian of Leicester, his native town, gives 
 this account of the small beginnings of what became a large in- 
 dustry, in the hands of Pliny Earle, his brothers, children, and 
 successors : — 
 
 The manufacture of cotton and wool hand-cards was commenced 
 in Leicester about 1785, by Mr. Edmund Snow; and among those 
 most early engaged was Mr. Pliny Earle, who possessed much of the 
 mechanical ingenuity (in addition to a great fund of general knowl- 
 edge) which has characterized those of that name in the town. About 
 the year 1790 Mr. Samuel Slater, the venerable originator of cotton- 
 factories in the United States, having in vain endeavored to procure 
 suitable cards for his machinery in the principal cities of the Union, 
 applied to Mr. Earle. Machine-cards had till then been made in the 
 manner C3.\led/>/ain. A part of the cards used on a machine is called 
 "filleting," and this part it was desirable to have what is termed 
 "twilled." For this purpose Mr. Earle was obliged to prick the 
 whole filleting with two needles inserted in a handle, in the manner 
 of an awl. This process was extremely tedious ; but Mr. Earle at 
 length completed it, and furnished to Mr. Slater the cards on which 
 the first cotton was wrought that was spun by machinery in America. 
 The difficulty with which he accomplished this engagement led to his 
 invention of a machine with which to prick the leather for cards ; and 
 about 1797 he accomplished the desired object. 
 
 Pliny Earle had engaged in this card-making before 1786, 
 when he was only twenty-four years old. By 1789 he had 
 become so well known that the firm of Almy and Brown of 
 Providence (kinsmen and successors of Moses Brown, a founder 
 of Brown University) engaged him to cover the cylinders in 
 their mill with card-teeth such as he had made for a mill in 
 Worcester, before Mr. Slater had applied to him for a similar 
 
O LEICESTER AND THE AMERICAN EARLES 
 
 purpose. The patent for his machine was not issued till 1803, 
 but it had been in use long before ; and its principle formed the 
 basis of all such machines for many years. 
 
 The mother, Patience Earle, was no less gifted and energetic 
 than her spouse. Of her and the events of his childhood, Dr. 
 Earle wrote in an unfinished autobiography : — 
 
 My mother, who was but five years old at the opening of the 
 Revolution (1775) had even fewer facilities for education than my 
 father ; but, having a strong literary taste, she became very much of 
 a reader, and carried the habit to the close of her life. From my 
 earliest memory of her till her last illness (November, 1849, when 
 she was seventy-nine), she habitually took an after-dinner nap in 
 bed, taking with her either a book or a newspaper, and reading 
 until she fell asleep. She did the same on retiring at night. When 
 in bed, she always lay on her left side, and held the book or newspa- 
 per in her extended right hand. The protracted and semi-continual 
 pressure of her body upon the left shoulder brought into opera- 
 tion a well-known physiological law. At the time of her decease the 
 shoulder-blade of that side was not more than half as large as that of 
 the right side, which had been free from pressure. 
 
 My parents had nine children, and the first death in the family 
 was that of my father, who died (1832) when his youngest child was 
 nineteen years of age. Of the nine, seven had learned the letters of 
 the English alphabet before they were respectively twenty months 
 old. In the two exceptions, the health of the children was so unstable 
 that it was considered unwise to attempt to teach them. This release 
 of the school-teachers from the drudgery of teaching the alphabet 
 was the work of the mother, to whom the children were indebted for 
 that instruction. 
 
 It has been said that no person can do three things at one and 
 the same time ; but, if my mother did not accomplish that feat, it 
 must be acknowledged that she came very near it. I have seen her, 
 many a time, during the first three years of my younger brother's 
 life, tending the baby, knitting, and teaching the letters to the baby. 
 My father was a subscriber to the old New York Herald, the lead- 
 ing newspaper of the metropolis at that time. Its heading was in 
 plain Roman capitals, an inch or more in height. These letters were 
 used for the instruction of her babies, in so much of the alphabet as 
 
1809-1S37 7 
 
 they would serve. The large letters of the title-page of the Bible 
 and other books enabled her to complete the alphabet, ^^'ith the 
 same arrangements of babies and knitting-work, and generally with 
 most of the family present, she read aloud from the Holy Scripture, 
 particularly in the long winter evenings. A neighbor, a prominent 
 minister of the Society of Friends, said of her, " She was the most 
 capable woman, taking her in every respect, that I ever knew : and I 
 have known a great many." 
 
 The district school was but about fort}- rods from my father's 
 homestead, and I began to attend it when very young. I learned 
 easily, and at the age of five years was reading in the highest class, 
 our text-book being Scott's " Lessons," the English publication 
 which to a greater extent than any other supplied the schools of 
 New England prior to the publication of any American work of the 
 kind. 
 
 I might relate an anecdote as illustrative of an early facility in 
 the application of acquired knowledge. I was very young, and this 
 is the earliest of my memories ; but the circumstances are still as 
 vividly in my mind's eye as if they had occurred much later. One 
 morning, after breakfast, Daniel Jenkins, the man who then had 
 charge of the farm, took me up, and held me with his arms around 
 my legs and face to face with himself, our heads being at very 
 nearly the same height. I pushed his head from me, making him 
 lean backwards, then leaned backwards to some distance, and said 
 to him, '' Y ! " I remember that I was greatly pleased to find I had 
 discovered, in the group formed by him and myself, a resemblance 
 to that letter of the alphabet. The literar}- taste of my mother was 
 inherited to a very considerable extent by her children ; and, con- 
 sidering the time at which they lived, they became great readers. 
 My grandmother Earle, one of our nearest neighbors, one day 
 remarked to my mother that with her children she had made it a 
 matter of principle not to call away one of them from reading to set 
 them at work. My mother's reply was, " If I should never call 
 upon one of my children while reading to do work, I should never 
 get any work done by them." 
 
 My father was a farmer and a manufacturer of (cotton) cards, 
 the latter being what he chiefly relied upon for the support of his 
 family. He was lenient with his children, and did not require us 
 to work regularlv, even when we were not at school. He often 
 
8 LEICESTER AND THE AMERICAN EARLES 
 
 kept two farm hands and always one. Either by requisition or for 
 my own amusement, I often assisted the farmers at their work. I 
 began by following the mowers to spread their swath (a work which 
 greatly delighted me), and was soon promoted to riding the horse 
 for ploughing, which I utterly detested, and always evaded, if possi- 
 ble. Subsequently I made myself familiar with the use of every 
 farm tool used at that time. The knowledge thus acquired has been 
 of no inconsiderable use to me in superintending the large farm at 
 the Northampton Hospital. My father had for those days a great 
 variety of fruit-trees, in which he took a great interest ; and he had 
 no little knowledge of horticulture and fruit-raising. I learned 
 from him the methods of grafting and budding fruit-trees when I 
 was about eleven years old, and had considerable practice upon 
 young trees raised in our garden. One or two of his experiments 
 were curious. 
 
 Among his pear-trees was one whose .trunk was some five inches 
 through, which had begun to bear fruit. It then began to decay 
 about five feet from the ground, and so continued till at one point 
 it reached the heart of the tree. My father then sawed the trunk 
 half off at two points, above and below the decayed portion, from 
 twelve to fifteen inches apart. From another tree he cut a branch 
 about as large as the decaying trunk, and carefully fitted a piece 
 of this branch into the space from which he took out the decay, 
 taking pains to match the bark of the branch to the bark of the tree, 
 so that the flowing sap would pass through the inserted half-cylinder. 
 He wrapped it at the mended part ; and this inserted piece grew, 
 and formed one-half of the trunk of the pear-tree, which, however, 
 continued to decay. In two or three years the decaj^ed part ex- 
 tended nearly through the trunk, but the inserted piece had become 
 so strong as to support the tree. He then sawed out the remaining 
 and decayed half of the original trunk for a space corresponding 
 to a new piece which he inserted. Again he wrapped it, and again 
 the inserted piece grew. The tree flourished for many years, with 
 no part of its original trunk where the decay had been ; and many 
 a good pear, both of the St. Michael's and the Flemish Beauty 
 varieties, have I eaten from it. Again, one spring father received 
 some young pear-trees from New York. They were all planted but 
 one, which lay in the garden three or four weeks, not " heeled in," 
 but exposed to all sorts of weather. I supposed it to be hopelessly 
 
1809-1837 9 
 
 dead ; but father took it, and, having gathered some small roots 
 from living pear-trees, inserted their upper ends under the bark of 
 the new tree's roots. He then planted it, and it grew with as much 
 vigor as if its planting had not been thus delayed. 
 
 For the business of manufacturing cards and carding-machines, 
 father had a carpenter's shop, a blacksmith's shop, and a foot-lathe. 
 This last was to me of great interest ; and I learned upon it the 
 use of the chisel and gouge, while turning tops and fancy articles. 
 In the carpenter's shop I became familiar with all its tools, and 
 practised with them to some extent of usefulness. In the card 
 factory I worked also, in such departments as were within my 
 ability. In making hand-cards, I punched and nailed the handles 
 to the boards, and nailed the cards upon the boards, thus getting 
 the dexterous and facile use of a small hammer. In both hand and 
 machine cards, the teeth were cut from wire by " cutting-machines," 
 which were somewhat complicated. Even as early as my seventh 
 year I was employed, more or less, in operating such a machine, 
 and soon learned to understand its construction, and how to correct 
 some of the simplest forms of its disordered working. Whatever 
 mechanical faculty nature gave me was here called into activity, and 
 so developed that, whenever since I have seen a new machine of any 
 sort, my first impulse has been to investigate all its movements. 
 Thus, when in 1824 a small steam-engine was placed in the card 
 factory, for running the cutting-machine, I learned its use ; and, 
 when fifteen years old, in the whole warm season of 1825, I had 
 charge of both the steam-engine and the machine, and practically 
 learned the principles of steam as a motive power. This was my 
 chief occupation until I entered the Friends' School at Providence 
 in the early autumn of 1826. 
 
 My school education had not been neglected meantime, for I 
 had just passed my tenth year (in 1820) when I entered the Leices- 
 ter Academy. I well remember the cold, blustering, uncomforta- 
 ble, and discouraging day in March. My mother took me in the 
 chaise then generally used, — a covered, one-horse carriage. The 
 preceptor of the English Department, which I entered, was Thomas 
 Fisk, a genial, good-natured man, without much natural taste for 
 his employment, and not specially fond of severe work, but who 
 still performed his prescribed duties without censure. But the 
 preceptor of the Classical Department was an excellent scholar, — 
 
lO LEICESTER AND THE EARLES 
 
 John Richardson, — a somewhat severe disciplinarian, with a counte- 
 nance really more stern than his character, and silver-bowed specta- 
 cles, which, being near-sighted, he constantly wore, and which had 
 the magical power of making every pupil in the school-room believe 
 the master was looking right at him, I remained in the Academy, 
 excepting a term now and then, until the close of the autumn term 
 of 1824, and in that term was under Professor Richardson. In the 
 following winter term (1825) I was at the town school, in my native 
 district, and made some progress in mathematics. In both schools 
 I learned easily, and my lessons were always thoroughly committed ; 
 but the knowledge acquired was much less than it should have been, 
 had the Academy been as thoroughly organized and efficiently man- 
 aged as some others I have known. 
 
 No doubt Dr. Earle was here thinking of that excellent insti- 
 tution, still existing, the New England " Yearly-meeting Board- 
 ing-school," at Providence, R.I., in which he completed his 
 academic education, and afterwards taught for some years with 
 success, leaving on the minds of his pupils, of both sexes, a 
 vivid impression of his teaching capacity, and most agreeable 
 recollections of his personal influence and character. He be- 
 came an assistant teacher there in 1829, was promoted in 1831, 
 and in 1835, at the age of twenty-five, became the principal, for 
 a short time, of this important seminary. Late in 1835 he re- 
 signed his place, and entered the University of Pennsylvania as 
 a medical student, at Philadelphia, in October of that year. 
 He had been studying medicine for some years with Dr. Usher 
 Parsons of Providence (brother-in-law of Dr. O. W. Holmes), a 
 distinguished surgeon and author, at the same time teaching 
 his classes in the Friends' School. He completed his medical 
 course in 1837, and soon after went abroad. But all through 
 his youth his education was more practical than academic, from 
 the lessons learned in his father's shops and on the great 
 Leicester farm. Of these matters the autobiography goes on 
 to say : — 
 
 The persons who did the work of card-making for my father were 
 chiefly the women and children of farmers, who were thus enabled 
 to earn a considerable sum in the support of a family. People in 
 
I809-I837 II 
 
 Leicester and all the adjoining towns engaged in this work ; for the 
 holes in the leather which held the card-teeth were pricked by a 
 hand-machine (" pricking-machine "), that could be used in a farm- 
 house. I often worked at this, rather as a pastime than a labor. 
 We had several " routes " in which a horse and wagon was sent out 
 from the factory for a circuit of from fifteen to twenty-five miles, 
 among the farmers, to carry the leathers and teeth to the " setters," 
 and collect from them the finished cards. Others, living nearer, 
 came themselves to the factory to get the material and return the 
 cards they had set. For some years I drove one of these circuit 
 teams, and thus gained no little experience in the use and care 
 of horses. My father also kept a kind of country store, — not for 
 general customers, but for payment in kind of those who set the 
 cards. There were not customers enough to justify hiring a clerk ; 
 and so different members of the Earle family acted as clerk, in due 
 time. I was first promoted to this post when about twelve, and I 
 well remember my feeling of pride at such exaltation. My first 
 entry in day-book of a charge against a customer I considered as- 
 tonishing. 
 
 It will be seen that this discipline and these experiences were 
 just what was needed to make the boy and youth acquainted 
 with the homely details of New England life in the first quarter 
 of the century, when a state of things existed which has long 
 since passed away. In these drives and colloquies with the 
 industrious Yankee farmer, his wife and children, young Pliny 
 Earle, as Channing says of Thoreau in his endless walks and 
 talks about Concord, " came to see the inside of almost every 
 farmer's house and head," — a sight worth seeing and a class 
 worth knowing and spending your boyhood among. The same 
 Concord poet has described them and their habitations as Dr. 
 Earle saw them in the upland region around Worcester, to 
 which he ever loved to return, until he became the last of his 
 family there : — 
 
 I love these homely mansions, and to me 
 A farmer's house seems better than a king's. 
 
 The palace boasts its art ; but Liberty 
 
 And honest pride and toil are splendid things. 
 
 They carved this clumsy lintel, and it brings 
 
12 THE AMERICAN FARMERS 
 
 The man upon its front. Greece hath her art; 
 But this rude homestead shows the farmer's heart. 
 
 The wind may blow a hurricane ; but he 
 Goes fairly onward with the thing in hand. 
 
 He sails undaunted on the crashing sea, 
 
 Beneath the keenest winter frost doth stand, 
 
 And by his will he makes his way command, 
 Till all the seasons smile dehght to feel 
 The grasp of his hard hand encased in steel. 
 
 Among the many virtues of this vanishing class was their 
 frugality, which Dr. Earle learned and commended. He says 
 in his autobiography : — 
 
 The disposition to save entered pretty largely into my natural 
 character ; and this tendency was fostered by the circumstances into 
 which the family was thrown by the loss of most of my father's 
 property, upon the declaration of peace between the United States 
 and Great Britain, in 1815. His business firm (Pliny Earle & 
 Brothers), which consisted of the three eldest brothers, Pliny, Jonah, 
 and Silas, was formed in 1791 ; and their business soon became one 
 of the most extensive of its kind in the country. In 1802 they 
 added to it the building of machines for carding both cotton and 
 wool; and in 1804 they placed wool-carding machines upon some 
 stream in each of the towns to which their work extended, even one 
 town in Rhode Island, for the convenience of the farmers who 
 raised wool, but before had it carded by hand in their houses. Graf- 
 ton, Rutland, Warren, and Northbridge, in Worcester County, and 
 Cumberland in Rhode Island were these towns ; and the firm were in 
 part owners of a cotton-mill in Northbridge. The war with England, 
 beginning when young Pliny was two and a half years old, much 
 increased their profits. But the cost of raw material also increased 
 greatly; and the close of the war in January, 1815, found them with 
 a very large stock on hand, with falling prices and very litde demand 
 for cards. Such of the business as remained was retained by my 
 father until his death in 1832, his principal agent and manager after 
 18 1 9 being my brother William, seven years older than myself. My 
 eldest brother, Thomas, who had been with his father in business, 
 removed to Philadelphia in 1817, at the age of twenty-one; and an 
 incident connected with him stimulated my tendency to economy. 
 
1809-1837 13 
 
 Upon his first return from Philadelphia, when I was seven years 
 old, he brought several books for children, which he gave to his 
 younger brothers and sisters, — among them some of the minor 
 tales of Maria Edgeworth, one of them entitled " Waste not, Want 
 not; or, Two Strings to your Bow." Its hero was a boy who one 
 day came across a piece of small cord, picked it up, and put it in 
 his pocket. Some time afterwards, when shooting for a prize in 
 archery, his bowstring broke. Whereupon he calmly took the pre- 
 served cord from his pocket, strung his bow with it, shot his arrow, 
 and won the prize. I was greatly pleased with this story, and its 
 moral made a strong impression. Twenty years after, on my first 
 visit to Europe, the multitude of illustrations (not only in Great 
 Britain and Ireland, but in the countries of the Continent) of a 
 degree of economy wholly unknown even in New England, confirmed 
 the impression made by the hero of "Waste not, Want not." At 
 that time also I derived a useful lesson in another direction. I met 
 with the evidences of order and system in the practical pursuits of 
 life, to a far greater extent than in the United States. We were still 
 in our national infancy, our Constitution not yet fifty years old, our 
 territor}' large, its population sparse, and its business, both in the 
 arts and commerce, carried on under the necessities of the moment 
 rather than by the rules of long experience. 
 
 This love of order, system, and economy, however, was quite as 
 much inherited and inbred by the connection of the Earles of 
 Leicester with the Quakers as by any books or observations of 
 early or later years. The traits of Dr. Earle were those so often 
 noted in the English and American Quakers, — patience, perse- 
 verance, submission to the will of God as revealed by the Inner 
 Light, even more than in the Old and New Testaments, and, 
 not less, a sober resolution to acquire and retain the means 
 of independent living. This implied industry, fru.gality, and 
 orderly management of all secular affairs, — virtues visible in the 
 first of the Quaker Earles of Leicester, Ralph, the great-grand- 
 father of Pliny the elder. He had not been called a Quaker 
 until after his removal from Freetown in Bristol County, in 
 1 71 7, to Leicester. Indeed, he had borne in his youth the mili- 
 tary title of ensign. He was a person of middle age and much 
 substance when he became one of the early settlers of Leices- 
 
14 CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN EARLES 
 
 ter, where his five hundred and fifty acres of land were trans- 
 mitted to his numerous descendants, and in part to his faithful 
 negro slave, Sharp, whom he emancipated before his own 
 death, and presented with thirty acres on the south slope of 
 Asnebumskit, the highest hill of his region. Though late in 
 joining the Society of Friends, he was much attached to them, 
 and made a visit to Pennsylvania (tradition says) to see William 
 Penn. If so, it must have been about 1700, when Ralph Earle 
 was forty years old.* 
 
 Like her husband, Patience Earle, though descended 
 through the Arnold family of Lanthony in Wales from war- 
 rior-chieftains of that land, was born and bred a Quaker. But 
 she had certain tastes not always cherished in that sect, and 
 more in accord with the bards of Wales. She wrote verse 
 with facility, as did her son, who says of this : — 
 
 Her natural poetic taste was far above mediocrity ; and she read 
 the verse of standard English poets with close attention, Pope being 
 her greatest favorite, and, next to him, Goldsmith. I once heard her 
 say of the " Essay on Man " that, if any person would repeat any 
 line of it he pleased, she would repeat the other line of the couplet. 
 Although familiar with Dr. Young, he was evidently not so satisfac- 
 tory to her as Pope and Goldsmith, I have heard her say that the 
 " Night Thoughts " would read about as well by beginning at the 
 bottom of the page and reading upwards. In the last twenty years 
 of her life she wrote many poetical pieces, some of which found 
 their way into the newspapers. An unfinished poem of one hundred 
 and fifty lines, imitative of Goldsmith's " Deserted Village," was 
 written on revisiting her native village in Rhode Island. Her 
 school-house, of the Revolutionary epoch, is thus described : — 
 
 In rustic, plain simplicity it stood 
 
 On a broad lawn, encircled by a wood ; 
 
 Within its walls a motley group was seen. 
 
 Of different sexes and of varied mien ; 
 
 Some, hardy, rough, and rugged sons of earth, 
 
 Who never gave one bright idea birth, 
 
 •Penn last visited l)is American colony in 1699, and returned to England in 1701, where he died 
 in 1718. Ralph Earle may have been a "birthright Friend," who disconnected himself with the 
 society and afterwards rejoined it. His title of ensign is as late as 1715. He lived to be ninety-six, 
 dying in 1757, so that the lives of himself and his son Robert covered one hundred and thirty-six years, 
 from 1660 to 1796. 
 
1809-1837 IS 
 
 And seemed by nature from improvement barred, 
 With minds as callous as their frames were hard ; 
 Some, gentle forms, and delicately wrought. 
 That scarcely seemed susceptible of thought, 
 On trifling objects ever prone to dote, — 
 Their only knowledge what they learned by rote ; 
 And yet another class did there appear, — 
 Their minds capacious, their perceptions clear ; 
 Like lightning's flash, they caught the vivid ray 
 Which Learning shed on their illumined way. 
 
 She next went on to mention the authors she read with her inti- 
 mate cousin, Lavinia Buffum, after leaving school and before mar- 
 riage : — 
 
 There on the margin of the rippling brook 
 We sat, and pored o'er some instructive book ; 
 Read Milton's page, wise, learned, and sublime. 
 Or soared with Young beyond the bounds of time ; 
 With Thomson viewed the varied seasons roll, 
 Or searched with Locke the mazes of the soul ; 
 With Goldsmith traversed realms and states unknown, 
 Or bowed with Burke before the regal throne ; 
 With Hervey pondered o'er the mighty dead. 
 With Homer trod where Grecian heroes bled, etc. 
 
 The same poem contains a tribute to the scholarship and 
 piety of Elisha Thornton, the leading Quaker minister in New 
 England in the period following the Revolution, and also a 
 learned teacher, from whom Patience Buffum received instruc- 
 tion : — 
 
 Next the sage Tutor claims my humble lays, 
 
 Mild in his manners, wise in all his ways. 
 
 Easy of access, gentle, peaceful, kind, 
 
 Endowed by nature with a vigorous mind. 
 
 And when at times he bowed before the Throne 
 
 Of the eternal, omnipresent One, 
 
 In holy, awful, reverential prayer. 
 
 It seemed as if the heavenly host were there. 
 
 Dr. Earle goes on to say: — 
 
 She commemorated, each by a poem, the arrival and the depart- 
 ure of Lafayette on his visit to this country in 1S24-25. When we 
 
l6 THE AMERICAN QUAKERS 
 
 visited Worcester, where the Governor of Massachusetts then Hved, 
 she took me with her to see him ; and we shook hands with him (in 
 company with hundreds of other persons) as he stood in the gateway 
 in front of the residence of Governor Levi Lincoln, a mansion after- 
 wards enlarged and converted into a hotel, — the Lincoln House. 
 The portrait of Lafayette in the Capitol at Washington is a very 
 accurate likeness of him as we that day saw him. 
 
 My mother was an elder in the Society of Friends, took an active 
 part in the women's meeting, and always sat at the head of the 
 meeting when no minister was present. She was liberal and chari- 
 table in all her views. At that time great stress was placed by most 
 of the society upon an adhesion to the custom of wearing its pecul- 
 iar dress. It was worn by me until I was thirty years old (1840), 
 when I adopted the fashionable coat,* not being then at my 
 Leicester home. When informed of the change, her reply to the 
 informer was, " It makes but little difference what Pliny wears, so 
 long as he retains his integrity." 
 
 It is plain that Patience Earle was the strong religious in- 
 fluence in the household, although her husband is well de- 
 scribed by his son as "a conscientious and consistent Quaker, 
 free from bigotry, and without unchristian prejudice against 
 any man because of his connection with some other denomina- 
 tion. He took but little part in the church business of the 
 society, but his house was ever open to its members ; and he 
 took pleasure in seeing it filled at the monthly and quarterly 
 meetings." Neither he nor his wife seems to have shared in 
 the controversy which raged about them for some years con- 
 cerning Elias Hicks and his liberal Quaker following. 
 
 Stimulated and united by persecution in the first century of 
 their separation from the Anglican and Puritan churches, the 
 Quakers continued to increase and to hold much the same 
 opinions until about 1820, when the eloquence and novelty of 
 the discourses of Elias Hicks, the friend of Walt Whitman's 
 forefathers on Long Island, began to stir up a schism. He 
 was a Unitarian, while the orthodox Quakers were Trinitarians, 
 and held to the doctrine of the atonement by the blood of 
 Christ. They were naturally shocked when Elias, a powerful 
 
 •In Philadelphia. 
 
1809-1837 17 
 
 preacher, cried out in one of their great meetings at Philadel- 
 phia, "The blood of Christ, — the blood of Christ, — why, my 
 friends, the actual blood of Christ was no more effectual in 
 itself than the blood of bulls and goats, — not a bit more, not 
 a bit," In 1826, when Pliny Earle was beginning his course 
 of learning and teaching at Providence, in the school main- 
 tained by the orthodox Quakers of New England, his brother 
 Thomas, then a practising lawyer in Philadelphia, wrote thus 
 to their brother William at Leicester : — 
 
 You have probably heard of Elias Hicks being here lately 
 [Dec. 31, 1S26], and of the efforts of the Trinitarian Quakers to put 
 him down. The missionaries whom the London Yearly Meeting of 
 late sends so profusely among us are quite zealous in the work. 
 The doctrine of the orthodox may be judged by two facts. The 
 creed of George Keith,* who many years ago separated from the 
 Friends because they would not believe in that creed, was read 
 awhile since to one of the orthodox ministers, he being under the 
 impression that it was the work of an early Quaker, which it was 
 contemplated to republish. At almost every sentence he would 
 exclaim, "Excellent!" "Just what is needed at the present time!" 
 and he concluded by agreeing to take two dozen copies himself. 
 The other instance was Isaac Hopper's reading to an English friend 
 some extracts from " William Penn's Works," to see what he thought 
 of them. So Isaac read from "The Sandy Foundation Shaken " two 
 detached sentences. The Briton was almost enraptured with them. 
 " There it is ! " said he. " See, that is just the doctrine of Friends ! " 
 But when Isaac had read a little more, to show that what he had so 
 much applauded was Mr. Penn's quotations from Episcopalians and 
 Presbyterians, made for the purpose of refuting them, the man was 
 so vexed that he departed, and has not been at Isaac's since. 
 
 Elias's meetings this time have been attended beyond all former 
 example both in the city and country, and, I think, more numerously 
 than those of any preacher of any sort who has been here of late 
 years. Hundreds went away from almost every meeting because 
 
 * George Keith was indeed " an early Quaker,'" but a vers' fickle and pugnacious one, who, from 
 hai,-ing been a great friend and travelling companion of W. Penn and Barclay' of Uri (he was himself 
 a Scot), turned about and denounced the Quakers, and became a parson of the Church of England, 
 subscribing to its creed and obeying its bishops. He lived for a time in Pennsylvania, and years 
 after travelled from Maine to North Carolina, disputing against Quakers. 
 
l8 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN QUAKERS 
 
 they could not obtain admittance, although no public notice was 
 given of where he was to be. This was doubtless mortifying to 
 those who had printed notices of the meetings of the English 
 preachers, sent them to most of the houses, and stuck them up in 
 taverns, and yet were unable to obtain meetings more than half as 
 numerous as those of Elias. The stenographer who has taken down 
 his sermons (first employed by his opponents) says that in the coun- 
 try near ninety-nine in a hundred Friends, old and young, approve 
 of him. Indeed, he met with no opposition in the country except at 
 Darby, where X., from London, attacked him. In Philadelphia there 
 is one monthly meeting nearly unanimous for EHas. The others are 
 divided, most of the elders and members of the " meetings of suffer- 
 ings " being against him, and about seven-eighths of the people 
 under the age of forty being in his favor. 
 
 At the Pine Street meeting, after Elias had done preaching, Jona- 
 than Evans, "the pope," got up to make " public opposition." Yet, 
 to avoid violating the letter of the discipline, he was careful not to 
 say a word about Elias, but to proclaim a number of things as the 
 faith of the society, every one present knowing that he wished it to 
 be understood that Elias held the contrary. At the close of the 
 meeting Elias offered to shake hands with Jonathan,* who refused, 
 saying : " I don't approve of thy doctrines. He that denies the 
 Son denies the Father." Elias replied, " If any one says that I 
 deny the Son, he tells what is untrue." In the afternoon of the 
 same day, at the Twelfth Street meeting, Elias preached to the 
 general satisfaction of the people. After he had done, Thomas 
 Wistar, a rich and haughty elder, got up to violate the discipline by 
 "public opposition," as J. Evans had done, and probably in pursu- 
 ance of previous concert. Immediately a clapping in the gallery 
 commenced, to drown his voice. Hissing was soon mingled with 
 clapping, and the greatest uproar arose which I ever saw in meeting. 
 " Order ! " " Order 1 " resounded from several quarters, — " Hear 
 what the man has to say ! " etc. Elias rose, and begged the audience 
 to be still and to hear. He was attended to, and Thomas finished 
 his testimony. Elias then rose, and said it was a pity the meeting 
 should be so disturbed. He supposed there was no one present but 
 believed all the Friend had said. The refractory elders probably 
 
 •The customary signal for breakinR up a meeting is for two elders sitting next each other on the 
 "high seat" to shake hands. 
 
1809-1837 19 
 
 adopted their course in despair of doing anything against Elias in 
 the manner required by discipline. 
 
 The orthodox appealed to the press, three or four years since, in 
 hopes to overthrow Elias Hicks. They published tracts and Elias's 
 sermons ; but the other party published tracts also, and the sermons 
 operated differently from what the orthodox hoped. They have now 
 become anxious to muzzle the press, and complained of one Friend 
 for circulating the Berean, a Quaker periodical published at Wilming- 
 ton. The overseers dismissed the complaint, unable to find any- 
 thing bad in the work except the proceedings of the Bible Society in 
 England, where the Right Worshipful Mr. Somebody (of the Epis- 
 copal Church) spoke, and was followed by the Rev. Mr. Some- 
 body, of the Society of Friends. This was published in the Berean 
 to show the disposition of English Quakers to amalgamate with the 
 Churchmen and aristocracy, who take the food from the mouths of 
 the laborers of that country. Gould, the stenographer, has com- 
 menced a work called The Quaker, to be published semi-monthly, 
 each number to contain a sermon by some minister of the society, 
 together with selections from early Friends' writings or the Script- 
 ures in corroboration of the sermon. The first number has a very 
 good sermon of Elias Hicks, preached at Darby. This work has 
 frightened the " meeting of sufferings," which appointed a committee 
 to put a stop to it. Having an idle notion that the law would aid 
 them, they went to Horace Binney for counsel, who told them they 
 could not suppress it. Nevertheless, they put on a bold front, and 
 went to Gould last week, demanding that he should stop the work. 
 He replied that he could not : his support depended on it. They 
 then said that the meeting would not encourage it. He replied it 
 was unnecessary, as he was satisfied with his patronage, having one 
 thousand subscribers. He also informed Samuel Biddle, one of the 
 committee, that the first Quaker sermons he ever took down were in 
 his (Samuel's) own house, at the request of his son, and by him paid 
 for. They were the sermons of William Forster and Stevenson, 
 and were found unworthy of publication. Among other things, they 
 told Gould that Friends never had approved of having their sermons 
 published. He said they must be mistaken, as he had seen the 
 sermons of at least three Quakers in the Friends' Library of Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 In a letter of April 24, 1828, Thomas Earle sums up the 
 
20 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN QUAKERS 
 
 points of difference between the Hicksites, whom he calls 
 " Friends," and the orthodox Quakers, in some terse sentences, 
 where allowance must be made for some partisan bias : — 
 
 The orthodox think much of doctrines, the Friends much of good 
 works ; the orthodox much of wealth, the Friends of a contented 
 mind ; the orthodox would call the righteous, the Friends would call 
 sinners, to repentance ; the orthodox think much, the Friends but 
 little, of appearances. The orthodox give the Supreme Being a 
 character less merciful than belongs even to men : the Friends think 
 his mercy is infinite. The orthodox think men are punished for the 
 sins of Adam : the Friends do not. The orthodox believe in the 
 Trinity : the Friends do not. The orthodox subject their reason 
 and their perceptions to the doubtful language of ancient books : the 
 Friends try the merit of ancient books by their own reason and sense 
 of truth. The orthodox think their erring fellow-creatures are to be 
 shunned almost as wild beasts : the Friends think they should be 
 compassionated, kindly treated, and reformed. The orthodox appear 
 proud, or have a proud look, — they speak of "the rabble": the 
 Friends are of different appearance and conversation. The orthodox 
 believe a man punishable for his opinions, the Friends only for 
 actions, as they believe opinions to be involuntary. The orthodox 
 seem to think that a shade of virtue above a certain point secures a 
 man eternal happiness, and a shade below that point dooms him to 
 eternal misery : the Friends believe that every vicious act receives 
 its appropriate punishment (by mental affliction or otherwise), and 
 every virtuous act its appropriate reward. The Friends think that 
 the society at large has a right to judge what measures are proper 
 and who are its most pious and discreet members : the orthodox 
 think a small number of individuals have a right to determine that 
 themselves are the most pious and discreet, and, having so deter- 
 mined, have a right to dictate what course the society shall pursue. 
 
 At this time the Leicester Quakers had a large meeting ; and 
 those of the society living in Worcester came over on First 
 Days and at other times to worship in the plain house near the 
 brook, under Earle Ridge. But none of these dissensions seem 
 to have troubled their united body. In November, 1837, while 
 Dr. Earle was in Paris, the Worcester Quakers began to hold 
 
1809-1837 21 
 
 First Day meetings in their own town, and the Leicester 
 Friends to join them; and now for many years the Worcester 
 meeting has been the only one, and the Leicester meeting- 
 house has disappeared. The slavery question introduced some 
 discord, apparently ; for Lucy Earle, writing to Pliny Dec. 3, 
 1837, tells him that at the Worcester First Day meeting of 
 November 26 " there was a colored man by the name of Roberts, 
 one of the most respectable in Worcester, and Brother Anthony 
 Chase (who, by the way, is a zealous Abolitionist) took a seat 
 beside him," — a remarkable fact in those days of darkness. 
 
 This long report of the stir among the quiet Quakers indi- 
 cates that Thomas Earle sympathized with the Hicksite 
 Friends ; and this was true of several of the family. But Pliny 
 was always rather more conservative in politics and religion 
 than his older brothers, — John, Thomas, and William, — though 
 ever inclining to liberal opinions. He kept his place in the 
 Providence school * undisturbed by the contest over doctrines, 
 and there prepared himself, by the study of books and the in- 
 struction of others, for his future career. He hesitated awhile 
 between medicine and the legal profession, in which his 
 brother Thomas had distinguished himself before 1830; and he 
 allowed the success of his brother, John Milton Earle, as a jour- 
 nalist, to draw him early into journalistic work. But, when he 
 finally took up medicine, he mastered its preliminaries, and 
 
 * Young Pliny Earle was for a time open to engagement as a teacher elsewhere than in Provi- 
 dence ; for a letter of his uncle, Arnold Buffum, April 22, 1830, makes him two offers from Fall River : 
 first, the editorship of an " Antimasonick paper published in this village, with six hundred sub- 
 scribers" ; and, next, " the school in our new school-house, which will be finished now in a few days." 
 He accepted the latter, apparently ; for he began a school in Fall River July 17, 1830. But what pre- 
 vented his editing the newspaper is not recorded. Jlr. Buffum's statement of the afiair is interesting : 
 " The establishment belongs to a company who will be satisfied with about $75 a year for the rent of 
 building, press and all, and would give up the concern to the editor, or they will have it conducted 
 on their account, and will pay a salary. They have been sadly disappointed in the qualifications of 
 the publisher, and are fully determined to get another person to take his place immediately. They 
 were about trjing to get David Daniels, but learned that he was gone to Baltimore. If thou hast any 
 inclination to engage in the newspaper concern, thou had better come down here immediately." 
 
 Anti-masonry was then being made the basis of a political party; and young Seward came into 
 prominence, with Thurlow Weed, in that movement, in which, also, William Wirt, the brilliant Balti- 
 more lawyer, and John Quincy Adams were concerned. The Earles had been contributing to a semi- 
 literary weekly in Worcester, the Talisma?t; but probably Pliny felt no call to edit a political organ. 
 Literature and scholarship were native to the Leicester family ; and Sarah Earle, ten years older than 
 Pliny, was not only an active member of the " Leicester Female Literary Society,"— half a century 
 before the era of women's clubs began, — but the founder of the JNIulberry Grove Boarding-school, at 
 her father's homestead, as early as 1827. She had previously been a teacher in the Friends' School 
 at Pro\idence. 
 
THE PROVIDENCE SCHOOL 
 
 eventually became eminent in one of its most difficult special- 
 ties. Both these elder brothers were ardent political reformers ; 
 and Thomas, who died in 1849, said of himself, "My democracy 
 is that which was advocated by Jefferson, my religion that of 
 the New Testament." Their father had been an opponent of 
 Jefferson ; and Dr. Earle preserved a letter from the Worcester 
 Congressman (Seth Hastings) in March, 1806, during Jeffer- 
 son's second term, in which he told his Leicester constituent : 
 " I believe it is rather troublesome times with our Executive 
 and his friends and supporters in Congress : they are in great 
 perplexity how to manage and guide our political barque." It 
 was evidently the wish of Mr. Hastings towards Jefferson, as of 
 Daniel "Webster towards President Madison in 181 3, to increase 
 his troubles and perplexities in holding the helm of state. Dr. 
 Earle, and probably his father, had little of this desire to em- 
 barrass the government of his country, whatever it might be ; 
 and he never took so active a part as his brothers in political 
 agitation, though always on the side of freedom and civilization. 
 In entering the Friends' Boarding-school at Providence, as 
 a pupil, which he did in September, 1826, Pliny Earle was but 
 going from the companionship of brothers and sisters to that of 
 cousins ; for Rhode Island abounded with his mother's relatives, 
 the Buffums, and he had as many uncles and aunts there as in 
 the vicinity of Leicester. In 1832, while one of the four teach- 
 ers of this school, which then numbered one hundred and thirty 
 pupils, of both sexes, no less than eleven of them were his 
 cousins. He early displayed a taste for botany and natural 
 history, and lectured to his classes with zest on those sciences ; 
 but his usual duties at first were to teach spelling, writing, 
 grammar, and the mathematics. He was the first to introduce 
 in the school the now universal method of writing down the 
 words to be spelled ; and he found the usual difficulties in com- 
 municating to his pupils the anomalous spelling of our irreg- 
 ular mother tongue. He says: — 
 
 When my spelling-class consisted of twenty-one, I put the names 
 of the twenty-four United States to them. They spelled on their 
 slates ; and I found more than two hundred mistakes, — an average 
 
1809-1837 23 
 
 of ten apiece. Again, when there were twent}^-seven in the class, I 
 made a list of fifty-two words, — the names of vegetables, berries, 
 fruit-trees, utensils of the farm and kitchen, articles of clothing, etc., 
 — things commonly known to them. They spelled wrong, in the ag- 
 gregate, three hundred and ninety-one times. Two words, "mocca- 
 sin" and "vinegar-cruet," were missed by all. In an additional 
 list of sixty-one words, a class of twenty-eight made six hundred and 
 sixty-eight mistakes. These, however, were more difiicult words. 
 One youth of seventeen made forty-three errors. 
 
 This extract from one of his letters of 1833 shows how early 
 the statistical habit was formed, and how practical his turn of 
 mind was, even when his head was full of snatches of verse, 
 learned from Scott and Byron, and when he had already begun 
 to publish both verse and prose, and was looking forward with 
 some longing to a literary life. In this hope his lectures on 
 botany were given, as well as for the purposes of instruction. 
 Writing to his sister Eliza, in May, 1835, he says: — 
 
 In the course of my botanical lecture last evening, w^ho should 
 make his appearance in the room but brother Charles (Hadwen), 
 bearing a noble specimen of the Trillmm atropurpureum which he had 
 brought for my special benefit from Worcester. It was the first of 
 the genus that I have seen ; and it came peculiarly apropos, for it 
 gave me an excellent subject for a peroration. The uniformity of its 
 organs, its remarkable adherence to the number three (exemplified in 
 most of the monocotyledons), furnished a good opportunity to im- 
 press on the minds of the class the wonderful harmony and beauty 
 of organization in the vegetable kingdom. I have given six lect- 
 ures, but have only entered the portals of the science. All the 
 teachers and about sixty scholars attend the course. We make long 
 botanical excursions every Saturday afternoon. It is ever a pleasure 
 to me to impart instruction ; but I must acknowledge that one of the 
 primary motives in attempting these lectures was self-improvement. 
 
 The religious seclusion of the Leicester Quakers in the 
 childhood of Dr. Earle was more marked than it has since 
 become. As Worcester and the other neighboring towns grew 
 in population, the Quaker families made Leicester, and the 
 Earle region in it, their religious centre, driving up the long 
 
24 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN QUAKERS 
 
 hills and through the winding valleys on First Day and Fifth 
 Day to take part in the meetings — often wholly silent — 
 which assembled in the little chapel near the brook and the 
 wood. As will be noticed hereafter, in a letter of Sarah 
 Earle's, the Friends seldom tested their faith by attending 
 other places of worship ; and, though they mingled with their 
 Calvinistic or Unitarian neighbors in the schools of the town, 
 in literary and political activity, and in social amenities, they 
 were in most respects a people apart. Their ordinary life was 
 plain and simple; and certain habits, now outgrown, were found 
 among them. Tobacco was used more than now by women, in 
 the form of snuff, and even of smoking ; and an aged friend 
 of the family remembers calling on Dr. Earle's mother, some 
 half-century ago, and finding her smoking a pipe beside her 
 broad kitchen chimney.* In politics and philanthropy the 
 Friends were commonly in advance of other sects. The early 
 anti-slavery movement found much support among Quakers, 
 and Dr. Earle had his opinions on that national question early 
 formed. I do not find that he was ever very deeply enthusi- 
 astic, as some of his coreligionists were, in his religious exer- 
 cises. He was naturally averse to controversy, even in youth, 
 and had little of that spirit of propagandism which brought 
 J. J. Gurney to America, in 1837, to advocate the orthodox 
 theological views, which commended themselves so earnestly 
 to him. He preached in the Leicester Quaker meeting, but 
 while Dr. Earle was absent in Europe ; and he published fer- 
 vent and sometimes polemical treatises, upholding the ortho- 
 dox side of the dispute then going forward. Questions of 
 slavery and social reform agitated the minds of the Worcester 
 and Leicester Quakers far more than doctrines of the then 
 current theology. 
 
 * While James I. was persecuting Puritans, he was scarcely less zealous against the use of the 
 newly discovered American herb,— tobacco. Perhaps for that reason it spread rapidly among 
 the New England people ; and in my boyhood there were many snuff-takers, and not a few pipe- 
 users, among elderly women. I remember the wonder which struck me as a boy, returning from 
 school, where we were taught by the "school-ma'am" that all use of tobacco was sinful, when 
 I stepped into my mother's kitchen, and there found two stout old women, my mother's aunts (one 
 of them the mother of Moses Xorris, then in Congress from New Hampshire), sitting by the great 
 fireplace, smoking pipes. The mother of General h. !•'. Butler, a New Hampshire woman twenty 
 years younger, also had this habit, as I was told by an acquaintance, who said he had often smoked 
 with her in her kitchen at Deerfield, N.H. 
 
1809-1837 25 
 
 The Quakers, with their traditional dislike of " hireling min- 
 isters " and willingness to hear women preach and pray, took 
 a deeper interest than they otherwise might have done in the 
 appearance, in 1837, of those South Carolina sisters, Angelina 
 and Sarah Grimke,* on the platform, pleading against slavery ; 
 for the Calvinistic clergy of Massachusetts opposed them 
 fiercely. J. M. Earle, writing to his brother at Paris, Nov. 
 30, 1837, says : — 
 
 The Grimke sisters were lately here, and made their home at my 
 house while lecturing, for about a week, in this and the adjacent 
 towns. We were much interested in them. They are very intelli- 
 gent and capable, and very much devoted to the abolition cause. 
 Angelina takes the lead in public estimation. She is the best 
 rhetorician, has the best person and voice, with a very imposing 
 manner, and is considered eloquent. S. J. May, in speaking of 
 one of her lectures, says he "never before heard such eloquence 
 from human lips." Yet we were better pleased with Sarah. Her 
 mind is naturally superior to Angelina's, and has been better disci- 
 phned. Her feelings, also, have been more disciplined; and that 
 of itself has an important influence on character. The First Day, 
 on the evening of which Angelina was to give her first lecture, 
 Woodbridge, minister of the Union Society, exhorted his hearers, 
 as they loved religion, as they loved him, and by the most solemn 
 obligations which rest upon Christians, not to violate their duty and 
 
 * Sarah Grimke, bom in 1792, and Angelina, a younger sister, were daughters of an eminent 
 judge in Charleston, S.C, — the latter became Mrs. Theodore Weld; and both had long before 
 1S37 become convinced of the sin and the dangers of negro slavery. In 1836 they published their 
 "Appeal to the Women of the South" on the subject, and early in 1837 they began to address 
 audiences in New York and New England. Samuel Joseph May, above quoted (brother of Mrs. 
 Bronson Alcott), was then pastor in South Scituate ; and the occasion of his remark was the close of 
 Angelina's appeal in favor of emancipation, given at his church in October, 1S37. The Worcester 
 County ministers were misguided enough to issue a " Pastoral Letter" against the speaking of these 
 women, which drew forth from young Whittier the poem in which occur these oft-quoted lines : — 
 
 Your fathers dealt not as ye deal 
 
 With. "non-professing" frantic teachers; 
 They bored the tongue with red-hot steel. 
 
 And flayed the back of "female preachers " : 
 Old Newbury, had her fields a tongue, 
 
 And Salem streets could tell their story 
 Of fainting women dragged along. 
 
 Gashed by the whip accursed and gory. 
 
 His allusion was to the whipping of Quaker women from Dover and Hampton, by order of Richard 
 Waldron of New Hampshire, and similar outrages in Newbury and Salem, when Endicott was 
 Governor of Massachusetts. 
 
26 LEICESTER AND THE EARLE FAMILY 
 
 their principles so much as to go and hear those who trampled 
 under foot that Scripture which declares that a woman is not 
 allowed to be heard in the church. Yet that very evening it is 
 said that both his deacons and a great portion of his church mem- 
 bers went to hear her, and I now hear that only four of his church 
 members approve his views on the slave question. The walls of 
 prejudice are evidently giving way. Abolition is looked upon, 
 among Friends, with very different eyes from what it formerly was. 
 An Indiana j-early meeting has recently advised its members, indi- 
 vidually, to aid other Christians engaged in the work of anti-slavery. 
 
 When these sisters and daughters of South Carolina slave- 
 holders first began to speak in public, only women were ex- 
 pected to attend. An earlier letter of Lucy Earle (August, 
 1837) makes this remark : — 
 
 When the Grimkes lectured in Salem, it was understood there 
 would be no objection to gentlemen attending. Accordingly, at 
 an early hour, the meeting-house was crowded, not only inside, but 
 about the doors and windows. A gentleman who was there re- 
 marked, "Those ladies are doing more in the cause than any two 
 men engaged in it." 
 
 In the case of Dr. Earle, his sisters and brothers, the ten- 
 dency was more and more towards science and literature ; and, 
 through the efforts of Sarah Earle and a few others, a woman's 
 literary circle was formed in Leicester, before 1820, and when 
 women's clubs were quite unknown. Her Mulberry Grove 
 Boarding-school continued to be a successful establishment for 
 a dozen years. Its name was due to the fact that her father, 
 in his tree-planting, took up for years the industry of growing 
 mulberry-trees, in order to raise silk from the foliage, and at 
 his death, in 1832, left sixty or seventy of these fine trees on 
 his farm. For the same reason the road which now traverses 
 the farm from north to south is called " Mulberry Street." 
 The young teachers — Sarah, Eliza, and Pliny Earle — culti- 
 vated poetry and literary prose, and contributed often to publi- 
 cations now forgotten, but which helped to form their style by 
 frequent practice. In these pursuits and incessant occupations, 
 
1809-1837 27 
 
 practical, educational, and literary, the childhood and youth of 
 Dr. Earle glided along, with no great crises, and no graver 
 anxieties than usually attend the passage from boy to man. 
 His family surroundings were happy, liberal, and hospitable. 
 He was handsome, ingenious, and eager for achievement, but 
 was fortunate enough not to be thrust too early into the battle 
 of active life. He began to teach others at nineteen, was ready 
 for the practice of a philanthropic profession at twenty-seven, 
 but wisely decided to see more of the world before settling into 
 a local situation. Hence, the real commencement of his active 
 career was his tour in Europe in 1837-39. 
 
 School-teaching was so natural to the youth of New England 
 two generations ago that to " take a school " was hardly more 
 than it now is to take a journey to Chicago. Dr. Earle's first 
 school was at Fall River, and began July, 1830, — a season 
 when all schools are now in vacations. We have little record 
 of it; but in a letter of the following autumn (September 12) 
 he says, " I am now giving a course of lectures on Astronomy, 
 and my time is wholly taken up with those and my other 
 duties." The same letter gives rhetorical expression to the 
 double desire that was ever dividing his heart, — the wish to 
 remain among the scenes of his childhood and the love of new 
 scenes and new acquirements. He says : — 
 
 A separation from the scenes and the friends which are rendered 
 dear by early intercourse — associated with all the fond recollections 
 of days when care was unknown and sorrow but the shadow of a 
 name — will be hard for me. I have never until lately learned the 
 permanency and depth with which the love of home is graven on the 
 heart. Possessing a passion of an opposite nature, — a longing de- 
 sire to be acquainted with other places, — I have considered home 
 rather as a theme for poets. But my opinion now is that love of 
 home is an affection that lives throughout existence, — an indelible 
 principle. 
 
 This affection was continually drawing Dr. Earle back to 
 Leicester, though his life was most of it spent elsewhere. 
 And it rested, primarily, on a deep recognition of how much he 
 owed to his devoted father and mother, whose lives moved 
 
28 THE LEICESTER EARLES 
 
 there in a far narrower circle than his own. Writing, in 1832, 
 in anticipation of his father's death, which occurred in that 
 year, he said : — 
 
 I have often thought that, in whatever situation we brothers and 
 sisters may find ourselves, — whatever may be our characters or our 
 success in the world, — we can never throw the least shadow of re- 
 proach upon our parents. They have done everything in their 
 power for our benefit ; and, though they may have failed in one 
 respect (which indeed is of trifling importance) to do so much as 
 they wished, that failure was owing to events beyond individual 
 human agency to control. And are not those benefits we have re- 
 ceived of far greater value than wealth ? If we compare the situa- 
 tion of our family with that of the great mass of people, shall we not 
 find abundant cause to be thankful ? 
 
 The unity of that large family circle, of which Dr. Earle was 
 the last, was very little disturbed by the course of events, 
 whether prosperous or adverse. Like the prospect from their 
 native hills, they took a broad and sunny view of life ; or, if 
 dark hours came, they supported each other till the clouds 
 passed away. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS IN NEW ENGLAND AND PHILADELPHIA ( 1 827-37). 
 
 Quiet as had been Dr. Earle's home life up to his eigh- 
 teenth year, he had the inborn instinct to travel and know the 
 world by sight, which was one of the traits of the New Eng- 
 land man, as it has been of his English cousins. His short ex- 
 cursions around Leicester, in aid of the family business, had 
 for him the stimulus of curiosity and novelty, as well as the 
 sense of duty ; and, when he became a schoolmaster, he grati- 
 fied his inclination by longer journeys, of which he has left 
 some record. In the complete change that has come over the 
 Northern States in all matters of industry, locomotion, race- 
 distribution, etc., within the past sixty years, these itineraries 
 and observations have a quaint interest. 
 
 Trip to Fall River ajid Nantucket. 
 
 [1830.] May 16. — After leaving Worcester for Providence, in the 
 stage-coach, the first place at which we stopped was Waters' Village, 
 in Millbury, where, when I alighted, I was met by the son of Waters, 
 who told me he had a fine horse and gig which he wished to send to 
 Providence. Glad of the opportunity, I offered to drive it; and I 
 could thus be at liberty to call upon my friends as I went. Soon 
 I was transferred from the lumbering old stage to a light gig, with 
 a horse that would easily carry me eight miles an hour. I therefore 
 called on Uncle Thomas Buffum's family, whom I found pleasantly 
 situated, then for a few minutes at Uncle William Arnold's, and 
 next proceeded to Uncle William Buffum's, where I found them at 
 dinner. Considering that I might not be so fortunate at any other 
 place, I ventured to partake with them. I next called at Uncle 
 Otis's, and then at Daniel Robinson's, — a very different journey 
 from that by the stage-coach. 
 
 At Pawtucket I met with a student from the Deaf and Dumb Asy- 
 lum at Hartford, just returned. He has been there but two years ; 
 
30 FALL RIVER AND NANTUCKET 
 
 yet it was astonishing to see how much knowledge he had acquired. 
 Almost any question I asked him was answered with much facility 
 and accuracy. If he could not at once comprehend the question, a 
 melancholy gloom came over his face ; but, when the idea struck his 
 mind, how quickly his features lightened with the glow of conscious 
 intelligence ! Debarred as such persons are from the power of 
 speech, they acquire the power of expressing slight variations of 
 passion and emotion by the countenance more readily than the rest 
 of us. 
 
 I spent two days in Providence, and lodged at Uncle Sam's, where 
 I met Cousin Rebecca Buffum, who was visiting Providence to at- 
 tend the infant school,* and become more thoroughly acquainted 
 with their system of instruction. I went with her to the school 
 taught by Charlotte Bradley, which is yet quite small. 
 
 This was that period in the development of education in New 
 England when infant schools, which had been rather neglected, 
 were taken up with zeal by the friends of a better instruction. 
 And it was to be concerned in such a Boston establishment 
 that Bronson Alcott had removed from Connecticut to Boston 
 a few years earlier. The Quakers took much interest in his 
 school reforms, and it was by them that he was invited to 
 Philadelphia in 1831. 
 
 Fifth Day [Thursday] I was tumbled over the road from Provi- 
 dence to Fall River, — a better prescription and more effectual 
 remedy for gout than all the nostrums imposed upon the world since 
 the god ^sculapius was invented. I took tea at William Newhall's, 
 where I was met by Uncle Arnold [Buffum t], whom I accompanied 
 home. Saturday morning I met Uncle Silas [Earle], and soon after 
 began a morning's walk to Tiverton, three miles below Fall River. 
 On the way I stopped where Mount Hope Bay lay stretched out 
 before me, bounded by the land on the Rhode Island side where the 
 mount itself rises with its cliff and crags against the western sky. 
 I had long wished to visit that hill, once the abode of the Indian 
 King Philip, grandson of Massasoit; and I therefore chartered a 
 
 ♦Afterwards Mrs. Marcus Spring, of New York, and now (i8g8) in Califoniia. 
 
 tThis was the brother of Dr. Earlc's motlier, and the father of Mrs. Marcus Spring, Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Chace, and other cousins mentioned in the letters. He had visited Europe for the first 
 time a few years earlier, and was active in reforms. 
 
1827-1837 31 
 
 boat, took an oarsman, and in an hour was landed on the opposite 
 
 shore. 
 
 Where Hope lifts up its craggy sides, 
 
 but not now, as in old times, 
 
 Clothed with forests deep and dun. 
 
 A few minutes' walk brought me to the base of that rugged perpen- 
 dicular crag where is the celebrated " seat " of King Philip, — a 
 throne hewn by Nature's hand from the everlasting rock. I usurped 
 the regal chair, and sat where that ruler of a savage nation once 
 reclined. It is on the eastern dechvity of the hill, at the foot of 
 a precipice fifty feet high, and itself raised three or four feet above 
 the ground. Immediately under it is the well, six or seven feet deep, 
 from which, they say, Philip quenched his heroic thirst. The wild 
 honeysuckle [columbine] grows in great profusion around ; and I 
 enclose a flower of it, which I plucked from the chair itself. One 
 of the De Wolfs of Bristol built a fine summer-house on the summit 
 of Mount Hope a few years since, but it is fast dropping in pieces. 
 I recrossed the bay, and after a two-mile walk arrived at A. Barker's. 
 Neither he nor his wife was at home ; but, as it was two o'clock, 
 and I was fatigued, I made myself at home by calling for some 
 dinner. 
 
 I spent First Day here very pleasantly. Monday morning I was 
 introduced to Dr. Foster Hooper of Fall River, and spent an hour 
 or two with him. Then I took the stage for New Bedford, with the 
 expectation of leaving there the succeeding day in the steamer 
 " Marco Bozzaris," now plying between Nantucket and New Bedford. 
 But, when I had made the journey through the rocks, briers, bogs, 
 and fens of that uncultured country in no very easy manner, I 
 discovered that the boat had gone down the bay that morning, 
 and would not return from Nantucket and sail again till Fifth Day 
 next, running only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Therefore, the 
 only alternative was to wait with WilUam Eddy until the boat's next 
 departure ; and I went to his store, where I had the pleasure of 
 meeting with perhaps the most weighty character in New Bedford. 
 It was the hero of Padanaram. He was sitting on the counter in 
 a profusion of perspiration, and looking as if he were just ready to 
 adopt the words of Shakespeare, and exclaim, 
 
 Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt ! 
 
32 FALL RIVER AND NANTUCKET 
 
 I called on a New Bedford painter, and heard of another artist now 
 there, — a young lady, who bears the romantic names of " Marietta 
 Tintoretta Catharine Francesca Thompson." Another call was at 
 the infant school, which, in the number and proficiency of its 
 pupils, the capability of its instructress, the size of the building, 
 or the arrangement of apparatus, is the most perfect thing of the 
 kind that I have seen. Here, again. Friends are in the absurd 
 practice of keeping their children away from such schools, merely 
 because they are copying from everything which is going on in the 
 universe (even from Nature herself) by means of uniting their voices 
 in an audible harmony. 
 
 On the 13th of May, then, I left New Bedford on the good boat 
 " Marco Bozzaris," * Captain Barker, bound for Nantucket. With 
 this marine road you are acquainted, so I need not speak of the 
 Black Rock, the beauty of the Elizabeth Islands, the legend of 
 Naushawn, the rocks and ledges of Wood's Hole, the portentous 
 breakers on Tuckanuck shoal, and the other wonders of the great 
 deep. Our boat was named not so much in immediate honor of the 
 Suliote captain as in acknowledgment of the worth of Halleck's 
 poem, with its speaking numbers. We sped over the billows at the 
 rate of ten knots per hour, and enjoyed ourselves, notwithstanding 
 the rain. Saturday, the 15th, I rode with Timothy Hussey to the 
 city of Siasconset, where I examined a fine collection of shells, the 
 property of Mrs. Elkins, the landlady of one of the hotels. I have 
 since walked to the south shore, and ridden with Dr. Swift to the 
 western part of the island. One evening I was with Lieutenant Pres- 
 cott, a scientific young man, sent by the government to excavate a 
 channel through the bar, in order to admit large vessels to the 
 wharves. 
 
 At this time, and for twenty years more, Nantucket and New 
 Bedford were the chief whaling ports of the world ; and the 
 business was largely in the hands of Quakers. In 1830, Nan- 
 tucket had 7,200 inhabitants, and New Bedford 7,500 ; while 
 Worcester had less than 4,200, and Fall River 4,158. Leices- 
 
 *The Greek chieftain, Bozzaris, killed seven years before at Karpenisi, near Missolonghi, had 
 been celebrated in verse by Fitz-Greene Halleck, and the poem beginning, 
 
 At midnight, in his guarded tent, 
 was for years the most popular American "piece," recited and spoken, in schools and parlors, 
 a thousand times every year. It is not yet quite forgotten. The German poem on Bozzaris by 
 W. Miiller was as popular in Europe. 
 
1827-1837 33 
 
 ter, which now has 3,300 inhabitants, then numbered less than 
 1800; and all Massachusetts had but few more than Boston has 
 now. Providence, in 1830, had 16,832 people, but was then, as 
 now, the second city in New England. Dr. Earle goes on : — 
 
 Captain Arthur has recently arrived from the Pacific, bringing the 
 largest cargo of oil ever landed in this country. He also brought a 
 remarkable stone. In appearance it resembles granite ; but is very 
 slightly put together, and will readily float on the water. It was 
 picked up by Captain Arthur's men in the Pacific, west of the Sand- 
 wich Islands, April 22, 1828 ; was thinly covered with sea-weed and 
 shell-fish, and bore every appearance of having been a long time 
 afloat. In size it is 3 ft. 2 1-2 inches long, 18 1-2 inches wide, and 5 1-2 
 inches thick. Its weight is 133 pounds. I succeeded in obtaining 
 a small piece of it. Firmly pinched between the thumb and finger 
 it will crumble into particles, and some of them, about the size of 
 coarse sand, will scratch glass, as can be seen by rubbing the thumb, 
 covered with these particles, heavily over a pane of window glass. 
 
 May 22, 1830. — I spent this evening in the Nantucket Museum, 
 examining the implements and curiosities there collected from all 
 quarters of the globe. Lieutenant Pinkham of our navy, recently re- 
 turned from a Mediterranean cruise, employed an artist, while in the 
 ports of Greece and Italy, to take sketches of different people, in 
 order to preserve their various costumes and characteristics. Among 
 them is one of the Greek admiral Canaris,* which the lieutenant 
 avouches to be an extremely accurate likeness. But what a likeness ! 
 At first view it would sooner be recognized as a Mahdi of Africa than 
 a commodore of Grecia ; but examine it closely, and that unbending 
 spirit of heroic valor for which he is celebrated is easily discovered 
 
 * Constantine Kanaris, born at the island of Ipsara, in 1790, was the latest sundvor and the most 
 distinguished of the four brilliant naval commanders of the island-Greek sailors in the Revolution, — 
 the others being Miaulis (Andrea Vocos), Sakturis, and Tombazis. He was at first a captain under 
 Miaulis (of whom there is an admirable account in the "Narrative of a Greek Soldier," by Petros 
 Mengous, New York, 1830J, afterwards a fleet commodore, and finally admiral. He long survived the 
 war, was active in the expulsion of the Bavarian King of Greece, Otho, and was one of the deputation 
 sent to imate the present King George to the throne in 1864. He died in 1S77, at a great age. Dr. 
 Howe had served under him in the Greek fleet, as well as under Miaulis. They both took much 
 notice of the young American surgeon, who had been a land-soldier of the Greek army before going 
 in the fleet. In his " History of the Greek Revolution" (now a rare book) Dr. Howe says little of 
 Kanaris, but much of Miaulis, who was the older captain. The dress of Kanaris, above described, 
 •was that of the Greek islanders in actual service. On shore they wore much more gorgeous raiment, 
 though they often went barefoot. An Italian sea captain, who lost a sailor, and wished to ship a 
 Greek in his place, was told to go ashore at Hydra and find one. He did so, but came back, after 
 seeing the stately Hydriotes stalking about, and said, " I saw no sailors,— nothing but captains." 
 
34 FALL RIVER AND NANTUCKET 
 
 in his countenance and the lofty pose of his head. His dress is 
 simply a plain green coat and vest without collar, — no appearance 
 of a shirt, — but a black handkerchief is carelessly tied around his 
 neck, between which and the top of the coat the skin is visible. 
 Upon his head is a cap which bears more resemblance to that 
 applied by the hangman than that of a military officer. 
 
 Providence and its People in 1830-31. 
 
 The two chief educational establishments of Providence, 
 when Pliny Earle went there as a pupil in 1826, were the 
 Friends' School, which was removed to that city in 18 19, and 
 Brown University, founded in 1764, but very small and unim- 
 portant for the first half-century of its existence. Though 
 controlled by the "denomination called Baptists or anti-Paedo- 
 baptists," as its charter described the then dominant sect in 
 Rhode Island, the same charter provided that five of its thirty- 
 two trustees should always be Quakers, in recognition of their 
 importance in the little State, and of the wealth some of them 
 had bequeathed. Eminent men, like Horace Mann, the educa- 
 tional reformer of Massachusetts, and Dr. Samuel G. Howe, 
 the chief philanthropist of a philanthropic age, had graduated 
 there before Dr. Francis Wayland became its president, in 
 1827, and proceeded to reform its discipline and elevate its 
 scholarship. One of his first steps was to remove the free ale- 
 barrel, kept in one of the cellars, to which all undergraduates 
 had access, — a form of " local option " not unusual before the 
 temperance reformation of Dr. Wayland's period. The uni- 
 versity in 1825, when Sarah Earle wasanactive teacher in the 
 Friends' School, was often contrasted with the latter ; and in 
 one point, which bore witness to the diligence of her sex, Sarah 
 Earle delighted to find her school preferred by visitors. From 
 a lively letter to her sister Lucy, in August, 1825, I take this 
 anecdote : — 
 
 We have had a good many visitors this summer, and in the last 
 three days have had ladies from Montreal, New York, Virginia, 
 and Washington, gentlemen from some of those places, Judge C- 
 
1827-1837 35 
 
 from Maine, a young man from New Orleans, etc. These visitors 
 are all to be conducted from the kitchen to the observatory, their 
 remarks heard and their many questions answered. They generally 
 appear well pleased, and pay us many compliments, particularly for 
 our cleanliness. One man told the company that they saw here the 
 effects of the best administration in the world, — a female administra- 
 tion. Then, turning to me, he said, " We have been over the other 
 college, Brown University, where they have a male administration." 
 Instantly I replied, " A mal-administration ? " and, though I had 
 not a thought of being very witty, they almost shouted their ap- 
 plause, so that I felt quite ashamed of myself, I did not admire the 
 Virginian, she was very inquisitive and somewhat sneering ; but the 
 Canadian who was with her was an interesting creature. She said 
 her education was in a nunnery, and this school seemed to her some- 
 thing like one. . . . There is a Sicilian in town about to establish 
 himself as a teacher of Italian, and I wish either to attend myself or 
 to have Eliza come and learn it. He has called at the Friends' 
 School several times. He comes highly recommended both from Italy 
 and Salem, where he has been teaching this year past. He is a 
 gentleman. His estates were confiscated and he imprisoned on ac- 
 count of political difficulties, and he finally left the country to save 
 his life. 
 
 At this time Moses Brown, for whose family the university 
 was named, was still living in Providence, at the age of eighty- 
 seven ; and he lived on for six or seven years longer, for in 
 August, 1 83 1, Sarah Earle, then newly married, writes thus : — 
 
 Last Seventh Day, after sunset, Moses Brown had his carriage 
 brought for the express purpose of coming to see me, — came and 
 made his call, apologizing for not coming sooner, and returned 
 home. Such a call from such a man, at the age of ninety-three, is 
 not to be despised. The next Monday morning I took Benjamin 
 Clark to see Moses Brown. We found him not very well and not 
 quite so animated as usual, but mild, affable, and interesting. Ben- 
 jamin said that visit crowned the whole, that would be something 
 to treasure up and reflect upon. 
 
 At that time the university can have had scarcely more 
 students than the Friends had pupils in their coeducational 
 
36 PROVIDENCE AND ITS SCHOOLS 
 
 school ; for they were wise enough to admit both girls and boys 
 to the higher education, while the university excluded all girls 
 until long after President Wayland's time. In the society of 
 Providence the Quaker teachers and the college professors met 
 on equal terms. And, when Pliny Earle went to New Haven 
 on his way to Philadelphia, he carried letters of introduction to 
 the Yale professors from his friends, the Brown professors. He 
 thus wrote in 1830-31 : — 
 
 Nov. 25, 1830. — I am much pleased with my boarding-house; 
 have a room and fire to myself, where I keep bachelor's hall as com- 
 fortably as need be. There are but nine regular boarders at present, 
 among whom are Professor Elton, of Brown University, and J. 
 Kingsbury. The professor is one of the finest men I have ever 
 known. He is very learned, both in science and general knowledge, 
 and also very sociable.* He has been a traveller, too : has stood on 
 the Alps, if not on the Apennines ; traversed the Highlands of Scot- 
 land and the Lowlands of Holland ; has been a resident of Edin- 
 burgh, London, Paris, and Rome ; is acquainted with Sir Walter 
 Scott and the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; has examined the ruins of 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii, burned his fingers and toes within the 
 crater of Vesuvius, and, " furzino," is acquainted with the father of 
 Amelia Pottingen, for he spent some time 
 
 At the U- 
 niversity of Goettingen, 
 
 mentioned by Canning in the Anti-Jacobm. . . . Some excitement 
 prevailed in Providence last week in consequence of Daniel Web- 
 ster's presence in court here. The court-room was literally over- 
 whelmed with ladies and gentlemen during the day when he spoke. 
 John Whipple occupied the forenoon with his argument, and the 
 company waited with a pretty good grace until he concluded. Then 
 Webster rose, and a hush came over the audience as if the voice of 
 
 •This word " sociable," a characteristic New England expression, is often used by Dr. Earle, who 
 long retained some of the dialectic peculiarities of rural New England. It signifies "affable," ready 
 to meet others in social intercourse, — a trait which distinguished the doctor at all times, except when 
 the peculiar melancholy, to be mentioned hereafter, came upon him. The odd phrase "furzino," just 
 after, is the dialectic Yankee for " so far as I know," but really means, " I suspect, though you might 
 not think it," with a slight shade of quiz or sarcasm, as in this instance. The verse quoted is from 
 Canning's soliloquy of the suicidal German student who had loved "sweet, sweet Amelia Pottingen," 
 a name which the English then fancied to rhyme with " Goettingen." 
 
1S27-1837 37 
 
 a spirit had stilled them. He spoke for nearly four hours, and I 
 heard him for an hour ; but it was not a case upon which he could 
 
 show all his talents. 
 
 This was the period when Webster* stood at his highest 
 point as a forensic orator. He had made his magnificent reply- 
 to Hayne of Carolina in the January preceding, and his splen- 
 did description of crime and remorse in his argument in the 
 Salem murder case, in the early autumn ; and, just before com- 
 ing to Providence to argue against Whipple, the leader of the 
 bar there, he had made a great tariff speech in Boston (Oct. 
 30 and 31, 1830), which extended over two evenings and 
 nearly five hours. His earlier orations had made him widely 
 known, particularly that on Adams and Jefferson in 1826, and 
 the Plymouth oration of 1820, in which he had attacked Bristol, 
 in Rhode Island, as the seat of the New England slave-trade, 
 then carried on by the De Wolf family. Of that town Webster 
 had said : — 
 
 Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be New England ! Let 
 it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world ! Let 
 it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, 
 and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it ! 
 
 Not yet had the great orator separated himself from "the 
 circle of human sympathies," and his appeal for generosity 
 towards the struggling Greeks had commended him anew to the 
 growing spirit of philanthropy. Nor had he identified himself, 
 as he did a few years later, with the money power of the 
 country, and accepted fees and favors from bankers. 
 
 Decetiiber 5 . — After making six calls last evening after tea, I 
 spent the remainder of the evening at Uncle Samuel Shove's, where 
 
 * Daniel Webster, bom in New Hampshire in 17S2, died at Marshiield, in Massachusetts, in 
 1852, ■w'as, like Dr. Earle's friend in Paris some few years later, General Lewis Cass, the son of a Revo- 
 lutionary captain, and educated under Dr. Abbott at the Exeter Academy. While Cass entered the 
 army and distinguished himself in the War of 1S12, and afterwards as Governor of Michigan, Webster 
 graduated at Dartmouth College in 1801, and began practising law in his native State, which he repre- 
 sented in Congress in i Si 2-1 7. There he made himself known as an orator, but also as a bitter oppo- 
 nent of President Madison and his administration. He also won great distinction by his appeal in 
 behalf of Dartmouth College in iSiS, leading (with the efforts made by himself and others in the 
 court vacation) to the famous decision in the Dartmouth case. In iSjo he was not only the leader of 
 the Massachusetts and Xew England bar, but a conspicuous Presidential candidate. 
 
38 PROVIDENCE IN 1 83 1 
 
 I met a host of cousins. There were seven of us, all cousin to one 
 another, and of six different families. For myself, that period is 
 approaching (my twenty-first birthday) towards which the untried, 
 enthusiastic heart of boyhood has looked with an impatient anticipa- 
 tion, — as a landmark beyond which all will be enjoyment, because I 
 should then be free to act for myself. But how differently does the 
 mind of maturer years regard that date ! I am now to go forth and 
 wrestle with a wrangling world alone. I am nearing the imaginary 
 artificial line which separates the boy from the man, and a mistaken 
 idea of thraldom from fancied liberty. To me there is no promise 
 of greater freedom than I have felt for years, while I have the con- 
 firmed assurance that the title to parental dependence is void. Had 
 I known the direction which seems now to be given to my path in 
 life, these past years might have been employed, more than they 
 were, in preparing myself. But even now there is a silent, powerful 
 voice coming up from the deep recesses of my heart, telling me it is 
 not too late, — urging me onward to gather from the broad fields of 
 knowledge that which will tend to exalt the soul and carry it forward 
 towards that goal of perfection which lies before us. 
 
 March 19, 1831. — I had the pleasure of dining the other dav, 
 at John Smith's, with John Bristed, who married a daughter of 
 J. J. Astor of New York, studied divinity at the age of (nearly) fifty 
 with Bishop Griswold, and has been for a year or two rector of an 
 Episcopal church at Bristol. He is a jolly Englishman, educated at 
 the old college of Winchester, in Hampshire, who studied law 
 in London, practised it in New York, and is now a clergyman not 
 far from Providence, as well as an author. But his volumes,* ac- 
 cording to Halleck ("Resources of the United States," etc.), are 
 " dear at half-price." We spoke of a satirical poem lately published 
 in Boston, entitled "Truth; or, A New Year's Gift for Scribblers," 
 full to overflowing with sarcastic venom against the American poets 
 of the present day. Its author doubtless took Byron's " English 
 Bards and Scotch Reviewers " as his prototype, but has come far 
 short of that. 
 
 May^ 183 1. — I have recommenced botany, with the opening of the 
 season for rambles and researches. We are to form a class as soon 
 as we can procure books enough ; and, by thus awakening an inter- 
 est in the study, we shall soon have all the flowers of the neighbor- 
 
 •One of these, "Hints on the National Bankruptcy of Britain in the Present Contest with 
 France" (New York, 1809), was given by Bristed to Couverneur Morris. 
 
1827-1837 39 
 
 hood brought in. Just now we are full of stenography. A young 
 Englishman (about my age) professes the art in town, and "we 
 teachers " are taking lessons of him. Our Yearly Meeting must look 
 out now ! Just take a specimen (to his sister Eliza at Leicester) : — 
 
 Here follow the twelve lines with which Campbell's "Pleas- 
 ures of Hope" commences, in a shorthand that phonography 
 has antiquated. 
 
 We have been agreeably disappointed in tinding it much easier 
 than we anticipated. I have devoted my leisure moments to it for 
 eight days, and can now write it faster than longhand, at my greatest 
 speed. 
 
 Thus in early manhood we find him interested in poetry and 
 poetic science, for such was botany then. 
 
 Pliny Earle had been preceded as a teacher in the Provi- 
 dence school by his sister Sarah, nine years older than himself ; 
 but, while he was teaching at Fall River and Providence or 
 studying medicine at the latter place, Sarah Earle had returned 
 to Leicester (May 15, 1827), and opened there her Mulberry 
 Grove boarding-school for girls, which she gave over to her 
 sister Eliza, at her own marriage with Charles Hadwen, of 
 Providence, in August, 1831. Three years later, in July and 
 August, 1834, a few months before her death, she took a jour- 
 ney with her husband from Worcester to Lowell, Lynn, 
 Boston, and Providence, which she described in a letter to 
 Eliza ; and this description may serve to show how travel was 
 managed before railroads were common. She says : — 
 
 Our journey lasted five days, Friday, Saturdaj-, Sunday, ^Monday, 
 and Tuesday, the last of July. Friday we left Worcester, and had 
 much ado to drag through and arrive at Lowell in our chaise just at 
 dusk. [The trip is now made in three or four hours. — forty-five 
 miles, — and might be in two hours.] Strangers as we were, we 
 feared it might take some time to find our place of destination 
 [George Brownell's]. Several avenues to the town [of fourteen thou- 
 sand people] and two or three bridges were presented to our view ; 
 and, having not the least clew, we so far left ourselves to the guid- 
 ance of chance as to follow a carriage over one of the bridges. 
 
40 TRAVELLING IN I 834 
 
 Coming immediately upon a house which did not appear to be really 
 in town, we halted; and Charles asked a man, who was just entering 
 the door, where G. Brownell lived. " He lives here," was the reply ; 
 and then I perceived that he was the man. This may seem nothing 
 wonderful ; but it struck me at the time as so remarkable, and at 
 the same time so joyful, that I thought much of it. The next morn- 
 ing (Saturday), which was one of our hottest, we went out with 
 George ; and, while the men were viewing the town, I stopped at 
 Dr. Elisha Bartlett's [he was the first mayor of Lowell, and a cousin 
 of the Earles], where I spent about three hours very pleasantly, and 
 engaged to take tea with them. We had intended to go to South 
 Reading [now Wakefield] that night, and to Lynn the next (Sunday) 
 morning ; but the heat and a shower prevented. We visited at 
 Elisha's; and the next morning set off for Reading, which we 
 reached just as people were going to meeting. We stopped at a 
 public house, and, upon inquiring for John Clapp, were told that his 
 carriage was just coming ; and the man kindly offered to go and tell 
 them we were there. He did so, and John came over and engaged 
 us to go home with them after the meeting. We rested and refitted, 
 and rode home with them, about two miles. Susan Flint was there, 
 employed as organist in a small church at South Reading.* The 
 family attend a small meeting at Reading, being the only one of the 
 right kind very near. Their officiating minister, a son f of Thayer of 
 Lancaster, came home with them in the afternoon, and took tea. 
 When I observed the freedom of their conversation, I felt less like 
 an intruder on that day of the week than I feared. Still, we felt 
 ourselves on every account one day behindhand. Had we gone on 
 Fifth Day [Thursday, July 24, from Worcester], we should have had 
 a fine cool day, and should have been in Lynn on First Day [Sun- 
 day, July 27], which was very desirable. I do not recollect that I 
 ever spent a First Day out from amongst my own people [the 
 Quakers] before; and I have no desire to again. | Still, we had an 
 excellent visit, were received and entertained with all the wonted 
 hospitality of our kind host and hostess. 
 
 * This was a daughter of Dr. Flint, of Northampton, aunt of Dr. Austin Flint, of New York, and 
 niece of the Sedgwicks, of Lenox. South Reading is now Wakefield. 
 
 t Dr. Thayer, of Lancaster, was the father of the wealthy brothers, Nathaniel and John E. 
 Thayer, of Boston, himself a classmate and intimate friend of Rev. W. Emerson, father of R. W. 
 Emerson. Rev. Dr. Thayer died in 1840. His son, Rev. Christopher Thayer, here mentioned as 
 preaching in a Unitarian parish at Reading, died in iSSo. 
 
 t The secluded character of the Quaker families in their religious life is seen by Mrs. Hadwen's 
 remarks about spending Sunday an^fwhere but among Quakers. 
 
1827-1837 41 
 
 Second Day morning we rode eight miles to Lynn, called at Avis 
 Keene's, as we supposed, but found it was Josiah Keene's, he having 
 recently returned. We would have spent the day there [Lynn], as 
 there were many we wished to see ; but of all times in the week to 
 be calling on people in such a place as that ! [It was washing-day ; 
 and Lynn being then a place of but seven thousand people, mostly 
 engaged in shoemaking, the families were not expecting visitors on 
 Mondays.] So, having dined, and having a good day, we proceeded 
 to Charlestown, and visited the State's prison, with which we were 
 much pleased, and left it with the conviction that, if we had a 
 friend or relative worthy of the place, we should rejoice at his being 
 there. The cleanliness and comfort of the apartments were admi- 
 rable, as well as the convenience of all their arrangements. We then 
 passed through Cambridgeport to Brighton,* Charles having a great 
 desire to view the cattle market there. We also had Mount Auburn 
 in view, and regretted to learn that we had missed the right turn, 
 which was to have taken it on our way. As we were going to Boston, 
 it would now be quite out of our way. So we gave it up. 
 
 We passed over the Mill-dam just in season to take a turn to the 
 railroad, and witness the animating spectacle of the passage of the 
 cars. Imagine a black giant seizing by force three or four huge 
 coaches filled with passengers, and carrying them off at the top of 
 his speed, hissing and bidding defiance to all opposition ! And, 
 before you have time to ask him what he means, he is gone ! We 
 stood and laughed like true Jonathan Doolittles, then entered the 
 city, and passed the night with our friend Holden and her daughter, 
 Charlotte Lander, who is a widow. 
 
 In the morning (July 29) we set off for home, which we reached 
 without much incident at night, just in season for the meeting the 
 next day. We have now been at home a week, one day monthly 
 meeting, and two days committee at the school. Rebecca Buffum 
 dined with us on First Day, and returned home yesterday afternoon 
 with a member of the committee. Fall River folks will think cer- 
 tain now.t Dr. Tobey says it is highly important for mother to live 
 
 * The Brighton cattle market was then the largest in New England, the rural parts of which in 
 1834 furnished 100,000 sheep and more than 75,000 cattle and hogs for slaughter there. 
 
 t This cousin of Dr. Earle was the daughter of Arnold Buffum, who soon after married Marcus 
 Spring, and long lived in New York ; afterward in a sort of community at Perth Amboy, N. J., where 
 Thoreau visited in 1856, and surveyed the estate of " Eagleswood," largely the property of Mr. Spring. 
 Mrs. Spring is still living in California. Her older sister, Mrs. Chace, of Valley Falls, R.I., is also 
 living, upward of ninety. The physical vigor of the Earles of this branch seems to have come from 
 the Buffums. 
 
42 TRAVELLING IN 1832-34 
 
 on the Graham system ; but, as her disease has become chronic, this 
 will not probably be sufficient of itself to effect a cure. She must 
 therefore, whenever attacked, use sweet oil copiously. He says every 
 time she takes cicuta she undermines still more her constitution. It 
 is strange, when it has been so strongly urged, that she should neg- 
 lect so simple a remedy. 
 
 The railroad, which the Earles had never seen before, was 
 that from Boston to Worcester, which was running trains of 
 English coaches for short distances in 1834, though not opened 
 to Worcester till 1835. The Mill-dam, of course, was that 
 avenue, then a turnpike, which runs westward from Boston 
 over the old dam which retained the tide-waters for the tide-mill, 
 near Beacon Street. The trip of five days, here chronicled, 
 could now be performed, if haste were requisite, in one, and 
 with all the visits named, in two days. The remark about the 
 regimen for Mrs. Earle shows that the use of coarse wheaten 
 meal instead of fine flour, introduced by Dr. Sylvester Graham, 
 was well known in 1834. Though a chronic invalid then, the 
 mother lived fifteen years longer; while the vigorous daughter 
 died a few weeks after this letter was written. 
 
 Short excursions, such as his sister could make, and with 
 which he had once contented himself, had ceased to have much 
 attraction for young Pliny, in whom, as in his Roman name- 
 sakes, the naturalist and the tourist were combined. Taking 
 advantage of the temporary closing of the Friends' School in 
 the summer of 1832, he took a companion August 5, and set 
 out for the White Mountains of New Hampshire, by way of 
 Portland. He writes : — 
 
 Trip to the White Mowitains [1832]. 
 
 S. L. Gummere * and I left Providence last Seventh Day morning, 
 at eight o'clock, for Boston, and arrived after a pleasant ride of 
 about seven hours. Our stop there was short, as the boat in which 
 we were to take passage left for Portland, Me., at 4 p.m. At 3.30 
 we were on board the good steam-packet "Connecticut"; and at 4 
 we left the wharf with one hundred and seventy-five passengers, all 
 
 *Gum-me-re. 
 
1827-1837 43 
 
 bound for Portland. It was a delightful afternoon ; and our prospect, 
 as we sailed out of Boston Harbor and along the northern coast, was 
 very fine. The sun shone clear upon the scarcely ruffled ocean ; and 
 the broad expanse of deep blue water, studded in all directions with 
 verdant islands, afforded as beautiful a (water) landscape as I have 
 ever seen. We passed in sight of Lynn, Nahant, Salem, Marble- 
 head, and Cape Ann in rapid succession. The Nahant Hotel ap- 
 peared really like an old acquaintance, thanks to S. B. Stiles for 
 an introduction to it. As we passed Cape Ann, the evening closed 
 upon us, and the sky, which had been so cloudless, became overcast 
 with light vapors ; but there was a fine moon behind the clouds, and 
 this, together with a balmy summer air, made a seat on deck desir- 
 able. The distance to Portland from Boston is one hundred and ten 
 or one hundred and twenty miles. We were to be out all night, and 
 for our one hundred and seventy-five passengers there were but fifty 
 or sixty berths. Fatigued with our ride from Providence, we wanted 
 sleep. The thing was where to get it. At 8.30 we found a mattress 
 in the after-cabin, carried it up the stairs at the stern of the vessel, 
 and took a refreshing nap on it directly before the cabin windows. 
 At ten I rose, and walked the deck, where I was particularly inter- 
 ested in the man at the helm. He was a negro, six feet two, 
 as I judged, and with a most dignified carriage. A single pas- 
 senger, a seaman, and myself were the only persons on deck be- 
 sides. We all entered into conversation ; and, as I asked, "What time 
 shall we arrive at Portland?" the passenger replied, "At 8 a.m." 
 Upon this the giant negro, projecting his head forward to observe 
 the light ahead, said very moderately, " I-beg-your-pardon-sir." 
 That was all he said ; but to me his words had a farther signifi- 
 cation. In a moment it flashed through my mind that he had been in 
 France. I questioned him, and found it was so. He had been a 
 great traveller, and had gleaned much information. His acquisi- 
 tions might have graced a higher sphere. I went to bed again, and 
 at 5.30 in the morning found myself in Portland. It was First Day 
 morning. We breakfasted at a public house, and at nine o'clock 
 called upon Isaiah Jones (a Quaker). 
 
 His house is near the centre of the city, in the same block with 
 N. Winslow's. Although the parlor was unoccupied when we en- 
 tered, yet within five minutes a sociable circle was formed around 
 us, — Isaiah, his wife and child, N. and J. Winslow, and E. Northey 
 
44 
 
 THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and his wife. We accompanied them to meeting, having engaged 
 to return to dinner, and to go to N. Winslow's to tea. After meet- 
 ing we were introduced to nearly all present, and soon engaged our- 
 selves to breakfast the next day ; and, had we concluded to stay an- 
 other day, we should undoubtedly have been quite as itinerant in our 
 eating then. Dined very pleasantly, and took tea equally so with 
 N. W., and a very sociable family. Called in the evening at Rufus 
 Horton's, and at nine returned to our lodgings. The Winslows are 
 great admirers of the course pursued (about anti-slavery) by Uncle 
 A. Buffum. The next day we breakfasted at Edward Cobb's, where 
 we spent two or three hours agreeably. Dined with James Oliver, 
 a brother of the great anti-Masonic Oliver at Lynn. He married a 
 daughter of E. Cobb, and is cashier of a Portland bank. Took tea 
 with a large party at Josiah Dow's, the father of H. and E. Dow.* 
 During the day we visited the Observatory, Arsenal, Custom House, 
 Court House, Town Hall, and two schools ; walked through all the 
 principal streets, and had an introduction to John Neal, with whom 
 we spent a half-hour of rapid conversation. We left Portland at five 
 o'clock, and arrived at Conway, N.H. (fifty-nine miles), in the even- 
 ing, which we left at four the next morning, passing through the 
 Notch by the valley of the Saco, past the Willey House, and arrived 
 at Ethan Crawford's "White Mountain House" (thirty-five miles) at 
 1,30 P.M. Mount Washington, its lofty summit even now enveloped 
 in an overhanging cloud, rests against our sky, while the peaks 
 named in honor of Jefferson, Adams, etc., stand at distances from 
 this more noble compeer, forming with Mount Pleasant a range of 
 mountain scenery unequalled in the United States. On Thursday 
 morning, August 9, a party of nine, including two of us, got horses 
 and a guide, and began to ascend the mountain. 
 
 In our party, besides the guide (who had to go on foot, because 
 we could find but eight horses), were a gentleman from Charleston, 
 S.C, a Bowdoin student, a Harvard student, a young gentleman, 
 something of a dandy, from Boston, a Unitarian minister from New 
 Hampshire, a Mr. White, formerly of Worcester, but now on a jour- 
 ney from Indiana, via Montreal, to Massachusetts, with myself and 
 
 * Probably also of Neal Dow, the temperance reformer, who was of Portland, and died in 1897, 
 at the age of ninety. John Neal, another distinguished citizen of Portland,— poet and essayist,— has 
 long been dead. He wrote the poem of the "American Eagle," beginning, 
 
 There's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak. 
 An angry eye, and a startling shriek. 
 
1827-1837 45 
 
 companion. It was amusing to look at our motley group, — our 
 guide now mounted on a pillion, — as we went 
 
 Full slowly pacing o'er the stones 
 With caution and good heed, 
 
 now winding, Indian file, through narrow passes, and now fording 
 the crooked Ammonoosuc River. We had laid our landlord under 
 contribution for clothing ; and now before me was seen our jolly 
 Carolinian, furnishing by his jokes amusement for us all, mounted 
 on a black steed, and behind his saddle the sober guide in a linsey- 
 woolsey roundabout. Next went the student from Bowdoin, in a 
 huge woollen coat of Crawford's, hanging about him like a meal-sack 
 over an iron bar. Underneath that was a waistcoat of Crawford's, 
 on the back of which the traces of a bear's paw were still visible, in 
 a melancholy rent. The story is this : Ethan, having caught a bear 
 in one of his traps, determined to carry him home alive. He there- 
 fore let him out of the trap, swung him over his shoulder, and took 
 up the line of march homeward. The bear was rather pleased with 
 his ride for the first mile, but after that became uneasy, and at the 
 end of the second mile determined on hostilities. This led Craw- 
 ford and the bear (to use his own words) " into a squabble," during 
 which he tore the vest quite unhandsomely. At length the man of 
 the woods, finding the resistance of his prisoner too unpleasant, gave 
 up the idea of carrying him any farther alive, and slew him on the 
 spot. Such is the story which Crawford tells. 
 
 To return to our party : The Bowdoiner was followed by some- 
 thing on a pale horse, — something that had gone to the mountain in 
 the shape of a Boston dandy of 1832 ; but, alas ! what a transfigura- 
 tion ! Though the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leop- 
 ard his spots, yet the Boston dandy can lose himself under the 
 flabby-brimmed chapeau and the enormous manteaii of Ethan Allen 
 Crawford.* This metempsychosis was followed by other figures, 
 mostly clad in suits which they had brought from their homes pur- 
 posely. However, I was enveloped in another coat of mine host ; 
 
 * This was the brother of Tom Crawford, who long kept a mountain hotel at the great Notch, and 
 a son of old Abel Crawford, with whom, in September, 1850, I rode from the Willey House to Tom 
 Crawford's, questioning the veteran about bears and other game. Twenty years earlier an adventure 
 such as Ethan described was not wholly improbable, and it may be credited. This pioneer family, of 
 Scotch descent, who went up to the White Mountains from Connecticut, is now entirely extinct in the 
 mountain region; and a railroad takes the visitor tlirough the Notch, which had to be widened a little 
 at its western end, to allow the trains to pass. 
 
46 MOUNT WASHINGTON ASCENDED 
 
 and, but for this, I should now have been without some forty pounds 
 of minerals, which I translated from the summit of Mount Washing- 
 ton in its capacious pockets. Doubly surrounded with this, which 
 was confined within hailing distance of my body by a bandanna hand- 
 kerchief, and carrying weight in the shape of a pair of saddle-bags, 
 filled with bread and cheese, I plodded on with the rest. Six miles 
 over rocks and hills, among woods and raspberries, brought us to the 
 end of equestrian navigation. Here we left our horses, and started 
 to perform the remaining three miles to the summit on foot. Three- 
 quarters of a mile brought us to a spring, of which the waters, 
 issuing from the side of the mountain, were by far the coolest I ever 
 drank. From this spring to the summit (two miles and a quarter) is 
 a most wearisome journey, the acclivity in some places forming an 
 angle of not less than forty-five degrees. 
 
 We arrived at the summit about one o'clock, having been almost 
 four hours travelling three miles. But here, indeed, it seemed as if we 
 
 Looked from our throne of clouds o'er half the world. 
 
 Though the day was rather cloudy, we were on the mountain long 
 enough to witness all the changes of scenery. One moment we were 
 wrapped in clouds, and could see but a few rods ; the next the cloud 
 rolled away in stately motion from the mountain side, and, floating 
 off, gradually opened to view the landscape below, where hills, 
 forests, and rivers dwindled into insignificance, stretched away and 
 away into a hazy distance far as the eye could pierce. Snow was 
 lying still upon the mountains in three spots, — a sight rarely seen in 
 August, even on these summits. We found another spring as cold 
 as that below, gushing from the rocks within a few rods of the high- 
 est point ; and there we sat down to eat and drink, with keen appe- 
 tites, — all but the minister. He, unfortunately, had been bred so 
 daintily that he " couldn't eat bread and cheese from a pair of saddle- 
 bags." As if the delicacies and ceremonies of the parsonage tea-table 
 could not be dispensed with for a few minutes on the summit of 
 Mount Washington ! The rest of us had no such qualms, and at two 
 o'clock we were refreshed and ready to descend. I filled, not my 
 pockets, but those of Ethan Crawford, with good specimens of mica 
 and quartz, before following the others down. It took us but half as 
 long to descend as to come up, and, after riding the six miles back, 
 were glad to reach our inn after an absence of ten hours and a half. 
 
1827-1837 47 
 
 Harriet Martineau, who visited Crawford's hostelry a few 
 years later, has left a more lively description of it and him. 
 She says : " Ethan Crawford cannot be said to live in solitude, 
 inasmuch as there is another house in the valley ; but it is a 
 virtual solitude, except for three months in the year. After 
 a supper of fine lake trout the son of our host played to us on a 
 nameless instrument, made by the joiners who put the house 
 together, and creditable to their ingenuity. It was something 
 like the harmonica in form and the bagpipes in tone ; but, well 
 played as it was by the boy, it was highly agreeable. Then 
 Mr. Crawford danced an American jig to the fiddling of a rela- 
 tion of his, — the dancing somewhat solemn, but its good faith 
 made up for any want of mirth. He had other resources for 
 the amusement of guests, — a gun to startle the mountain 
 echoes, and a horn which, blown on a calm day, brings a chorus 
 of sweet responses from the far hillsides." In my time (1850) 
 Fabyan, who kept a large hotel on the plain north of Craw- 
 ford's, had the same devices of gun and horn to amuse his 
 guests ; and it was then still possible to see the deer at night 
 feeding on the plain, while the bears were now and then killed 
 in the forest. Dr. Earle took the same course away from the 
 mountain which I followed eighteen years after ; that is, to 
 Littleton and Bath, and so down the Connecticut valley. His 
 description of the scenery, and some mention of the New 
 Hampshire Shakers, here follows: — 
 
 We left Crawford's Friday noon, and journeyed north-westerly 
 eighteen miles to Littleton, a pretty village in a low valley on the 
 banks of the Ammonoosuc, surrounded with lofty hills. Thence we 
 followed the Ammonoosuc to Bath, and so into the valley of the 
 Connecticut, just below the junction of the two rivers. Our ride was 
 delightful. The fertile meadows on the Connecticut are worthy of 
 all the praises so long bestowed on them. Verdant with grass or 
 luxuriant with Indian corn, profuse with waving grain or heavily 
 laden with fruit, they lie before us as we turn to the right in passing 
 down the New Hampshire side of the stream, and stretch away in 
 either a continued level or a gentle undulation, interspersed with 
 neat dwellings, and with a noble river rolling on between them. We 
 
48 NEW HAMPSHIRE SCENERY 
 
 dined at Haverhill, a village about as large as Leicester, with a court- 
 house and an academy in the same building. From there to Han- 
 over, twenty-seven miles, our route still lay on the river bank ; and 
 we admired the varied yet always romantic and beautiful scenery 
 through which we passed. At Orford, before reaching Hanover, we 
 stopped to examine silkworms. Such a curiosity to me ! * We 
 spent the Sabbath at Hanover, and attended a Shaker meeting a few 
 miles away. It consisted of about one hundred and twenty members 
 and perhaps fifty spectators. Our friend Lazarus, the Southerner, 
 who still favored us with his agreeable company, thought that " four 
 out of five among those black-eyed girls would get away if they could." 
 I could not feel that I was in a house of worship. Hanover is finely 
 situated. Most of the dwellings are placed around a very large com- 
 mon, and are well shaded with ornamental trees. The east side of 
 this square is occupied by the college (Dartmouth) and the other 
 buildings thereunto belonging. The view of Dartmouth College 
 upon the fireboard in the Leicester parlor is very good. 
 
 On Monday we rode fifty-four miles to Concord, the capital of 
 New Hampshire, across a rough and rugged country, over high hills, 
 and in sight of many mountains. I called on Stephen Breed, and 
 concluded to go to the town of Weare the next morning. Accordingly, 
 at that time, Samuel Gummere, Lazarus, and Prince, — a young man 
 from Boston, who had been our constant companion since we left the 
 mountain, — set out for Boston, and I for Weare. Arriving at noon, 
 I called at Pelatiah Gove's in the afternoon. Thursday morning I 
 left Weare, and, riding seventy miles through Amherst, Nashua, 
 Lowell, Billerica, etc., I arrived at Boston in the evening; and 
 Thursday we returned to Providence. 
 
 Fears of the cholera, which was then visiting America, had 
 kept the Friends' School from opening at the usual time, and 
 allowed Pliny Earle to make this comparatively long tour. It 
 was finally opened in October ; and, in mentioning the fact to 
 his sister, he indulges in that odd jesting so characteristic of 
 him in later life, saying : — 
 
 The school-house was opened on Sunday last, pursuant to notice. 
 In course of the week ten girls were admitted, and three boys in the 
 
 * This is sarcastical. At Leicester the Earle family had long been raising silkworms, and losing 
 money by it. An uncle of Dr. Earle lived at Weare, N.H. 
 
1827-1837 49 
 
 Classical Department ; while we (in the English Department) re- 
 ceived so many that, were the number to double each succeeding 
 week till April i (twenty-two weeks), we should then have no less than 
 4,194,304 pupils, more than the whole population of New England 
 and New York combined. To save you the trouble of computation, 
 I may as well add that w^e have had just one solitary scholar, George 
 Taber, a little fellow from New Bedford, who has been crying because 
 he has been lonely, and picking potatoes for amusement. 
 
 Providence, Nov. 24, 1832. — Dr. Griscom has come to Providence,* 
 but is not expecting to remove his family until spring. He will be 
 in the school in a few days ; and, after the close of our lectures on 
 " Natural Philosophy " (four have been given), he will give a course 
 upon " Chemistry," from which we expect much. We have one hun- 
 dred and thirty scholars on both sides, with the prospect of enough 
 more to make us (un)comfortable. Among the one hundred and 
 thirty I count nearly a dozen cousins ; namely, four of Uncle 
 Arnold Buffum's, four of Cousin David's, two of Uncle Otis's, and one 
 of Abraham Barker's children. I could sit under the clock each day, 
 and then not see each of my cousins oftener than once a fortnight. 
 
 May 2, 1833. — Dr. Griscom has returned from New York, after an 
 absence of three weeks, bringing three daughters and a son with him. 
 They have taken lodgings at Mary Easton's on Main Street, opposite 
 the Episcopal church. I have spent two or three evenings in com- 
 pany with the girls, and am very much pleased with them. The 
 youngest is fine-looking, sociable, and, if I am in any measure a dis- 
 ciple of Lavater, she is amiable. John Gummere has been spending 
 two or three days in Providence. He and Dr. Griscom have given 
 their presence to our sitting-room together once or twice. They are 
 doubtless the two most learned Quakers in America. A few days 
 ago I went one evening with two of the Miss Griscoms to the Man- 
 sion House, where we met the wife and three daughters of Rem- 
 brandt Peale, the artist. In a few minutes we were as sociable as 
 old acquaintances, and the clock struck ten before we thought of the 
 time. To praise the daughters would be a matter of course, — what 
 
 *This was the elder Dr. John Griscom, a New Jersey Quaker (bom 1774, died 1852), who dis- 
 tinguished himself as a teacher in early life in New Jersey, then removed to New York in 1807, and 
 taught there for twenty-five years, besides being active in charitable and scientific work. He had 
 been "literary principal'' in the Providence Friends' School for some years at this time, but resigned 
 in 1835, and returned to Burlington, N.J. His son, John H., was professor of chemistry at New York 
 for some years, and an active member of the New York Prison Association, as well as a copious 
 writer. Rembrandt Peale (bom 1778, died i860) was the son of C. W. Peale, studied with West, and 
 painted good portraits of Washington, as his father had done. 
 
50 DR. EARLE IN PROVIDENCE 
 
 every one would feel bound to do, — but I was none the less pleased 
 with Mrs. Peale. She appears to be one of your good, kind, motherly 
 women, one who acknowledges there is reality as well as romance in 
 the world. Her husband has been in England some seven months 
 has decided to make that country his home, and she and her daugh- 
 ters are going to meet him in London some time next summer. 
 
 During this season, in a school so large as above mentioned, 
 Dr. Earle's tasks vi^ere many and engrossing, especially as he 
 was also studying medicine with Dr. Parsons, at the same time 
 that he taught five and a half days, with an occasional evening 
 lecture. ''Every day and every evening," he wrote, "has its 
 particular exercise. Even Sunday shines no Sabbath day to 
 me." He taught reading, writing, English grammar, algebra, 
 and geometry, besides botanical lectures ; and it was now that 
 he gave that particular attention to spelling which his autobi- 
 ography mentions. March 24, 1833, he writes: — 
 
 D. does pursue the method of having the words written for 
 spelling ; but it was introduced by me. I recommended it a long 
 time before it was adopted, but could get none to encroach so far 
 upon the "good old way" as to attempt this reformation. There- 
 fore, I asked my class one morning to take their slates for spelling. 
 They did so, and were much pleased with the exercise. Very soon 
 the whole school were using their pencils so. 
 
 Dr. Earle came to the head of the Providence school in 
 1835, but did not long continue there; for his preparatory 
 medical studies were now so far advanced that he entered the 
 Medical College at Philadelphia in the autumn of that year. 
 His journey to Philadelphia was the occasion for many visits 
 and observations, which he thus records, in a letter to his sister 
 Eliza, at Mulberry Grove : — 
 
 Anno Mundi 6839, and Anno Plinii xxv, on the 21st of that 
 month vulgarly called October, I arrived at the summit of the hill of 
 all hills, Leicester Hill,* intending to take the stage-coach for Hart- 
 
 • From the ridge on which the Earles lived in 1835 it is a mile and a half to Leicester Hill, on 
 which the village stands, — a " Yankee Perugia," as one of its residents calls it ; and there is a resem- 
 blance to that Italian town in the site, not the architecture or art. " Mount Pleasant" is a hill farther 
 westward, which was early occupied by a provincial magnate as a country seat. Indeed, all the hills 
 in this region are suited for rural magnificence. 
 
1827-1837 51 
 
 ford. It soon arrived, not, as I had feared, crowded with passen- 
 gers, but containing one journey-man and one journey-lady. And 
 who should these be but the Honorable Leonard M. Parker and his 
 daughter Elizabeth ? The father very kindly and politely offered me 
 a seat beside the daughter, which I did not hesitate to accept. 
 It would have been crossing myself and very ungallant to refuse. 
 " Crack went the whip, round went the wheels." We pleasantly 
 mounted Mount Pleasant on our way to the capital of Quinnihtiquot. 
 Brookfield, Brimfield, many a cornfield and potato-field, besides enor- 
 mous quantities of pumpkins and bumpkins, were among the objects 
 of our attention that forenoon. Ten days earlier the beauty of the 
 scenery would have been increased by the autumn foliage of the 
 forests ; but now the thousand tints which had decked them were 
 mostly melted into a sombre brown, and the eye was pained where 
 it might have been delighted. We dined at Stafford, Ct. ; and, while 
 dinner was being put on, I went into the " cupola furnace " of the 
 Hydes. The tremendous bellows were wheezing at an awful rate ; 
 and from the brilliancy of the flame one might well suppose that it 
 
 was so hot, Josiah, 
 That if you only was put in it. 
 Then took out and laid on the fire, 
 You'd freeze to death in a minute. 
 
 At Hartford we lodged at the City Hotel, with excellent accommo- 
 dations. After tea I visited the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, where I 
 found a daughter of John Macomber, of Westport, the only person in 
 the institution with whom I had been before acquainted. She rec- 
 ognized me immediately, and we had an interesting tete-a-tete. Be- 
 fore breakfast on the 2 2d (Wednesday) I went to see the Charter 
 Oak, which looks very much like other oaks equally old. After 
 breakfast I went again to the asylum with Elizabeth Parker and her 
 father ; and we were conducted through the various departments, — 
 school-rooms, kitchen, dormitories, workshops, etc. The school had 
 been suspended for a few weeks, and some of the pupils were ab- 
 sent. However, nearly one hundred were present, all industriously 
 employed during our visit, the girls with their needles, and the boys 
 at the several trades there taught. After what has been said of 
 Julia Brace,* I need say nothing except that I saw her thread a 
 
 * The American Asylum, mentioned above, was the first school for the deaf established in Amer- 
 ica, and then served for all New England. At present there are seven other schools for this class in 
 
52 HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN 
 
 needle, which she did very expeditiously, and was presented with a 
 piece of her patchwork sewed quite decently. 
 
 After we returned, A. S. Beckwith, whose family live in Hartford, 
 took me to ride with him. We passed Washington College (now 
 Trinity) and the beautiful residence of Mrs. Sigournej^* and stopped 
 at the Retreat for the Insane. Its situation is remarkably pleasant, 
 commanding a delightful prospect. It is conducted upon a plan 
 very similar to that of the Lunatic Asylum at Worcester. While at 
 the City Hotel, Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, who founded the Deaf and 
 Dumb Asylum, came in ; and I had the satisfaction of being intro- 
 duced to him. He is a plain, modest man, about five feet five in 
 height, with spectacles on nose, and a face that beams with benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 New Have7i, October 23. (Tontine Hotel.) — We reached here 
 before nine last evening. Just after breakfast this morning I went 
 to the house of Professor Olmsted, to deliver the letter with which 
 Professor Elton, of Providence, had favored me. The professor had 
 gone to Yale College to give a lecture. I followed, but the lecture 
 had commenced. I was desirous to hear the person who had just 
 become extensively known as a scientific man by publishing one of 
 the best recent works on Natural Philosophy, and as the first person 
 who saw the comet in America at its late approach. So I went to 
 the door of the lecture-room, which I found in that position when 
 it is not a door, — because it is ajar ! The lecturer stood with his 
 back towards me, talking to eighty or ninety young men about 
 "nodes," "apsides," "perigees," and "apogees." He very soon 
 turned, perceived me, came to the door, took my letter, and invited 
 me in. After the instructive and well-delivered lecture closed, he 
 took me to his room, and, upon some remark about the comet,t 
 asked me into the observatory where he discovered it. His tele- 
 New England ; and even Connecticut has a second school at Mystic, near New London, where tlie 
 oral method is used, and signs discarded. Julia Brace was deaf, dumb, and blind. 
 
 * The once famous poet, Lydia Huntley, (born 1791, died 1865, married Charles Sigouniey in 
 1819), to whom Dr. Earle, on his return from Europe in 1839, sent flowers and shells gathered by him 
 in classic scenes. A statue of Dr. Gallaudet, the work of D. C. French, now stands in the asylum 
 grounds. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-four, having founded the asylum in iSr7 when thirty 
 years old. 
 
 tThis was the comet upon which Dr. Holmes wrote his amusing verses, about the time Professor 
 Olmsted discovered it. The latter was forty-four at this time, being born in 1791. He died in 1859. 
 Professor Silliman was the elder of two Yale professors of that name (boni 1779, died 1864). He trav- 
 elled in Great Britain and Holland in 1805-6, and in 1812 secured for his college the collection of 
 rnmerals made in Europe by Colonel Gibbs. In 1835 he was the most eminent geologist in America, 
 though not the best. 
 
1827-1837 53 
 
 scope is a refractor of ten feet focal distance, so fixed upon the 
 standard that every part of the heavens may be observed except 
 near the zenith. He said that the comet, when lirst seen, was like a 
 speck of smoke no bigger than a thumb-nail. The only proof that 
 it was a comet was the change of place apparent the next night. 
 After examining his apparatus, including the most powerful electri- 
 cal machine I had ever seen, we went to the cabinet of minerals, 
 where we found Professor Silliman about to lecture on mineralogy. 
 His special subject was quartz and its silicious companions. His 
 style was simple, and his manner easy and informal. He remarked 
 in conversation that " the New England Friends know not what they 
 have lost in allowing Dr. Griscom to leave their school at Provi- 
 dence." 
 
 In the afternoon I noticed in the burial-ground north-west of New 
 Haven the monument of Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, — 
 of freestone, consisting of a parallelopipedon base, 8 feet by 4 and 
 3 feet high, surmounted by a beautiful entablature a foot high, termi- 
 nating at the ends in a scroll, like those in the capital of an Ionic 
 pillar. Returning to the city, I visited a collection of paintings left 
 to Yale College by Colonel Trumbull, the painter, and handsomely 
 arranged in a building erected for that special purpose.* INIany ad- 
 ditions have since been made to the gallery. I left it unwillingly, be- 
 fore examining half of the pictures, in order to take tea at Professor 
 Olmsted's, where I spent most of the evening. He is about forty, 
 in height five feet seven, with an activity of motion that would grace 
 a youth of sixteen. His complexion is dark: his hair, eyebrows, 
 and eyes, black as jet. 
 
 A'ezi' York, October 25. — I walked in the north-east, or "new," 
 part of the city. This modern American Babel increases astonish- 
 ingly. Arriving at Washington Square, my attention was attracted 
 by a building, the University of New York, of purely Gothic archi- 
 tecture, and a stately marble pile. It somewhat resembles Newstead 
 Abbey; but the towers and turrets are surmounted with blocks of 
 marble instead of spires, — rather a compound of Abbotsford and 
 Newstead. 
 
 These remarks on architecture in New York and New Haven 
 show that Dr. Earle had been studying that subject at the 
 
 *The painter Trumbull did not die till 1S43, but gave his pictures to Yale College for an annu- 
 ity of Si, 000. 
 
54 
 
 CHRISTMAS IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 time when Greek and Gothic styles were getting introduced 
 and mingled in America. His comments were founded on en- 
 gravings ; for he had not seen any ancient buildings, and pho- 
 tography was yet in its gloomy infancy. His interest in art 
 was always marked, but his taste was far from severe. Con- 
 tinuing his journey, he reached Philadelphia by steamer on the 
 26th, and found friends there, as everywhere. The Vice-Presi- 
 dent, Martin Van Buren, soon to become President, was in 
 Philadelphia at the time ; and Dr. Earle, always ready to see 
 notabilities, went to call on him at his hotel, but found him 
 gone. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 27. — While at breakfast, Dr. Griscom called, 
 in fine health and spirits. I went with him to call on John Farnum. 
 Also, having sent my letters of introduction in advance, I called on 
 Dr. Robert Hare, and found him fat and more than forty, — as jolly 
 as he is fat, and as gray as he is forty. Add an inch or two to the 
 stature of Alexander Gaspard Vottier, of the sugar-plums, give him 
 an intellectual instead of a bacchanalian countenance, a little more 
 expansion of forehead and enlargement of sinciput, and you have a 
 model of the carnal portion of the American giant in chemistry. 
 Even in their speech there is a very striking similarity. 
 
 In Philadelphia for the first time the student saw Christmas 
 kept as it never was at that period in New England, where the 
 Puritan Thanksgiving, a month earlier, had quite supplanted 
 Christmas, which was not even a holiday in Massachusetts till 
 many years after 1835. Writing home on Christmas evening 
 in that year, Dr. Earle said : — 
 
 A Christmas among the people of this city of Penn puts to the 
 blush all the blessed Thanksgiving Days that animate the compara- 
 tively sober inhabitants of the Bay State. It would be hard for 
 Jonathan Doolittle to strike a note high enough to describe the " lots 
 o' good livinV' the fun, frolic, flash, and fashion that characterize 
 this day of festivity in Philadelphia. I say a day of festivity, for 
 such it is with a large proportion of the citizens ; although many (the 
 Catholics, particularly) consecrate it to divine worship. If a man 
 passed through the crowded market this week, it was at the expense 
 
1827-1837 55 
 
 of comfort, if not of a broken rib or a demolished or overturned 
 huckster's tub. Book-stores, toy-shops, confectioners, — in sliort, 
 every place of retail trade, — are teeming with the rare and the 
 beautiful. Last evening Santa Claus did his prettiest, showering 
 uncounted blessings in the shape of whistles, rocking-horses, wooden 
 swords, counterfeit puppies, mice, and kittens, together with cakes 
 and confections of all kinds, on the children. The stocking of every 
 manikin and womanikin overflowed this morning with the gifts of 
 Saint Nicholas. With honor be his name spoken ! After dinner I 
 thought I would mingle with the rest of the fashionables, to see and 
 be seen ; and I found the streets swarming with a joy-seeking popu- 
 lation. Boys ringing a grand chorus upon rackets, whistles, and 
 would-be flageolets, crowds of young men at the street corners 
 smoking cigars, and unnumbered ladies, eloquent with smiles and 
 enveloped in capes with large cloaks attached to them, threading the 
 streets, — all were as merry as Christmas. So much for Sixth Street 
 and Franklin Square. In Race Street a long procession, in the 
 deepest mourning, followed the remains of a departed friend. Arch 
 Street, of course, was thronged. And there, again, as if to contrast 
 the luxury of life with the pangs of death, an extensive cake and 
 confectionery establishment was filled with eaters ; while above and 
 around and before the next door, in large, staring capitals, was to be 
 read, " Coffins ready-made." An oyster-cellar came next, where the 
 vulgar, the profane, the intemperate, — very offscourings and canaille, 
 — were drinking and carousing. The confused gibberish of a hun- 
 dred tongues, the hollow laugh, — long, loud, and hysterical, — the 
 horrid oath, the thumping of the toddy-stick, made not only the 
 room, but the street before it, odious. Then Chestnut Street, — 
 whew ! what a river of humanity ! what a condensation of flesh and 
 vesture, a flood of men, women, and children ! 
 
 With scores of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Rain influence. 
 
 But at this moment the clouds also began to rain, and put a 
 damper on the general hilarity. 
 
 All this was a new scene to the serious-minded Quaker from 
 Leicester and Providence, but his kindly heart inclined him to 
 look on it with pleasure. Not so the state of things in the 
 
56 MEDICAL STUDENTS IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 Medical College, — never a very quiet place, — and just then, in 
 1836-37, unusually disturbed by unmannerly students. Writing 
 at the end of February, 1836, Dr. Earle says : — 
 
 It appears that three hundred and ninety-eight medical students 
 have attended lectures the present term, nearly every one of the 
 twenty-four States being represented here, as well as Nova Scotia, 
 Canada, England, and South America. These heterogeneous 
 materials have mingled during the last four months with as little 
 effervescence ae could be expected. Indeed, our preceptors say we 
 have been very good boys, " the kindest of classes," *' the most 
 gentlemanly class that ever attended this school," etc. Let us see : 
 (i) The son of a Governor of one of our Southern States caned 
 another " gentleman " at the theatre, who thereupon, believing that 
 "one good turn deserves another," repaid the caner with compound 
 interest. 
 
 Behold how good a thing it is, 
 And how exceeding well, 
 
 Together, such as brethren are, 
 In unity to dwell. 
 
 (2) Another gentleman stabbed one of the vulgar with his jack-knife ; 
 
 (3) another was kept in three or four weeks by wounds received 
 from the dirk of a fellow-laborer ; (4) another drew his dirk upon the 
 driver of an omnibus, but shed no blood; (5) while a fifth benevolent 
 creature called on one of his classmates in the evening, invited him 
 to the door, and there, upon the steps, shot him in the legs with a 
 charge of buckshot. He who received the wound was instantly 
 confined in Arch Street Prison, to prevent him from challenging his 
 friend ; while the one who gave the wound died a few weeks after 
 of typhus fever. After these "gentlemanly" encounters, the minor 
 affairs of " cabbaging " cloaks, umbrellas, overshoes, etc., are un- 
 important, — they hardly begin to make a man a "gentleman" now- 
 adays. Heretofore the conduct of students has been such that 
 odium is cast upon the whole tribe of -^sculapian tyros. The 
 term "medical student," with many citizens, is intimately associated 
 with "roguery," "impudence," "lawlessness," "delicate sense of 
 fashionable honor," etc. ; while another very large class (the Phila- 
 delphia negroes) add to this list "tyranny," "cruelty," "murderer," 
 "thief," and a few other endearing epithets. This last fact is fraught 
 
1827-1837 57 
 
 with an advantage, however ; for, of all the mothers in the twenty-five 
 thousand colored population, I hardly think there is one who does 
 not govern her children by threatening them with the medical 
 students. Every disobedient urchin is told, " I'll give you to the 
 students "' ; and by this magic of a name he is brought back to the 
 path of rectitude. And yet, in spite of all this, a great majority of 
 the four hundred students are gentlemen in the proper sense of the 
 word, — men of kind, generous, and ardent feelings, with native 
 talent, well cultivated, and of a spirit that scorns to commit acts by 
 some thought necessary to support their " honor." It is the conduct 
 of a few which has stigmatized the whole. 
 
 These remarks recall to the aged the state of things which 
 the semi-civilization of certain slaveholding communities im- 
 posed upon much of our country sixty years ago, and which 
 drew forth from foreign observers the censure that was found 
 so provoking by Dr. Earle's contemporaries. In August, 1835, 
 Mrs. Kemble-Butler, then living in Philadelphia, wrote to her 
 publisher in London, Murray, this extreme statement : — 
 
 There are mobs in every part of this country, burning, tarring and 
 feathering, hanging without jury, judge, or other warrant than their 
 own sovereign pleasure. The slave question is becoming one of ex- 
 treme excitement. The Northern folks push the emancipation plans 
 with all the zeal of people who have nothing to lose by their philan- 
 thropy ; and the Southerners hold fast by their slippery property, like 
 so many tigers. The miserable blacks are restricted every day 
 within narrower bounds of freedom ; and the result of all is clear 
 enough to my perception. The abuse is growing to its end ; but it 
 will not be done away with quietly. There will, I fear, be a season 
 of awful retribution before right is done to these unfortunate 
 wretches. 
 
 No young man brought up as Dr. Earle had been could fail 
 to see where the poison of our social and political system lay ; 
 but it w^as hard to prescribe for an evil so deep-seated. Mrs. 
 Butler w^as right in her general prognosis, as the event proved ; 
 but most Americans in 1837 hoped for an easier solution of the 
 slave question. Dr. Earle was one of these. His attention 
 
58 PHILADELPHIA PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 was chiefly drawn to other topics, though he never neglected 
 this one. Philadelphia interested him in many ways, and not 
 merely as the place of his medical graduation. Its scientific 
 and philanthropic eminence among American cities drew his 
 attention ; and the prominence of the Quakers attracted him 
 and his relatives, of whom several settled there. From his 
 letters of 1836 and 1837, this may be cited : — 
 
 Saturday evening Dr. Griscom had the kindness to introduce me 
 into the rooms of the American Philosophical Society, — a little para- 
 dise upon earth to a scientific man. The library contains twenty 
 thousand volumes, chiefly scientific works, ranged about the room in 
 cases ; while those parts of the walls not so occupied are hung with 
 portraits of worthies eminent in the annals of science. Dr. Franklin 
 was its first president and one of its first members. The present 
 librarian, an active octogenarian, still adheres to the practice of 
 whitening with powder that hair which the snows of age have 
 blanched. He was one of the earliest members, and long an inti- 
 mate friend of Franklin.* I am to breakfast with him on Tuesday 
 morning. 
 
 Feb. 6, 1837. — The Abolitionists in Philadelphia are about to have 
 a large hall erected for their especial accommodation. It will be the 
 largest in the city. Charles C. Burleigh has lately been speaking 
 here, and was very much liked. J. G. Whittier also has been spend- 
 ing some time here, but not on business connected with the Anti- 
 slavery Society. While here, he added another Unk to the prolix 
 chain of marvellous things said to have been performed as animal 
 magnetism at Boston and Providence. He was present, it seems, 
 when Poyen performed experiments upon the damsel from Pawtucket, 
 before Drs. Walter Channing and Ware, Rev. Dr. Channing, and 
 some members of the State legislature.! Dr. Ware acknowledged 
 
 •This was Mr. John Vaughan, bom 1755, died Dec. 30, 1S41. At the date of his death he had 
 been treasurer of the society more than fifty years, or since 1790. He lived in the building of the 
 Philosophical Society, which is on the west side of Fifth Street, just below Chestnut, and appears to be 
 in Independence Square, but really is older than the square, standing in a plot of ground given by the 
 city before the square was formed. Mr. Vaughan had a famous custom of giving breakfasts to dis- 
 tinguished visitors to Philadelphia in his rooms there. Mr. B. S. Lyman, one of the present curators, 
 says, " The old meeting-room had a charming, old-fashioned look of quiet elegance, but was wholly 
 changed at the time the building was enlarged and altered, about 1890." 
 
 t Whittier was chosen a member of the Massachusetts legislature from Haverhill two years in 
 succession,— 1835 and 1836. He was one of the members present at these experiments in Boston, 
 no doubt, though he does not seem to have taken much part in legislative proceedings in 1837. He 
 
1827-1837 59 
 
 himself a proselyte ; and Rev. Dr. Channing declared his meta- 
 physics to be confounded. Dr. Tobey (of Providence) informs me 
 that M. B. Lockwood has become an adept in the science. 
 
 There were disturbances among the Philadelphia medical 
 students in the winter of 1836-37, which came to the public 
 notice through articles in the Ledger and other newspapers ; 
 but, amid all the troubles of the class, Dr. Earle pursued his 
 studies calmly, and took his degree early in March, with 
 some distinction. He made a brief visit to Washington at 
 the inauguration of Van Buren as President ; made his ar- 
 rangements with deliberation and good judgment for his pro- 
 posed year of medical study in Europe ; visited Leicester and 
 bade farewell to his mother, — his father having died in 1832, — 
 his sisters and brothers ; promised to correspond from Europe 
 for the Worcester Spy, which his brother Milton was then edit- 
 ing; and, on the 25th of March, 1837, sailed from New York 
 for Liverpool on the packet ship "Virginian," a sailing-vessel. 
 The first use he made of his nautical observations was to cor- 
 rect a false opinion which he had formed at Providence as to 
 sea-distances ; and the remark in his diary is so characteristic 
 that this chapter may well close with it. 
 
 March 27, 1837, Lat. 41° 6', Long. 68° 30'. — The Havre packet 
 "Albany," which sailed at the same hour with the "Virginian," is 
 still in sight. My previous impressions with regard to the distance 
 at which small bodies at sea are visible have been erroneous. They 
 need not have been, had I reflected ; but, having drawn my conclu- 
 sions from observation at the Providence School, I believed they 
 might be seen much farther than is possible. From the height on 
 
 did not go to live in Philadelphia until late in that year ; and the new hall mentioned above was not 
 completed till 1838, when Dr. Earle was in Paris. It was destroyed by a mob in the same year. The 
 excitement in New England over mesmerism or animal magnetism followed close upon that ardent 
 pursuit of the pseudo-science of phrenology which was stimulated by the popularity in Boston of Dr. 
 Spurzheim, who, with the eminent anatomist, Gall, was its zealous propagandist, and died in Boston 
 (November, 1832) while lecturing on phrenology. Dr. Earle no doubt heard Spurzheim, and 
 became more than half a believer in the science, as did also Dr. S. G. Howe and other Massachusetts 
 physicians. Some allusion to this will occur hereafter. Indeed, Gall and Spurzheim, though ridi- 
 culed for making a chart of the human skull to correspond with certain inward functions of the 
 brain, did lay the foundation of the present doctrine concerning the brain as the organ of the mind ; 
 and this part of their theory continued to interest Dr. Earle through life. His brother Thomas was 
 ^a mesmerist, and often had experiments at his Philadelphia house, but long after 1837. 
 
6o DR. earle's candor 
 
 which that building stands, it is evident that vessels would be wholly 
 visible at Newport or even far beyond, were there no intervening ob- 
 jects ; but, situated as we are now, no portion of the hull of a ship 
 can be seen farther off than ten or fifteen miles. Hence the vessels 
 that we meet, though they heave in sight directly ahead, are very soon 
 (from three to six hours or more, according to the force of the wind) 
 all invisible, having passed out of sight in the opposite direction. 
 
 This candor of mind, this love and research of the exact 
 truth, whatever his own predilection might be, was my friend's 
 distinguishing trait. It made him welcome wherever he went, 
 and it gave to his well-considered opinions almost the force of 
 natural fact. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ENGLAND SIXTY YEARS SINCE, 
 
 It happened fortunately for the young physician on his first 
 tour in Europe that the railway and the steamship had not an- 
 nihilated distances and made it possible to see a great country 
 in a week. Dr. Earle found himself in England in the very 
 culminating period of the English stage-coach, described by 
 Dickens with so much zest, and therefore familiar to all who 
 have read that popular novelist. He journeyed from one end 
 of the island to the other in 1837 in such coaches, and lived at 
 such inns as Dickens and the earlier novelists set before us in 
 every chapter. He crossed the Atlantic from New York in the 
 spring of that year, sailing on the 25th of March and landing 
 in Liverpool the middle of May. Among his fellow-passengers, 
 fourteen in all, was Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, an English 
 Quaker, just returning from a visit to Jamaica and the other 
 British West Indies to report on the effects of the then recent 
 policy of slave-emancipation. This fact, and the many intro- 
 ductions to English Quakers which had been given him in 
 America, opened to young Earle at once the rich and philan- 
 thropic circle of Quakerism in Great Britain and Ireland. He 
 met on the most friendly terms the Gurneys, of Earlham, the 
 Aliens, of London, Sir Fowell Buxton, Mrs. Opie, Samuel 
 Lloyd, the great banker, the Forsters, Becks, and other mem- 
 bers of that well-known society. His sketches of these persons 
 are interesting : — 
 
 Sir T. F. Buxton is a plain, familiar man, six feet two inches in 
 height, not prepossessing in appearance, but interesting in conversa- 
 tion. He has just succeeded [June, 1837] in obtaining the accept- 
 ance by the House of Commons of a report in relation to the cruel- 
 ties and acts of injustice practised by the British upon the aborigines 
 
62 ENGLISH QUAKERS IN 1 837 
 
 of their various dependencies, and hopes soon to have an act passed 
 by which those barbarities will be stopped. ... At the quarterly 
 meeting, Elizabeth Fry, Hannah Backhouse, Anna Braithwaite, and 
 Elizabeth Dudley sat at the head of the women's department of the 
 meeting ; and all of them appeared either in testimony or supplication 
 [that is, either preached or prayed]. A quaternion of ministers 
 such as are not met at every place ! Elizabeth Fry has more dig- 
 nity in the gallery than any other woman I ever saw. This, with 
 fluency and elegance of language, and a voice rich, melodious, and 
 of great compass, renders her a most impressive speaker. . . . The 
 English women Friends who are elderly seem less anxious to conceal 
 the footsteps of Time than do those in America, — I mean, those 
 traces left by the lapse of years on their persons. However gray the 
 hair may be, it is not concealed, but frequently more exposed by 
 bringing it forward upon the forehead, as Anna Braithwaite does. 
 Mrs. Fry has a sandy complexion and hair corresponding, now con- 
 siderably changed by years. However, she dresses it in the manner 
 named, having a portion cut short and brought fro,m beneath the 
 cap-border through the whole expanse of the forehead. She has a 
 more natural dignity of manner than Amelia Opie, particularly dur- 
 ing her public communications. I shall never forget the silence and 
 solemnity of the last meeting held by J. J. Gurney (her brother) in 
 London, while she was speaking. As she closed her sermon with 
 the appealing exhortation contained in the seventeenth verse of the 
 last chapter of Revelation, "And the Spirit and the Bride say, 
 Come," etc., an almost palpable stillness prevailed throughout that 
 immense assembly. ... I have met her at the meeting-house during 
 Yearly Meeting, at S. Gurney's (both in London and Upton), at 
 her own house two or three times, and also at Newgate Prison. She 
 still continues to attend that abode of sinners once a week; but, 
 others having become enlisted in the cause, she is very much released 
 from the onerous duties formerly attendant on her work there, and 
 is left at liberty to exert herself in other forms of benevolence. In 
 her associations she approaches the English throne. She showed me 
 two long letters received by her, immediately after the death of the 
 king [William IV.], from his two sisters, the Princess of Gloucester 
 and another ; and she gave me as autographs two or three letters, 
 one of them from these ladies. ... I accidentally learned that Mrs. 
 Opie had rooms in the same London house where I was lodging. 
 
1837-1849 63 
 
 and I sent at once a letter of introduction which Uncle Arnold Buf- 
 fum had furnished me. The following morning I met her at her 
 breakfast table, in company with Eliza Kirkbride. [This lady was 
 from Philadelphia, and afterwards married J. J. Gurney.] Although 
 several years a member of our society, Amelia Opie has not effaced 
 all traces of her fashionable life. Her dress, though quite plain in 
 its shape, is put on with a showiness of manner not so conspicuous 
 in those who have birthright membership. This effect is heightened 
 by her gold watch, and is perfected by a peculiar grace of manner. 
 To her I am indebted for an introduction to Samuel Gurney, at 
 whose table, in company wath her, I first met Elizabeth Fry. This 
 Avas the last day I saw Mrs. Opie. She bade me farewell with the 
 remark, " I hope I have launched thee well." 
 
 Reginald Heber, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, when he went 
 to hear I\Irs. Fry in Newgate in 1S20, described her as "a 
 Quaker, the wife of a merchant in the city who some two 
 years ago obtained with difficulty permission to attempt the 
 reformation of the female prisoners." Her brother-in-law, Sir 
 Fowell Buxton (who did not receive his baronetcy until after 
 Dr. Earle's first tour in Europe), had occasion, twenty years 
 after Bishop Heber's visit, to call on the same day upon the 
 Secretary of State in Downing Street and upon the Gurneys in 
 their counting-houses ; and, finding the ministry niggardly in 
 fitting out the Niger expedition, which his Quaker kinsmen 
 liberally aided, he exclaimed : — 
 
 Well, I go into the City, and I see brokers who behave like princes. 
 I come back to Downing Street, and see princes who behave like 
 brokers. 
 
 The Gurneys, of Normandy, under the name of De Gournay, 
 were indeed princes in the time of William the Conqueror, and 
 sent several of their name to assist him in his victory at 
 Hastings, after which they established the English barony of 
 Gournay, and left their name at Barrow-Gurney in Somerset 
 and several other English places. But, in the time of George 
 Fox, one of their descendants, John Gurney, citizen and cord- 
 wainer of Norwich, was sent to prison for three years (16S3) for 
 
64 THE GURNEYS OF EARLHAM 
 
 espousing Fox's Quaker principles. His son John, in Sir 
 Robert Walpole's day, "by his celebrated extempore speeches, 
 February, 1720, before the Honorable House of Commons, 
 turned the scale of the convention between the woollen and 
 linen manufacturers, being the weavers' advocate." He was 
 himself a woollen manufacturer ; and his eloquence was com- 
 memorated by an engraved portrait, over which Addison's 
 " Britannia " leans, smiling, and points to the Latin motto, 
 " Concedat Lmirea Lingncsy 
 
 A grandson of the prisoner, and nephew of the woollen 
 merchant, John Gurney, of Keswick, had a son John, who 
 married a descendant of Penn's friend Robert Barclay of Uri 
 (Catharine Bell), and became the owner of the estate of Earl- 
 ham Hall, near Norwich, where the Gurneys were born or 
 brought up whom Dr. Earle knew. They were connected by 
 blood or marriage with the Barclays, who succeeded to the 
 great brewery of Dr. Johnson's friend Thrale ; with the Pease 
 family of Darlington, and the Backhouse family of the same 
 Yorkshire town (Hannah Backhouse, often named by Dr. Earle, 
 being a cousin of Mrs. Fry) ; and with others of the wealthy 
 and politically powerful Quakers of London and the provinces. 
 Mary Anne Galton (afterwards Mrs. Schimmelpenninck) was 
 another cousin ; and Opie, the painter, who married the daughter 
 of Dr. Alderson, the popular physician of Norwich, belonged to 
 the Quaker circle, though neither he nor Mrs. Opie was at first 
 a Quaker. Elizabeth (Mrs. Fry) was the eldest of the Gurney 
 sisters of Earlham ; and Samuel was the youngest brother, born 
 in 1786, and early admitted into the banking house of his 
 brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, who married Elizabeth Gurney in 
 1800. He was a " plain Quaker," not very attractive in person 
 or manners, but well educated, and with a talent for making 
 money, which nearly all the Quaker circle had. His father, 
 William Fry, had a fine house at Plashet, near London ; but 
 Joseph and his wife long lived at St. Mildred's Court in London, 
 where Samuel lived with them until his marriage with another 
 cousin, Elizabeth Shepherd, of Ham House, near Plashet, which 
 in time became his own property. Fowell Buxton, not yet a 
 Quaker, had married Hannah Gurney, the sister of Samuel and 
 
1837-1849 65 
 
 Joseph John, in 1807, Samuel married in 1808, and Joseph John 
 (who also married a second cousin) in 18 17. 
 
 In the mean time, while Louisa Gurney had married a London 
 banker, Samuel Hoare (distantly related to the Hoar family of 
 Concord, Mass.), and while Joseph John had been studying 
 Greek and Hebrew with a private tutor, Samuel, hardly of age, 
 had become an important member of the rising firm of Overend, 
 Gurney & Co, in Lombard Street. As the children of these va- 
 rious marriages grew up, they formed other connections. Some 
 of the Quaker circle entered Parliament, others went on mis- 
 sions to different countries, and Mrs. Fry, the most distin- 
 guished of them all, had made herself known throughout the 
 world by her labors in prisons. It will be interesting to see 
 how she was viewed by Bishop Heber, then rector of his native 
 parish of Hodnet in Shropshire, when she first began this 
 work at Newgate : — 
 
 She is now [June, 1820] assisted by a numerous committee of 
 ladies, and governs the women's side of Newgate with full authority. 
 We found her in a room where she was expecting her flock to come 
 together for prayers, and I was greatly struck both by her and them. 
 She is a tall, well-looking woman of forty-five, has no pretensions to 
 eloquence, but is the best reader I ever heard, with a voice of perfect 
 music. She read the parable of the Prodigal Son and one of the 
 penitential psalms, and then said a few words of advice to the poor 
 women before her, who listened with deep attention and some of 
 them with tears. . . . You will ask to what I attribute Mrs. Fry's 
 great power over such beings as these. Partly, I conceive, it arises 
 from the contrast between her and any human being whom these 
 poor wretches have ever seen before, partly from the immediate 
 temporal advantages which she has it in her power to bestow, the 
 clothes and comforts of which she is the dispenser, and the mitigation 
 of punishments which she has in some instances obtained for them 
 from Lord Sidmouth, Still, much must be ascribed to her own calm- 
 ness, good sense, and perseverance, her freedom from all enthusiasm 
 or vanity, and her not expecting too much at first from either con- 
 victs or magistrates. Yet there are a set of men who cannot bear 
 that anybody should do good in a new way, who absolutely hate Mrs. 
 Fry ; and, when I was at Oxford, I had to fight her battles repeatedly 
 
66 THE ENGLISH QUAKERS 
 
 with persons whom that arch-bigot, Sir William Scott, had been 
 filling with all possible prejudice against her.* 
 
 Persecution and ridicule had been the lot of the Quakers in 
 England during the first century and a half of their existence 
 as a sect ; but with the opening of the nineteenth century a 
 better era had dawned. Dr. Fothergill, the good physician, the 
 friend of Franklin and of all mankind, who died in 1780, and 
 many other Quakers had shown such a talent for success (which 
 the English value above most men), as well as so many of the 
 national virtues, that it was impossible not to respect them. 
 Even in the humbler callings their piety and benevolence had 
 won the good will of persons who could not understand either 
 their doctrines, their modesty, or their scruples. Wordsworth's 
 Westmoreland friend, Thomas Wilkinson, who tilled his own 
 farm with the spade which the poet celebrated in verse, and 
 who walked the three hundred miles from the Lakes to London 
 (calling on "Edmund and Jane Burke" at Beaconsfield, on the 
 way) to attend the Yearly Meeting, was one of these. Charles 
 Lamb, whose humorous eye caught both the charming and the 
 laughable traits of the society, said of this yearly gathering : — 
 
 Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they come up in bands to 
 their Whitsun conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the me- 
 tropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops 
 of the Shining Ones. 
 
 When Esther Maud, the wife of William Tuke, of York, the 
 founder of rational care for the insane in England, knocked at 
 the door of the London Yearly Meeting in 1784, and with her 
 feminine comrade made the first appearance of women in these 
 London gatherings, the exalted clerk, who presided, said in his 
 heart : " What wilt thou, Queen Esther, and what is thy re- 
 quest ? It shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom." 
 Her request was for a "Women's Yearly Meeting," and it was 
 at once granted : hence the throng of Quakeresses whom Lamb 
 
 "From "Bishop Heber, Poet and Chief Missionary," etc., by George Smitli (London, John 
 Murray, 1895.) The passage cited is on pages 73, 74. Heber was the half-brother of Walter Scott's 
 friend Ricliard Heber, 0/ Hodnet. His sister Mary married Rev. Charles Cholmondeley, father of 
 Thoreau's friend, Thomas Cholmondeley. 
 
1837-1849 67 
 
 noticed, and among whom the susceptible young American now 
 found himself, — sometimes rambling with them in the gardens 
 at Upton, which Dr. Fothergill had planted, or visiting the 
 great Ackworth School, which the same benevolent physician 
 had endowed. 
 
 Luke Howard had been a London chemist, and the partner 
 at Plough Court of William Allen, the philanthropist. Both 
 were Fellows of the Royal Society, at that time a great dis- 
 tinction. Howard was a meteorologist, as Dr. Fothergill had 
 been. He wrote a book on the climate of London, in which 
 Fothergill had been the first to publish a record of the weather. 
 Howard's country home was at the villa, near Ackworth, fresco- 
 painted by an Italian artist, and hospitably served by Maria 
 Bella, an Italian cook, who ten years before, in 1828, had 
 served the fever patients at the Friends' School with delicacies 
 from her kitchen. At the same period Luke Howard broke 
 up the week-day religious meeting at the school with the re- 
 mark, " Under present circumstances I think the children 
 ought to have shorter meetings and more generous diet." This 
 made him very popular at the school. When Dr. Earle, in 
 1837, visited Ackworth, Hannah Richardson, of York, who had 
 long lived with the New York Quaker, Lindley Murray, at 
 Holdgate, near York, had been for two years governess of the 
 girls' department. " She was the most unselfish, disinterested 
 character I ever knew," wrote one who was a schoolmistress 
 under her. "She is before me now, with her kindly, smiling 
 face, in her Friendly attire, with her erect form and somewhat 
 measured step. Wherever we were, even if going out to dinner 
 at a quarterly meeting " (perhaps at S. Gurney's), " to houses 
 where footmen stood behind our chairs (so different from our 
 school life), we were sheltered behind her, our pioneer, to whom 
 we looked up with unmixed confidence and respect, mingled 
 with deep love. She once told me that, if she could have but 
 two books, they must be the Bible and Thomas a Kempis." 
 She was ever active. "I will just step over to Pontefract," 
 she would say, before setting off four miles to that old town, 
 where another Quaker grew licorice to manufacture into " Pom- 
 fret Cakes " for colds and couo-hs. 
 
68 THE QUAKER SCHOOL AT ACKWORTH 
 
 A general meeting was held at Ackworth for a week in July 
 each year, and was a yearly holiday. Dr. Earle was present at 
 this meeting in 1837, near the close of July, and assisted as a 
 member of the committee to examine the boys, the girls being 
 examined only by a committee of women. The treasurer of the 
 school was then, and for long after, Samuel Gurney ; and thither 
 came the other Gurneys and their connection, also the Tukes, 
 of York, the Pease brothers, John and Joseph (the latter the 
 first Quaker M.P.), and that fiery young Quaker, John Bright, 
 whom Dr. Earle afterwards met. Dr. Earle was struck with 
 the simplicity, even to rudeness, of the boarding-school arrange- 
 ments. Writing before the modernization of the school, in 
 consequence of the efforts of James Tuke and others, he said to 
 his sister Eliza, herself a successful teacher : — 
 
 The examination here is not so interesting as that in Providence, 
 since the higher branches are not much studied, from the fact that 
 none are permitted to stay after the age of fifteen. The present 
 number is about three hundred ; and there are more girls than boys, 
 I think. They dress almost exclusively in uniform, the clothing 
 being made by a tailor and a seamstress, who are here constantly 
 employed. The food of the scholars is much more simple than that in 
 American schools, and the table is set in a style that would hardly be 
 tolerated by our republican pupils. Wooden trenchers and tin cups, 
 which appeared as if taken from the ruins of Noah's ark, and from 
 each of which cups four persons drink at meals, form the chief table 
 furniture. Yet the scholars look as robust as a regiment of Green 
 Mountain boys. The other accommodations are very good, and the 
 discipline apparently mild and efficient.* The buildings are arranged 
 on three sides of a square. The court, or green, thus partially en- 
 closed is divided by a flagged walk, the eastern half of the yard 
 being occupied by the boys, and the western by the girls as their 
 playground. Brothers and sisters, also cousins, have the privilege of 
 
 • It was not always thus. When Thomas Pumphrey, who was in charge of the boys from 1835 
 onward, was in his first week at Ackworth, he made this entry in his diary: " Examined the records 
 of caning, — a very humiliating vohime. It carries its own refutation with it as to tlie good effects of 
 such punishments, — two hundred and thirty-five inflictions in a year, of whicli half the number have 
 been upon eight boys, varying from three to twenty-four times in the year. My mind is greatly 
 pained by the perusal." The records of other schools, including the most famous in England, would 
 have pained the good Thomas still more, as may be seen by the memoirs of tlie period, and for long 
 afterwards. There was less of this discipline in the American Friends' schools. 
 
1837-1849 ^9 
 
 meeting at any time upon the dividing walk. It is remarked as a 
 curious fact that nearly all the scholars are related to each other. 
 
 Dr. Earle did not visit Ackworth when again in England in 
 1849, so far as his letters show. He met Samuel Gurney and 
 many of his old Quaker friends ; but Joseph John Gurney had 
 died in 1847, ^^^ Samuel Gurney did not remember him. 
 John Bright had by this time become an active politician, con- 
 spicuous for the part taken by him in the Corn-law repeal, in 
 which, at first, the wealthy Quakers did not much sympathize. 
 Speaking of the Ackworth General Meeting of 1846, Mrs. Ann 
 Ogden Boyce says : — 
 
 The presence of John Bright was not always a source of un- 
 mingled gratification. What had they done, — those gentle, soft- 
 voiced people, — who never imputed a motive, passed a hasty judg- 
 ment, or made a rash promise, — who wrapped up their censure, even, 
 in elaborate sentences of long Latinized words, who were, above all 
 things, peacemakers, — that from their midst should come a young 
 man whose short words smote like sledge-hammers ? who never 
 "believed " nor " hoped" nor "trusted," but was always quite sure 
 he was in the right, w^ho treated some leading Friends with no more 
 reverence than he would have treated a bishop, and who spoke of 
 some Quaker institutions with little more respect than of the House 
 of Lords ! The young " Tribune's " physique, his resolute carriage, 
 the head thrown defiantly back, the sensitive mouth set firmly, may 
 have resembled Friends of the seventeenth century, but not those of 
 the nineteenth. 
 
 How well Mrs. Opie, novelist and late-made Quakeress, had 
 launched the attractive young American, may be judged by 
 these notes from his English diary of 1837, revealing a con- 
 tinual round of dinners, teas, and Quaker meetings in the first 
 month of his residence in the island, where he had planned to 
 tarry but two weeks on his way to Paris, and where he lingered 
 four months : — 
 
 May 27, 1837. — Dined with Richard Beck. J. J. Lister present. 
 May 28. — Meeting at Stoke Newington. Dined with Richard 
 Beck at his country seat. 
 
70 ENGLISH DIARY OF DR. EARLE 
 
 June 4. — At the meeting in Plaistow, Essex. Dined at Samuel 
 Gurney's. Evening meeting at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, 
 London (the Quaker headquarters in the city). Returned, and spent 
 the night at S. Gurney's. 
 
 June 5. — To town (from Upton) in the gig with S. Gurney. Yes- 
 terday, at the Plaistow meeting, Elizabeth Robson preached. The 
 evening meeting at Devonshire House was appointed by J. J. Gur- 
 ney, who was soon going to America. Opened with prayer by 
 E. Fry, followed by a sermon of J. J. Gurney, then prayer by 
 W. Ball, and sermon by Hannah Backhouse, closing with prayer 
 by J. J. G. 
 
 Samuel Gurne}^ lives at Ham House, formerly occupied by Dr. 
 Fothergill, the gardens of which were set under the direction of that 
 celebrated physician. It is five miles from town. Many rare and 
 curious exotic shrubs are in the gardens, still flourishing among the 
 trees. 
 
 Jime 6. — Last week, as I was walking through Houndsditch, a 
 tap on the shoulder caused me to look rovmd. I recognized a per- 
 son whom I had met at dinner a few days before (at Richard Beck's). 
 "I understand you are an American." "Yes." "Well, if you'll 
 come to my house at Isleworth, and spend a week, with such accommo- 
 dations as I can furnish, I shall be glad of your company." I 
 thanked him. " No, no, no thanks. I shall only be paying old 
 debts. I know what it is to receive hospitality in a foreign country. 
 I am an old sailor, and my habits stick to me. I do things and say 
 things in a straightforward manner. I live in a little cottage, — a 
 widower with one son, a little boy. Now you know what to expect 
 when you come." So to-day I took an omnibus ; and, going through 
 Brentford to Islesworth (a village on the Thames near Richmond 
 Hill, about fifteen miles above London Bridge), I found my friend, a 
 brother of Richard Beck, living in a house large enough to supply 
 a parlor, sitting-room, library, wash-room, kitchen, etc., on the ground 
 floor, with a view of the gardens, — one of the prettiest places of the 
 kind I have seen. And here Edward Beck lives, in what he calls 
 very humble style, spending an income of $6,000 a year. Here I 
 passed a week or, more exactly, eight days, during which I drank 
 tea and spent an evening with Charles Allen, a Friend retired from 
 business, with a family of five boys and girls. 
 
 June 14. — A monthly meeting to-day about a mile from Edward 
 Beck's. At dinner his table was filled with friends belonging to the 
 
1837-1849 71 
 
 meeting, but living at some distance, among them John Hull, author 
 of a philanthropic work on the poor and a zealous advocate of total 
 abstinence. He was about to attend a temperance meeting at Wind- 
 sor, fifteen miles further west, and requested me to go with him. 
 When I declined on account of previous arrangements, he added 
 the inducement of promising to take me to the grave of William 
 Penn, at Stoke Park. I finally accepted. 
 
 June x^. — At the Windsor meeting a Mr. Greenbank, who had 
 spent twelve years in America, held forth ; and also another gentle- 
 man from Lancashire, who spoke Englishly, but is uneducated. He 
 " 'oped and troosted that hall would koom forward and join the tem- 
 perance society." In Mr. G. I recognized the gentleman opposite 
 whom 1 rode from Manchester to Birmingham, who suspected me to 
 be an American from the crooked handle of my umbrella, and asked 
 if my name was not Earle, from my resemblance to brother Thomas, 
 whom he knew in Philadelphia. 
 
 June 16. — At John Hull's, who gave me some autographs, among 
 them a letter from Lady Byron. 
 
 June 19. — I rode to Croydon, ten miles south of London, on the 
 road to Brighton (Brighthelmstone), dining there with Peter Bed- 
 ford. After dinner we visited the Croydon boarding-school for boys 
 and girls, one of several such Friends' schools in Great Britain. 
 It is pleasantly situated, with highly cultivated gardens, divided by 
 some of the hedges which make England, in its most luxurious dis- 
 tricts, seem a paradise. The idea of gravel walks at this school 
 seems not to have excited so much ridicule as it did at the Friends' 
 School in Providence, when John Griscom suggested one in the front 
 grove. This Croydon school is limited to eighty boys and seventy 
 girls, and is always full, mainly with those unable to pay for an ex- 
 pensive education, and patronized by the wealthy only so far as to 
 prevent the children from feeling that pur society separates the 
 " precious " from the "vile," and that they are among the latter. 
 We called at two other places, and met at one of them John Barclay, 
 descended from Barclay of the " Apology," and himself an author of 
 some note. Took tea with William Frith, another old bachelor, Uke 
 Peter Bedford, retired from business, and living with a sister and 
 two nieces in one of those thousand villas, near London, that bloom 
 under a perfect cultivation. 
 
 June 23, Friday. — Met Elizabeth Fry at Newgate Prison. 
 
72 THE GURNEYS AT HAM HOUSE 
 
 June 24. — Took the coach to Upton, five miles from London. 
 Called at Joseph Fry's (husband of Elizabeth), and saw him, but not 
 his wife. Dined at Ham House. After dinner walked through the 
 grounds of S. Gurney, with him and his family and the wife and two 
 daughters of J. J. Lister. Mr. Gurney has one hundred tons of hay 
 now cut and out. Many men and women were making it. Day 
 after to-morrow (June 26) the children are to give a haymaking 
 party. Spent this Saturday night at Ham House. 
 
 Jtme 2t^, Sabbath. — The Gurney family assembled this morning. 
 Three of the younger children read, and so did S. Gurney. The 
 children repeated poetry. At the Plaistow meeting, not far away, 
 there was prayer by Mrs. Fry, and sermon by Hannah Backhouse. 
 At dinner, with her and her brother and Eliza Kirkbride (at 
 S. Gurney's), I met Sir T. F. Buxton and his son. In the evening I 
 supped with J. Fry. At table were his wife, a daughter, and two 
 sons. Before supper we walked in the garden and grounds, examin- 
 ing the flowers, the Jersey cows, and an old pony. After supper 
 Mrs. F. read the chapter in Luke about the Pharisee and publican. 
 
 Mrs. Opie, in one of her letters of 1838, gives a fuller descrip- 
 tion of life at Ham House and in Upton Lane, near by, where 
 Mrs. Fry then lived. She says : — 
 
 Monday I reached a dark-looking house in Lombard Street — Mr. 
 Gurney's house of business — at 3.30 p.m.* Going upstairs, I found 
 in a back room Mr. Gurney, two young ladies, and an old gentle- 
 man, rather crooked and odd-looking, with two or three others. 
 " Truly glad to see thee, my dear," said Mr. Gurney. An hour's 
 drive brought us to Upton (Ham House). •' How does my little gal 
 do ? " said he to a little child that ran out to meet us at the door. 
 " How glad I am to see thee are home, Sam ! " exclaimed a tall lady 
 with white hair, coming out ; while a very tall gentleman in a blue 
 coat with gilt buttons (Fowell Buxton) called from behind, " And 
 how's the king of London and all the princesses this morning 1 " 
 One would have thought Mr. Gurney had been out for a year, by all 
 the greetings ; but they are a very affectionate family. At 5.30 we 
 assembled in the drawing-room, and I was introduced to the five 
 daughters and son and several guests. I went in to dinner with Mr. 
 
 • This was the business house of Overend, Gurney & Co., the largest discounting house in the 
 world then. It had grown out of the Norwich business of Joseph Smith in 1806-7, whose clerk 
 Overend was. 
 
1837-1849 73 
 
 Gurney, who placed everybody before he took his own seat : " Fowell, 
 sit by my wife ; Catherine next ; Prissy, my sweet, by Charles ; the 
 little gal by me," etc. The evening was finished by a supply of wine- 
 glasses of gruel. 
 
 Tuesday morning we were all summoned into the dining-room at 
 8.30 by the ringing of a great bell, when Mr. Gurney read a chapter 
 in the Bible. Directly after a tall clergyman, rather lame, made his 
 appearance, having come, rather to the surprise of everybody, by 
 one of the mails. The only introduction I had was, " Francis, thee 
 knows Amelia," — a mistake, but a common mode of introduction at 
 Upton. Though it was a damp, drizzly morning, we all went to the 
 end of a terrace walk in the garden, — their usual practice before 
 breakfast. " Francis," said Mr. Gurney at breakfast, " I'll give thee 
 five pounds for Chenda's schools, if thee likes." Meantime it was 
 being arranged who was to be asked to that day's dinner ; and at 
 least three notes of invitation were despatched, and the answers re- 
 ceived, before Mr. Gurney left the breakfast table, which he did ten 
 minutes before the rest, to start for town. They seem to think 
 nothing of giving short notice at Upton. After breakfast, to my 
 surprise, one of the girls ushered me into my bedroom with : " We 
 generally separate for the morning, but meet at twelve to read with 
 John (the invalid brother). Perhaps thee'd like to join us." I 
 assented, and was left to my meditations in my pleasant room over- 
 looking the front door, where the numerous departures and arrivals 
 amused me exceedingly. I came down at twelve, when some of the 
 party settled to drawing, others to working, while their brother read 
 to them. Luncheon — a famous hot meal, at one — put a final end 
 to further literary pursuits. All the afternoon arrangements, most 
 various, were made then. 
 
 After luncheon Mrs. Opie was taken to Mrs. Fry's, Upton 
 Lane. 
 
 I found her, like the party at Ham House, quite full of business. 
 There were already two persons to speak to her ; but she kindly 
 came forward to speak to me, and introduced me to one of the per- 
 sons as master of a coast-guard station, and to the other as a matron 
 going out to some establishment in New South Wales. She was so 
 taken up with this matron that I saw little of her till the carriage 
 came with Mr. Gurney, who called out : " Oh, I must go speak to 
 
74 THE GURNEY FAMILY 
 
 Betsy. Betsy, here are these letters. Thee must do so and so with 
 them: do thee understand?" ... At half-past-five the dinner-party 
 assembled at Upton, — a seven-leaf table. ... At dessert the little 
 girl was despatched to fetch a little boy, who was soon perched on 
 grandpapa's knee, and before long was on his way to grandmamma, 
 walking along the table, amid exclamations of, " Take care ! take him 
 off ! " which were perfectly unheeded ; and he arrived at his destina- 
 tion safely. In the drawing-room three kittens are generally play- 
 ing. A parrot named Thomas lives on a tree near the house ; and 
 there are, besides, dogs, doves, and canaries without end. Nobody 
 who has not been at Upton can understand its pleasures and peculi- 
 arities. 
 
 Dr. Fothergill, who had laid out the grounds of Ham 
 House, was a celebrated physician, contemporary with Dr. 
 Erasmus Darwin, but older, and, like him, fond of rare plants 
 and trees ; a Quaker also, and one who practised medicine as 
 much from philanthropy as for gain. Plashet House, where 
 the Frys lived before their loss of property, was near Ham 
 House, both being in Upton, and not far from the Quaker 
 meeting of Plaistow. The old home of the Gurneys at Earl- 
 ham was occupied, after his father's decease, by Joseph John 
 Gurney, the scholar of the family ; and George Borrow, in 
 " Lavengro," has given a picture of it and of its owner, as the 
 strolling author saw him, when fishing one day on his grounds. 
 The misfortunes which overtook the banking house of Over- 
 end* & Gurney did not come until after the death of Samuel 
 Gurney, in 1865. 
 
 Of Joseph John Gurney many notices and anecdotes are 
 given. Mrs. Ann Ogden Boyce, a kinswoman of the Richard- 
 sons of Cleveland, England, in her " Records of a Quaker 
 Family" (London, 1889), says: "One of a family of brothers 
 and sisters (children of John Gurney of Earlham) remarkable 
 for their gifts of mind and person, cultured, prosperous, and 
 
 •One of the founders of the house of Overend & Gumey was Thomas Richardson, of a remark- 
 able Quaker family in the county of Durham, whose sister married John Overend (born 1769, died 
 1832). Overend was the inventor of the plan of charging but one commission on bills, and converted 
 John Gumey to the plan, who soon sent his son Samuel to join the new firm of discount and bill 
 brokers. Overend and Richardson were both clerks in banking houses at tlie time, early in the 
 present century. 
 
1837-1849 75 
 
 generous, Joseph John Gurney was a man of great influence 
 in his generation. His sweetness of nature exhibited itself in 
 a manner full of the most winning courtesy and consideration 
 for the feelings of the humblest and youngest person. He 
 walked about the Ackworth school garden like a prince, sur- 
 rounded by his loyal subjects. When it was announced that 
 Joseph John Gurney had reached the school, the girls gathered 
 with one accord upon the green, clustering round him like a 
 swarm of bees." Mention has been made of this Ackworth 
 school when Dr. Earle records his visit there. It had been a 
 provincial branch of the London Foundling Hospital, but was 
 given up as such, and was purchased, with its farm and fine 
 stone buildings, by Dr. Fothergill in 1777. He and his friends 
 paid ^35,000 for what had cost $85,000. It was the model of 
 other Friends' schools in England and America, and is still a 
 flourishing establishment. 
 
 Of Dr. Fothergill (born 17 12, died 1780) Dr. Franklin said, 
 in a letter to another Quaker physician, Isaac Lettsom, written 
 from Paris while Franklin was American ambassador there, 
 after his friend's death, " If we may estimate the goodness of 
 a man by his disposition to do good, and his constant endeav- 
 ors and success in doing it, I can hardly conceive that a better 
 man than Fothergill has ever existed." His portrait was painted 
 by Hogarth at a time when Quakers were averse to sitting for 
 pictures. 
 
 Among all these English Friends, so hospitable and so 
 interesting, there was one, Joseph John Gurney, of whom Dr. 
 Earle makes little mention, because he had been moved of the 
 spirit to visit America, a little after the young American's ar- 
 rival in England. He remained on our continent, visiting the 
 United States, Canada, and the West Indies, until after Dr. 
 Earle's return to Philadelphia in 1S39, and they met there in 
 1840; but, when Dr. Earle made his second visit to Europe, in 
 1849, J. J. Gurney was dead. He was the most learned of the 
 whole Quaker Society in England, and one of the most ortho- 
 dox, so that the secession of Elias Hicks and his followers 
 in 1828 had given him great concern; and his visit to the 
 United States had for its objects to oppose the Hicksite 
 
76 THE GURNEY FAMILY 
 
 Quakers, and to do what he could for the enfranchisement of 
 the slaves. It seems that nearly or quite a third of the Ameri- 
 can Quakers had separated from their brethren, following the 
 views of Elias Hicks, — chiefly in New York, Pennsylvania, 
 and Maryland ; in New England there was no open secession, 
 though the opinions of Elias were probably held by some of the 
 Quakers there ; in Virginia and North Carolina also, no seces- 
 sion occurred. Of the troubles in Philadelphia, mention has 
 been made in the first chapter. Dr. Earle in his English diary, 
 presently to be cited, speaks of the departure of J. J. Gurney 
 for America; and the jocose verses circulated at the Yearly 
 IMeeting (ascribed by some, but incorrectly, to Dr. Earle as 
 their author) make allusion to J. J. Gurney, and the Eng- 
 lish disputes in which he took an active part. The diary 
 goes on : — 
 
 Ju7ie 26, 1837. — Rode to London with S. Gurney, after spending 
 the night at his house. Visited at Jonathan Backhouse's. The ill- 
 ness of his sister has long detained them near London. They will 
 leave to-morrow for Liverpool, whence, July 8, Eliza Kirkbride and 
 J. J. Gurney will sail for Philadelphia. Rode in the afternoon with 
 J. J. Lister, his wife, and three children, to his house at Upton. 
 He lives near S. Gurney's. We sat up till midnight, viewing objects 
 through his microscope. 
 
 June 27. — Quarterly meeting at Plaistow. At 2 p.m. the meeting 
 adjourned for dinner, and met again at five. I dined at Plough 
 Court with a son-in-law of William Allen, who was present, and also 
 Robert and Josiah Forster. 
 
 June 28. — Called at J. Fry's, where Mrs. Fry gave me some 
 autographs, one of them from a royal princess. To London with 
 J. J. Lister. 
 
 June 30. — To the British Museum. My stay in England has been 
 unexpectedly prolonged.* 
 
 •Dr. Earle, late in life, told me the circumstance which enabled him to spend so much time 
 travelling in the three kingdoms, when he had formed a Spartan resolution to devote himself and his 
 small property to the completing of his medical education in Paris. He was dining one day with a 
 party at the house of a wealthy English Friend, and was asked by one of the company how long his 
 stay in England would be. Dr. Earle named some brief space, adding that he must go on to Paris 
 and take up his studies there. " Kut," said his friend, " you are not seeing enough of England and 
 Scotland: you ought to spend the summer here." "I should be glad to do so," said the young 
 American, "if I could afford it; but I came to Europe to study, and must deny myself the pleasure." 
 
1837-1849 77 
 
 July I. — I go to Totteaham to spend Sunday with Josiah and 
 Robert Forster. Dine there this evening. 
 
 July 2. — At the Tottenham meeting, where Anna Braithwaite 
 preached from the text, " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome 
 evil with good." Dined in company with her and her daughter at 
 Josiah Forster's. Caroline B. is very spirituelle and quick in repar- 
 tee. I have often been tortured by the arrows of her wit. 
 
 July 3. — To town with Robert Forster, where I supped last night. 
 
 July 5, 6. — Supped, lodged, and breakfasted with George Stacy 
 at Tottenham. He married a daughter of S. Lloyd, the banker. 
 Dined at John Hodgkin's with Sir Augustus D'Este, a son of the 
 Duke of Sussex. G. Stacy resembles President Van Buren. I told 
 him so, thinking, of course, it would be a compliment ; but, miseri- 
 cordia ! he came as near being offended as would answer for a disciple 
 of George Fox. At what ? At the idea of being even physically 
 analogous to a man of such heterodox opinions on the slave ques- 
 tion as Van Buren is. His wife is about the age of sister Sarah 
 Hadwen, and, like her, retains the appearance of "sweet seventeen." 
 Beside her sits a daughter who might be mistaken for a younger sister. 
 
 July II. — Anti-slavery meeting at Exeter Hall. The Duke of 
 Sussex presided, led in by William Allen. Joseph Sturge spoke at 
 much length. 
 
 July 13. — Dined with Robert Howard at Tottenham, who married 
 another daughter of S. Lloyd. Rode with him to Chingford church. 
 Took tea and passed the night at Robert Forster's. 
 
 July 14. — Breakfasted with Josiah Forster in the city, and back at 
 night to stay at R. Forster's. 
 
 The next day Dr. Earle started northward on the Birming- 
 ham Railway, after six weeks of this genial Quaker hospitality. 
 The character of his entertainers is disclosed by their names. 
 
 Nothing further passed at the moment ; but, when they rose from the table, this Friend took Dr. Earle 
 aside, and said, ' I have a sum of money which is at thy disposal for a tour in England, and I shall 
 be glad to have thee take it." " But I cannot repay thee at present, probably not for some years." 
 " Never mind," was the answer : " I will trust thee until thou canst pay." The offer was so kindly 
 made, and the thing to be done — to make the acquaintance, not only of English scenery and life, but 
 of the attractive and hospitable English Quakers, who invited him so cordially to their houses — was 
 so eminently desirable, that it was accepted ; and some years after this the loan was repaid. The 
 incident seems to me a delightful illustration of character in both lender and borrower. As Emerson 
 said of his brother Edward, — 
 
 Prosperous Age held forth his hand. 
 
 And freely his large future planned. 
 
78 ENGLAND IN 1837 
 
 They were the most wealthy and prominent of the Friends 
 about London, and at that time becoming powerful in the af- 
 fairs of Parliament and the nation. This was due in part to 
 their riches, but much more to the active share taken by them 
 as a sect in the discontinuance of the slave-trade and the aboli- 
 tion of slavery in the British colonies ; in part, also, to those 
 personal traits which made William Penn and some of his con- 
 temporaries influential at the court of the Stuart kings. The 
 Gurneys and some others of the leading Quakers of England — 
 notably, William Allen and Mrs. Fry (herself one of the Earl- 
 ham Gurneys) — had that charm of manners, along with sincerity 
 of conviction, which never fails to please an aristocratic circle. 
 This is evident enough from what Dr. Earle says of them, both 
 in England and afterwards in France, where he met Mrs. Fry 
 and some of her friends in the following winter. He was a 
 close observer, not without humor ; and many of his descrip- 
 tions and anecdotes may still be read with amusement. Speak- 
 ing of the stage-coaches and ta.verns, he says : — 
 
 The public coach of the English is a model of compactness, neat- 
 ness, and lightness, drawn by large horses, elegant in form, and 
 handsomely caparisoned, the brass trimmings of their harness 
 glistening in the sun, when that happens to shine. The coachman 
 is a portly creature, in genteel dress, wearing white-topped boots and 
 white gloves. He seldom touches his whip while driving. Ati con- 
 traire, the French diligence is driven by a small man in a blue frock, 
 over which in cold or wet weather he wears a curious goatskin gar- 
 ment, dressed with the hair on ; and, what with his whip and his 
 mouth, he keeps up a continual crack and chirrup from Calais to 
 Marseilles and from Bordeaux to Strasbourg. His diligence is a 
 lumbering vehicle, weighing of itself from one to two tons, and some- 
 times carrying on its top, at least a ton of merchandise. It is drawn 
 by small horses, harnessed with ropes, and driven three or four 
 abreast. All the inns in England of any importance, and some that 
 are unimportant, are dignified with titles, and seldom known by the 
 name of the landlord, as in America. I saw "The Star and Garter," 
 " The White Horse," the " Cock and Castle," and "The Jolly Butch- 
 ers." One near Sheffield is called " The Fiery Dragon," and its 
 landlord is a " Tempest." The " Bell at Edmonton " famous in John 
 
1837-1849 79 
 
 Gilpin's day, still exists ; and on its front is a picture of Gilpin's race, 
 taken at the moment when 
 
 The dogs did bark, the children screamed, 
 
 Up flew the windows all. 
 And every soul cried out, " Well done ! " 
 
 As loud as they could bawl. 
 
 In the stage-coach in Derbyshire I found myself in company with 
 two very intelligent men, a Whig and a Tory. Party politics were 
 running high ; for it was on the eve of the election of members to the 
 first Parliament of the youthful Victoria, whose coronation I wit- 
 nessed the next year. In the discussion I made a remark which im- 
 plied me to be a foreigner. " But, surely, you are an Englishman ? " 
 said one of them. "No, I am an American." "Then you have al- 
 ways lived in England ? " "I have only been in your country six 
 weeks." " But you must have been educated here." "This is the 
 first time I have ever been out of the United States." "Indeed ! do 
 all the Americans speak our language as well as you do?" All are 
 not such in England ; for one damp morning, as I was perambulating 
 the streets of Penrith, wearing my camlet cloak and overshoes, and 
 gazing like a country gawky at the objects about me, a huckster- 
 woman, coming up to me with a courtesy, said, " Pray, sir, are ye an 
 
 American ? " " Yes." " Is your name X ? " " No : why do you 
 
 ask, and why think me from America.-"' "Why, I seed ye wears a 
 cloak, and there's American missionaries in Westmoreland that wears 
 cloaks, too ; an' I didna know but ye was one o' them." After a 
 pause : " I hope ye'll excuse me for speakin' to ye. I didna know but 
 ye was one o' them missionaries, and wanted a place to board. I 
 hope the missionaries will succeed, for I think there's more moral 
 darkness in Westm'rTn' than in the Indies." 
 
 After Edward Beck had invited me (in the streets of London) to 
 make him a visit at Islesworth, he went home and told his sister, — 
 for he has no wife, — "Well, I have invited an American to come 
 and spend a week with us." "O dear brother, how could thee?" 
 "Because I think it will be pleasant to both him and myself." 
 "But," — and she spoke as if ruin were likely to come upon their 
 furniture, — " but we have no spittoons in the house ! Really, I hope 
 he won't be spitting about everywhere." There is certainly a great 
 difference between the English and the Americans in regard to this 
 
8o ENGLAND IN 1 838 
 
 habit. Absolutely, I have no recollection of having seen a man spit 
 since I came to England, unless he were smoking. Neither have I 
 observed any chewing tobacco. There is a vast amount of pipe- 
 smoking among the lower classes ; but cigars, from their high price, 
 are used only by politicians. They are the Tories of Nicotiana. 
 
 The English understand the true philosophy of living better than 
 we Americans, although perhaps they drink a little more porter and 
 wine than is best. But a change in that habit is rapidly taking 
 place. Proselytes to the doctrine of the "teetotalers," as they are 
 called here, are made almost as fast as to the anti-slavery cause in 
 the United States. There was a discussion on the subject at the 
 Yearly Meeting in May. Many remarks had been made, both pro 
 and con, when one of the assistant clerks of the meeting, a leading 
 member of the society, arose. He said he must acknowledge that 
 he was not ready to unite with the sentiments of some who had 
 spoken. He was fully satisfied that, after the labors of the day, he 
 had often experienced great invigoration from a glass of porter, and 
 been thereby better prepared for the duties of the evening. No 
 sooner had his coat-skirts touched the bench than a Friend, still 
 higher in the " rising seats " than himself, rose to clinch the nail 
 which the brother had driven. Imagine a Friend of seventy years 
 standing in the gallery, covered by a real primitive tri-cocked hat, 
 and leaning upon a cane to plead the cause of the juice of the 
 grape, with an earnestness that would do credit to some of the 
 young men on the other side of the question. Wine is set upon the 
 table by a much greater proportion of our society members than I 
 had supposed. However, they rarely drink more than two glasses, 
 and generally but one. 
 
 It has been my pleasant lot (Sept. g, 1837) to see a great deal of 
 our Society of Friends, considering the short time I have been in 
 England, and much of the best society among them. They bring 
 about them all those little (as well as great) conveniences and com- 
 forts which so much conduce to the luxury of living. Their social 
 affections are cultivated, if possible, to an objectionable extreme. I 
 speak not from my personal observation alone, but from the testi- 
 mony of some English Friends themselves. I lately passed an even- 
 ing with Samuel Tuke (of the York Lunatic Retreat), who is now in 
 London. Our conversation turned upon lunatic asylums, insanity in 
 general, the predominance of that disease among the Friends, and 
 
1837-1849 8i 
 
 the cause of such preponderance. Among other influences tending 
 that way, he mentioned the extreme cultivation of the ties of consan- 
 guinity, the parental and fraternal affections. 
 
 This is the first intimation given in the young doctor's let- 
 ters that he was specially considering what was to be his life- 
 work in America and the occasion of several future visits to 
 Europe. But, before he returned home in 1839, he had in- 
 spected many of the European asylums then existing ; and he 
 reported on their condition, soon after his return, in a work 
 which first drew general attention to the European specialty. 
 Crossing over to Ireland in the summer of 1837, he visited an 
 asylum in Dublin, and relates this incident : — 
 
 I have a strong inclination to wear a mask. My plain Quaker 
 coat, although in a land of Friends, attracts too much attention. 
 September 8, while near the " Bell at Edmonton," I was accosted 
 thus : " Excuse me, sir, for the intrusion ; but I am a poor man with 
 a family, and can get no work, else I would not beg. If you will 
 give me a few pence, I shall be very much obliged to you. Pray, 
 sir, let me furn down the collar of your coat.'' He suited the action 
 to the word, before I could say Jack Robinson, Passing along the 
 wards of the lunatic asylum at Dublin, we met a patient apparently 
 very happy. "Well, Tom," said the keeper with me, "how are you 
 to-day ? " " Oh, illigant, illigant," replied the maniac. Then, step- 
 ping up to me, he asked, " Are you an Englishman, sir ? " "I came 
 from England." " Well, I Uke the EngUsh. Why t Because they 
 give a fellow a bit of something to ate. Let me fix your coat-col- 
 lar," and accordingly gave it a turn. I thanked him, and pursued 
 my way. 
 
 A concise review of his first English experiences was given 
 by Dr. Earle in this letter to Mrs. Spring, of Sept. i, 1837, 
 written from the Isle of Wight : — 
 
 Dear Cousin Rebecca, — Even at the present late period, I have 
 not yet seen the coast of la belle Frafice. The English people 
 and the English scenery, the English antiquities and institutions, 
 have presented attractions powerful enough thus long to protract my 
 
82 ENGLAND IN 1837 
 
 Stay among them, in this thrice-blessed yet doubly cursed land. I 
 could not have selected a more desirable season to be in Great Brit- 
 ain. The weather has been uncommonly warm and dry (though 
 there has not been a day that I should call very warm), and vegeta- 
 tion remarkably luxuriant. The many changes which have occurred 
 in the royal family, and the consequent dissolution of the old Parlia- 
 ment and election of the new one, have furnished constant subjects 
 of excitement among the people, and enabled me to see more of a 
 monarchial government as it exists here than would have been pos- 
 sible under ordinary circumstances. I have seen the queen three 
 or four times, but had the best opportunity of studying her face 
 while she was on her way to the House of Lords for the purpose of 
 dissolving Parliament, The royal procession on that occasion was 
 one of the most magnificent displays of regal splendor ever exhibited 
 in England. And the head and heart and soul of the whole of it 
 was that little girl just turned of eighteen. Young as she is, she 
 played her part very well. 
 
 I arrived here this morning, after a tour of more than fifteen hun- 
 dred miles through England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Loch 
 Katrine and Loch Lomond (a larger and, in my opinion, a more 
 beautiful lake) were the places farthest north that I visited. I 
 landed and spent some time on the island where the Lady of the 
 Lake landed before me. Since then I have been among the lakes 
 in England, visiting Windermere, Derwent, UUswater, Thirlmere, 
 Grasmere, Rydal Water, and Esthwaite Lakes ; passed some time in 
 rich yet poverty-stricken Dublin and its vicinity ; ascended Mt. 
 Snowdon in North Wales, and have come thence to the Isle of 
 Wight. I have been in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Man- 
 chester, Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield, York, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
 Bristol, Bath, Oxford, and Cambridge, besides numerous places of 
 minor importance. 
 
 I found in Joseph Sturge a very agreeable fellow-passenger. He 
 sat at my right hand during the whole passage over. When in 
 Birmingham, I visited very agreeably at his house, and have since 
 met him several times. Since his return, with the mighty lever of 
 horrid truth which he brought from the tropics, he has moved the 
 whole British, nation. You will have heard of the breakfast given 
 him by the inhabitants of Birmingham, and the exposition which he 
 made at that time ; also you will have read of the great anti-slavery 
 
1837-1849 83 
 
 meeting at Exeter Hall, at which the Duke of Sussex presided, and 
 J. Sturge, among others, addressed the audience. I had the pleas- 
 ure of being present then, my friend, Robert Forster, having given 
 me a ticket to the platform. The form of a petition on behalf of the 
 West India Apprentices, to be addressed by the women of Great 
 Britain to their queen, was adopted at that time, and is now among 
 the people for signatures. The numbers obtained exceed the most 
 sanguine expectation of the friends of the negro. It will, in all 
 probability, exceed the renowned petition presented to Parliament 
 by T. Fowell Buxton, before the passage of the Apprenticeship Bill, 
 and which required four men to carry it. That contained but 
 about two hundred thousand names. It is hoped that in this there 
 will be five hundred thousand. In the city of Bristol alone, upwards 
 of thirty thousand (equal to about one-third of the population) have 
 already been obtained. 
 
 In Darlington I became acquainted with Elizabeth Pease, a 
 Friend who is much interested in anti-slavery, and, I think, a cor- 
 respondent of either Sarah or Angelina Grimke. ... I sincerely re- 
 gret that A. E. Grimke should have introduced the resolution which 
 awakened the discussion upon " the rights of women." It was un- 
 called for and unnecessary. I expect to retiirn to London in two or 
 three days. 
 
 As this letter shows, by the ist of September Dr. Earle had 
 visited Edinburgh, the Scotch Highlands, Glasgow, Dublin, 
 Dumfries, Hawthornden of the Drummonds, Gretna Green, 
 Carlisle, Windermere, and other places of note in Words- 
 worth's country, and had not only ascended Snowdon, but 
 
 Climbed the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn. 
 
 Then, returning to London, he sailed down the Thames on his 
 way to Boulogne September 12, and in two days more was in 
 Paris for the winter. But even in that gay and studious capi- 
 tal he was not yet out of the Quaker circle of England. In 
 October the family of Samuel Gurney were in Paris for some 
 days; and in February, 1838, Mrs. Fry and her husband, with 
 other English Friends, held meetings in Paris, which were 
 largely attended by English, American, and French people of 
 both sexes. Dr. Earle (February 18) went in the evening to 
 
84 MRS. FRY IN PARIS 
 
 the rooms of Joseph and Elizabeth Fry, after hearing her give 
 elsewhere " the best sermon I have ever heard from her." He 
 then says : — 
 
 I introduced Dr. Mott and his daughter to Mrs, Fry, who spoke 
 of receiving a letter from Richard Mott, twenty years before, invit- 
 ing her to America. I said I hoped she would still accept the invi- 
 tation. Joseph Fry: "I hope she'll consult her husband about it." 
 I replied that I had not finished my remark, — I was going to say, 
 " and her husband, too." He said, " In London, if you buy a span 
 of horses, you generally get one very good horse, the other only or- 
 dinary." I replied, "And sometimes two very good ones." "Gen- 
 erally," he repeated, " an ordinary one harnessed with a good one to 
 get him off." Among the audience at the sermon, which was in 
 English, was a Frenchwoman, of whom Mr. Fry asked if she under- 
 stood what had been uttered. " Non," was , her answer, "Je n'ai 
 pas compris les mots; mais il y avait quelque chose que j'ai senti, 
 beaucoup, dans mon cceur." (" Nay, I did not comprehend the 
 words ; but there was something which I deeply felt in my heart.") 
 
 A month later Robert Ware Fox, of Falmouth, the father of 
 Caroline Fox, was in Paris with his daughters ; and Dr. Earle 
 met them frequently. In May and June, 1838, he was again in 
 England, and renewed his acquaintance with them and with 
 his other friends among the English Quakers. Dr. Earle wrote 
 home that he was " enchanted " with the Foxes ; and Caroline 
 (whose journals were published not long after her death) seems 
 to have been the most attractive member of a singularly gifted 
 family. On leaving Paris, he made this entry concerning the 
 final result of the labors of Mrs. Fry, Anne Knight, and other 
 English Quakers for the improvement of the F"rench prisons 
 and for other social ameliorations : — 
 
 While Elizabeth Fry was here, a committee was appointed to visit 
 prisons, composed in part of Catholics and in part of Protestants. 
 Religious difficulties soon arose, and all the Protestant members re- 
 signed and withdrew. There is ground for the belief that the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris will endeavor to undo all that was done by Mrs. Fry, 
 except what was done among the English in Paris. 
 
1837-1849 8s 
 
 On his return to England (Feb. 20, 1838), Dr. Earle took 
 lodgings on Queen's Square, near the British Museum, the 
 Royal College of Surgeons, and the London University, all 
 which he visited. But his chief interest was still with the 
 members of the Society of Friends, a few sketches of whom 
 may be given, with the events therewith connected : — 
 
 Feb. 23, 1838. — Called at John Burrt's. John is a good-hearted, 
 benevolent man, who is always doing something, — if not otherwise 
 occupied, he talks ; and, if you wish it, he will do all the talking. 
 Like many of the English Friends, he dresses in drab small-clothes 
 and gaiters. Dined with the mother of Albert Savory, the party 
 consisting of his mother, sister, two brothers, and James and William 
 Tuke, sons of Samuel Tuke, of York. The Savorys live at Stam- 
 ford Hill, between London and Tottenham ; but, like all Friends' 
 famines who live some miles away and have business in the city, 
 they have a table -at their place of business, where they dine, — at 
 least during Yearly Meeting. 
 
 February 23. — Dined and passed the night with Edward Beck, at 
 Islesworth, with whom I spent eight days last spring. He has since 
 married Susan Lucas, a highly educated young woman. It was 
 pleasant again to meet him. He is a man of little reserve, and 
 speaks frankly what he thinks, — can perceive the faults of the 
 English as well as of the Americans or any other people, and men- 
 tions them as freely. We have thoroughly canvassed the manners 
 and customs of our compatriots, and always good-humoredly. He 
 was never displeased by any of my remarks, but once he showed a 
 little irritation at something I did or failed to do. He always has a 
 variety of excellent wines on the dinner table. This day the dessert 
 consisted in part of wedding cake. When it was brought in, I had 
 already taken as much wine as I ought ; but with this cake it was 
 verily needful to take a little more. So I poured a half-glass, say- 
 ing, " Excuse me : I have already drunk more than I need." In- 
 stantly I perceived the irritation I have mentioned (I ought, accord- 
 ing to common courtesy here, to have filled the glass). But he only 
 said, '* Certainly : thou well knows I have always given permission 
 to do as thou pleases." 
 
 February 25. — Returned to London and called on Joseph Sturge 
 to get a ticket of entrance to Exeter Hall, to a meeting of such as 
 
86 CAROLINE FOX AND HER FRIENDS 
 
 favor the immediate abolition of the apprenticeship of the emanci- 
 pated negroes in the colonies. At the meeting I met many ac- 
 quaintances, — James Webb, at whose house I dined in Dublin, 
 George Thompson, who gave me items of news from America, — the 
 marriage of Angelina Grimk^ to Theodore Weld, for example, — 
 Frederick Tucket, an extensive traveller, William Smeat, with whom 
 I breakfasted in Glasgow, etc. Among them was Elizabeth Pease, 
 of Darlington, and a daughter of Isaac Braithwaite, the most 
 beautiful, be it said in passing, of all the young Quakeresses I have 
 met in England. But she is no longer a true Quaker in principle, 
 though still a member of our society. She is a Tory, regarding the 
 national Church, the hereditary peerage, and all the relics of feudal 
 times as the greatest blessings of her country. (I shall long remem- 
 ber a discussion of those subjects which we had in a twilight walk 
 to the ruins of the ancient palace near Kendal.) I also met Anna 
 Maria and Caroline Fox, the two daughters of R. W. Fox, who were 
 in Paris, and a brother of theirs, who reminds me of brother William. 
 The two young ladies are amiable and full of vivacity, not hand- 
 some (their complexion having the Spanish tint), but with that 
 which is better than beauty of face, — a wealth of mind, richesse de 
 Vesprit. Caroline is very spiritudle and quick in repartee. 
 
 Exeter Hall was my dinner this day, — beefsteak, well covered with 
 pepper, brought from the kitchen of Lord Brougham, a ragout 
 cooked by George Thompson, turtle soup served by Daniel O'Con- 
 nell, and entremets, salads, and dessert from the cookeries of 
 several celebrated members of the bourgeoisie. I find that O'Connell 
 is not liked by all Friends, although they are very glad to have his 
 powerful assistance in the cause of emancipation. Against the 
 Roman Catholics the Irish Friends appear to have an almost impla- 
 cable hatred. 
 
 Sunday, 2'jih. — At the meeting in Plaistow we had sermons from 
 the two Elizabeth Frys, mother and daughter. I dined at Samuel 
 Gurney's, the other guests being Sir T. F. Buxton, with his beautiful 
 daughter Lucy, Anna and Caroline Fox, Thomas Pim, of Bristol, 
 William (Edward) Forster, Edward Backhouse, Jr., with his brother 
 and sister Lucy, — nephews and niece of Hannah B. The party 
 was so large that there were two tables, large and small, the latter 
 for the younger guests. In course of the dinner they became quite 
 turbulent, with loud talk and laughter. T. F. Buxton called to them 
 
1837-1849 8; 
 
 in a very loud voice, " A little silence there ! a little silence ! " The 
 Stentor made things quiet for a few minutes. Sir T. F. Buxton is 
 hors de combat on the apprenticeship question, having been per- 
 suaded to act against his own convictions when he gave his voice 
 in favor of apprenticing, and for the payment to the masters of 
 ;^2o,ooo,ooo. Since then he has been silent on the subject; but he 
 is still himself, — still the same benevolent man, — his philanthropic 
 spirit always occupied with projects for the good of mankind. For 
 some months he has been investigating the slave-trade ; and he 
 finds that the number of negroes carried from Africa to America is 
 now twice as large as when the trade was abolished in England. 
 The number of men killed in the wars to obtain these slaves aver- 
 ages one thousand a day. 
 
 The custom of English ladies to leave the table before the men is 
 still kept up, even among some Friends. When they rose to-day, 
 S. Gurney said, " It is our practice to let every person go where he 
 will and do what he will until three o'clock, when all will assemble in 
 the parlor to read the Scriptures," it being between meetings, and 
 hence the early dinner hour. We remained at table but a few min- 
 utes ; and then nearly all went into the garden, where we found the 
 young ladies, with whom we promenaded, and went to the deer 
 park, containing but twelve or fifteen deer. 
 
 I took tea with Joseph Jackson Lister, who last year showed me 
 wonders with the microscope. There were present, besides the 
 children, William Aldham, of Leeds, his wife, and five or six other 
 guests. I was obliged to answer for the hundredth time such ques- 
 tions as this: "Is it true that you Americans do not call your 
 domestics servants ? I have heard that your servants do not ask 
 leave when they go out, is that so ? " We walked some time in the 
 garden, where are two magnificent cedars of Lebanon, took tea, and 
 then went to the afternoon meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. After 
 meeting I went home with Joseph and Elizabeth Fry, passed half an 
 hour there, and then rode to London with W. Aldham and family. 
 His son was educated at one of the two universities, and has since 
 travelled in Southern Europe and in Asia. 
 
 May 28. — I dined to-day with Edward Backhouse. The other 
 guests were W. E. Forster and two or three strangers (to me). A 
 daughter of E. B. is very intelligent, and converses with much ease 
 and fluency. She was one of the first of my acquaintances among 
 
88 " QUAKERIETIES IN 1838 " 
 
 young English ladies ; and I was then much struck with her manners, 
 — natural, but somewhat brusque. There is something of the kind 
 in nearly all the young ladies I have met in society. Their move- 
 ments are not so artificial and mechanical as those of American 
 demoiselles. The principal topics at the table were Switzerland and 
 whether it is proper for a member of our society to accept the office 
 of a magistrate, Edward being a justice of the peace. [The Yearly 
 Meeting afterwards adopted a minute in which members are advised 
 not to accept that or any similar office.] 
 
 May 30. — Dined with James Tuke and his aunt at their lodgings, 
 the " Four Swans." Samuel Tuke, of York, is not here this year. 
 Doubtless the sole cause of his absence is the wish not to act as 
 clerk of the Yearly Meeting. The last day of the meeting a 
 pamphlet entitled " Quakerieties for 1838" found its way among 
 some of the Friends, written in rhyme, and containing twenty-eight 
 verses, each of which alludes to some member of the society. That 
 concerning S. Tuke was as follows : — 
 
 Samuel Tuke, Samuel Tuke, 
 
 I have read thy rebuke 
 Of Wilkins's strange resignation. 
 
 I own thou hast tracked 
 
 With astonishing tact 
 The cause of his alienation. 
 
 The other verses were sometimes more sarcastic, as thus : — 
 
 Joseph John, Joseph John,* 
 
 Thou sine qua ?i07i 
 Of a certain religious society, 
 
 Thy bolts thou hast hurled 
 
 On a sceptical world, 
 And won what thou loved, — notoriety. 
 
 Luke Howard, Luke Howard, 
 
 Why fretful and froward ? 
 Why leave us? we miss thee and thine now; 
 
 And then, what is worse, 
 
 We miss thy long purse, 
 For Friends have an eye to the rhino. 
 
 •Guraey. 
 
1837-1849 89 
 
 Friend Forster, Friend Forster, 
 
 Thou foe to imposture 
 And knight of the yearly epistle, 
 
 Fame's a very fine thing, 
 
 If it happiness bring. 
 And we "pay not too dear for the whistle." 
 
 Betsy Fry, Betsy Fry, 
 
 Where the fatherless lie. 
 And the widow, we find thee. 'Tis there 
 
 In the prison-house cell 
 
 That thy soft accents dwell, 
 And the culprit exults in thy prayer. 
 
 May 31. — At a meeting appointed by Sarah Grubb I met James, 
 Sally, and Elizabeth Arnold (of New Bedford, in New England). 
 They had left Paris a few days earlier than I, and came by way of 
 Havre, Southampton, and Salisbury, whereas I came by Boulogne, 
 and thence direct to London. In the evening I called upon the 
 Arnolds. James's daughter Elizabeth is without exception the 
 most highly educated young lady I have met on this side of the 
 Atlantic. She is not handsome ; but one is charmed by the fluency 
 and polish of her conversation, in which she draws from the re- 
 sources of a mind largely stored with literary and scientific knowl- 
 edge. She speaks French well. The family will soon leave Lon- 
 don for Holland, where they will remain two or three weeks, and 
 return to England for a tour through the southern counties before 
 sailing for the United States. 
 
 June I. — Dined with William Leatham, of Wakefield, in Yorkshire, 
 who is at the Yearly Meeting with a son and two daughters,* John 
 Hodgkin, a lawyer of Tottenham, and two daughters of J. J. Lister 
 being of the party. J. Hodgkin has eminence in his profession, with 
 a practice of from ^10,000 to $12,000 annually. He is in law the 
 oracle of the Friends. 
 
 June 2. — At the dinner table of J. Backhouse I met Alexander 
 Cruikshank, with whom I supped and breakfasted in Edinburgh 
 last summer. Isaac Hadwen and Mrs. Richardson and her two 
 
 • The elder of these daughters of W. Leatham afterwards married the celebrated John Bright, 
 himself a Quaker. Her brother was chosen to Parliament, but unseated. William Edward Forster 
 and William Aldham, Jr., sat much in Parliament; and Mr. Forster was a zealous champion of the 
 Union cause there in our Civil War. 
 
90 QUAKERS AT YEARLY MEETING 
 
 sons from Belfast were present. While at the table, I. H. made a 
 short religious communication, and Hannah Backhouse a prayer. 
 How profound a travail of spirit when this woman prays ! It is as 
 if the soul had forgotten the body which it inhabits. I took tea at 
 Isaac Braithwaite's, Jr., in company with his sisters, two brothers, 
 and some others, among them Assaad Yakoob Kayat, the Oriental 
 convert to Christianity. To-day the Yearly Meeting closed. 
 
 Jime 3. — At the Tottenham meeting I met W. E. Forster, R. W. 
 Fox and his daughters, William Leatham (whose son married Pris- 
 cilla Gurney, daughter of Samuel), and others. Dined at Robert 
 Forster's, and called at Robert Howard's. I stayed at Robert 
 Forster's, where I met also Joseph Price and John and Martha 
 Yeardley, whose travels in Greece were published in The Friend. 
 They speak German, French, Italian, and modern Greek. When a 
 young man, John Yeardley joined our society from conviction, and 
 went to reside among the Friends in Germany. About the same 
 time Martha, in obedience to a sense of religious duty, went to 
 Southern France to live for a while among the Friends there. The 
 two first met on the Continent, and were not long afterwards married. 
 At R. Howard's, at tea, I met Joseph Sturge and his sister, the 
 Foxes, and several other Friends. It was a few days after the 
 defeat in the House of Commons of the Abolitionists, on the appren- 
 ticeship question. J. Sturge was cheerful, notwithstanding the 
 defeat. 
 
 Ju7ie 4. — Breakfasted with R. W. Fox, and went with his son and 
 Anna and Caroline Fox to King's College, London. Dined at 
 S. Gurney's. I breakfasted with Robert Ware Fox, who has apart- 
 ments at 63 Burton Crescent. He showed me an ingenious instru- 
 ment for determining the dip of the magnetic needle, invented by 
 him ; and I remembered to have assisted John Griscom at Provi- 
 dence, years ago, in taking the dip with a similar instrument sent to 
 him by R. W. Fox. Caroline showed me a book of the Proceedings 
 of a philosophical society in their town (Falmouth) in which her 
 father had a large share. 
 
 June 22. — Elizabeth Pease tells me she has recently received a 
 letter from William Lloyd Garrison, in which he said he had entirely 
 relinquished the idea that slavery will ever be abolished in the 
 United States by means of moral suasion. I am sorry to hear it. . . . 
 When I saw in the newspapers that Abby Kelly has come forward 
 
1837-1849 91 
 
 as a practical contender for the rights of woman, — or, rather, as an 
 illustrator of the practice of those rights, — I was seized with a con- 
 trary opinion ; and it appeared to me more suitable that women 
 should still guide the distaff and direct the loom, arrange the kitchen, 
 and grace the parlor rather than take so prominent a situation. 
 And yet I have ever contended for the propriety of their taking an 
 active part in public questions. If they can do more good in this 
 way than otherwise, let them go on ; and I bid them God-speed. 
 
 Ju7ie 25. — Went to the London University, to a lecture by Dr. 
 A. S. Thompson on Medical Jurisprudence, specially relating to 
 persons drowned ; then to the University Hospital, where I followed 
 Dr. T. in his visit to the patients ; and afterwards saw in the amphi- 
 theatre one of the most important operations in surgery (lithotomy) 
 performed by Lister, who, as an operator, stands at the head of the 
 profession in London, excepting, perhaps. Sir Astley Cooper, who 
 has much withdrawn from practice. Dr. J. Mason Warren, of 
 Boston, was present. In the evening called on the Arnolds, who 
 have just returned from Holland. 
 
 On the 28th of June Dr. Earle saw the coronation of the 
 Princess Victoria as Queen of England, and was so near her 
 that he could witness the whole ceremony. The year before 
 he had been at the funeral of William IV., and in the early part 
 of 1839 ^s saw the Queen Dowager Adelaide at a public func- 
 tion in Malta. But, as the passages cited amply show, his chief 
 opportunities in England were among the active members of 
 his own sect, from whom he received the most cordial welcome 
 and unstinted hospitality. The familiar combination of re- 
 ligious earnestness and practical shrewdness in Quakers did 
 not escape his notice, and was by no means absent from his 
 own nature. Of this earnestness, directed towards surgical 
 problems, a good example is found in this letter of Mrs. Anne 
 Forster, the grandmother of the parliamentarian and statesman, 
 W. E. Forster, already mentioned. It was sent to Dr. Earle in 
 June, 1837, before he went to Paris for his medical studies. 
 
 Sixth Month, 1837. 
 Dear Friend, — In requesting thy kind consideration of the en- 
 closed, I wish to express the sorrow I have for years at times felt 
 
92 VIVISECTION IN 1 83 7 
 
 in hearing of Magendie's (of Paris) excessive cruelty, both there and 
 when on a visit to this country, and my earnest desire that serious 
 and honorable men of the same profession may not give encourage- 
 ment to such proceedings. 
 
 I earnestly desire that those of the medical profession who are 
 endeavoring to act up to the high standard of righteousness — that 
 all earthly engagements should be in the fear and love of God — 
 may very seriously consider whether, in actively promoting or pas- 
 sively allowing experiments on living animals (in fact, living dissec- 
 tions), with other acts of excessive cruelty, they have his holy coun- 
 tenance on their labors, and the trust that they tend to his glory, 
 and whether such treatment can be consistently allowed by those 
 who feel that they are but stewards over the creatures formed by 
 Him whose " tender mercies are over all his works." However 
 specious may be the pleadings as to some service thereby rendered 
 to their fellow-creatures, will sanctified knowledge be acquired by 
 such means ? 
 
 Allow me, and that with true respect, to entreat such afresh to 
 take the subject into their serious consideration, not only on 
 account of the exquisitely tortured animals, but also on account of 
 the hardening effect on the youthful pupils. I wish to call their at- 
 tention to a statement at the sixth meeting of the British Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science, held at Bristol in 1836 : — 
 
 ^^ Anatomy and Medicine. 
 
 " Dr. O'Berne read the following report of the Dublin Committee 
 on the Pathology of the Nervous System. . . . They are of opinion, 
 however, that more extended observations on this branch of their 
 subject are required to be made ; and they would also submit the 
 necessity of repeating those experiments on animals, upon which so 
 many authorities rely as a foundation for their doctrine." 
 
 I trust that using the word " necessity " implies a degree of caution 
 on the subject ; and I earnestly and reverently pray that this necessity 
 may be solemnly looked at, and considered under the enlightening 
 influence of His Holy Spirit who said, " Blessed are the merciful, for 
 they shall obtain mercy." 
 
 It would be very pleasant to me to have more of thy company ; 
 but, as I am likely to go this week into Dorsetshire, I can hardly ex- 
 
1837-1849 93 
 
 pect this, unless I may have the gratification of welcoming thee at 
 our house near Bridport. My husband and son are likely to return 
 to Norwich,* 
 
 With kind regards, thy friend, 
 
 Anne Forster. 
 
 The duties of life were always taken up by Dr. Earle in this 
 serious spirit ; and, whatever he may have thought afterwards of 
 vivisection (then a new question in England and America), his 
 opinion would be formed as this good and courteous lady 
 desired, upon full and prayerful consideration. Cheerful as his 
 temper was, and seldom averse to merriment, he had, even in 
 youth, the sobriety that his religious profession required. 
 
 *0n this letter Dr. Earle indorsed, "This was sent to me, while in London, by Anne Forster, 
 wife of William Forster of Nor\\ich, and mother of AVilliam Forster, who was father of William E. 
 Forster, now (May, 1S80) one of the ministers of the British government." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DR. EARLE IN FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AND ITALY. 
 
 In the latter part of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the 
 nineteenth centuries, Americans, desiring to complete a med- 
 ical or other scientific education, generally went to Edinburgh. 
 But by 1830 the eminence of the French in almost all the fields of 
 science drew our young countrymen to Paris, where Dr. Holmes 
 studied medicine from 1833 to 1835. It was at this time 
 that Pliny Earle was engaged in his early medical studies with 
 the brother-in-law of Dr. Holmes, Dr. Usher Parsons, of Provi- 
 dence ; and it may have been this circumstance which directed 
 his attention to the advantages of attending the lectures of 
 Louis, Broussais, Magendie, Ricord, Velpeau, and the other 
 men of world-wide renown who were then practising or teach- 
 ing medicine and surgery in the French capital. I incline to 
 think, however, that it was rather the suggestion of a cousin of 
 the Earle family, Dr. Elisha Bartlett of Lowell, who had heard 
 Louis, and thought him the prince of instructors, as indeed 
 he was. Dr. Holmes in later years used to say he had devoted 
 himself too exclusively to the teachings of Louis, but that was 
 not Dr. Earle's case. He had, even in 1837, looked forward to 
 the specialty in which he afterwards attained such distinction 
 as an alienist ; and he gave some time in Paris to the study of 
 mental maladies and their treatment. I find a letter from Dr. 
 Elisha Bartlett to his cousin, then in the medical school at 
 Philadelphia, on the subject of European study and travel, 
 dated at Lowell, Mass., early in 1837, from which a passage 
 may be cited : — 
 
 First, as to the cost of twelve or fourteen months' absence on a 
 trip to Europe, staying eight or nine months in Paris and travelling 
 as far as Rome or Naples, — I suppose $1,000 or $1,200 will do very 
 well. It cost me about $1,100, including everything, — clothes. 
 
1837-1839 95 
 
 books, etc. I have only regretted that it was worth so Uttle to me 
 professionally on account of my general and desultory studies while 
 in Paris. If you go, attend to a few things. If you are preparing 
 yourself for the practice of medicine particularly, put yourself under 
 the care of Louis, and study disease as he teaches it. It is the only 
 way. Take hold of the stethoscope, and of the scalpel for post- 
 mortem study. Become a true Baconian disciple of the Bacon of 
 medical philosophy, Louis, and you will learn more true medicine 
 than you can in any other way. 
 
 This advice was well followed by Dr. Earle in Paris for a few 
 months. He learned French enough in a month or two to 
 make the lectures intelligible, and then applied himself to 
 special studies, with Louis and others, till he felt himself suffi- 
 ciently advanced to "come out of his professional shell," as he 
 phrased it. He then gave many hours to society, to the theatre, 
 to the study of Italian, and to other pursuits likely to further 
 his present or his ultimate purpose. In the spring of 1838 he 
 made visits to the great asylums for the insane at Paris (then 
 but two, the Bicetre and the Salpetriere), and thus described 
 his first visit : — 
 
 The insane department of the Bicetre contains seven hundred and 
 sixty men, besides about two hundred idiots. We found them under 
 the medical care of Pinel the younger, Ferrus and Leuret. The 
 latter accompanied us on our tour of inspection. Dr. Pinel, the son 
 of him who first unchained the maniacs here, has written for the 
 Academy of Sciences an account, no doubt correct, of that famous 
 deed of his father, Philippe Pinel, early in the year 1793, when Cou- 
 thon, the friend of Robespierre, finally consented that the chains 
 should be removed from about fifty of the madmen then at the 
 Bicetre, when the whole number was somewhat less than I found 
 there. It was not this son of Pinel (as incorrectly stated in my 
 " Visit to Thirteen Asylums "), but his colleague. Dr. Leuret, who 
 showed us the bathing-room, and explained his manner of using the 
 douche for purposes of mental and moral discipline, which appeared 
 to me injurious. The scene of this treatment contained about a 
 dozen bath-tubs, over each of which was a douche-pipe with a ca- 
 pacity for a three-quarter-inch stream. In two tubs we saw patients. 
 
96 INSANITY IN FRANCE, 1838 
 
 each kept from leaving the tub by a board fitted to his neck where 
 he sat, as a man stands in the pillory. One was a robust man, sub- 
 ject to varying hallucinations, who now thought himself the husband 
 of the widowed Duchess of Berri, and had been permitted the day 
 before to have writing materials on condition that he would not 
 write such vagaries as that he was a favorite of the exiled Bourbons 
 and of Louis Philippe. He had written, however, his usual ab- 
 surdities about the Duke of Bordeaux, Charles X., etc. Dr. Leuret, 
 with this letter in his hand, reminded the patient of his promise, read 
 him the nonsense he had written, and asked him if he still believed 
 that. "Oui, Monsieur." "Give him the douche," said Dr. Leuret 
 to the attendant, who at once turned the cock and discharged the 
 stream on the madman's head. He screamed and writhed, and 
 begged to have it stopped. It was checked ; and he was asked, 
 " Do you still believe you are the intimate friend of Charles X.? " 
 " I think I do." " Let him have the douche." He again floundered, 
 shouted, and begged for mercy. " Well, are you the chum of 
 Charles X, and the Duke of Bordeaux ? " "I — I presume so." 
 " Give him the douche once more." In this way, sometimes with 
 argument and sometimes with the cold stream, the doctor labored 
 for half an hour to break up his fantastic notions. At last the 
 patient gave in, and his tormentor gave him a lesson to be learned 
 for the next day. 
 
 Turning to the other man in his tub. Dr. Leuret said he had 
 yesterday refused to do a task assigned to him, leaving the work un- 
 touched. He then asked the man why he had neglected to work. 
 "To tell the truth, Monsieur, I did not feel any special desire to 
 work." This was said with a jocose leer which almost made us 
 laugh. " Well, will you work hereafter when you are told ? " Re- 
 flecting an instant, with the same comic air he said, " Pai-ole d'honneur^ 
 I will ;/^/ work." "Give him the douche," said Dr. L. The effect 
 of the stream was now instantaneous. Like a child who is whipped, 
 he cried, " I will, I will ! " The douche was then stopped, and 
 orders given that he should do the task before night.* 
 
 Dr. Earle was shocked at this use of physical pain to coerce 
 or punish the insane, which in itself was no better, though the 
 
 * This singular treatment, long since given up, like Dr. Rush's panacea of bleeding the insane, 
 is described at greater length in the "visit" above mentioned. But Dr. Earle pointed out to me 
 numerous errors in the printed account, which I have here corrected. 
 
1837-1839 97 
 
 motive was good, than the old abuse of chaining the men 
 whom Pinel released. 
 
 Ordinarily, the young doctor, while in Paris, was each day at 
 the Hotel Dieu, the old general hospital of the city, where 
 Louis, Velpeau, and sometimes Magendie lectured and gave 
 clinical instruction ; and it was Louis who gave him introduc- 
 tions to the three asylums. Esquirol himself, a worthy suc- 
 cessor of Pinel, and better instructed in the specialty, was then 
 at the head of the Charenton asylum, some miles outside the 
 city. Here he found both men and women, under better con- 
 ditions and receiving more enlightened care than either the 
 men at the Bicetre or the women at the Salpetriere. In both 
 the last-named asylums the sane and the insane poor were re- 
 ceived in the same establishment, as in the Blockley Alms- 
 house of Philadelphia, though kept in separate departments. 
 Even the Hotel Dieu, the great general hospital, was found by 
 the medical reformer Chaptal, seven years after Pinel's noble 
 act at the Bicetre, occupied in part by noisy, chained maniacs. 
 Chaptal says {1800) : — 
 
 A visit made by me as Minister of the Interior to the Hotel Dieu 
 decided me to begin my reforms there, — the most important and the 
 worst kept of all our Paris charities. Sixty maniacs, tied by the feet 
 and hands to the four posts of their beds, occupied the upper rooms. 
 Their outcries, which were heard almost all over the building, kept 
 the sick men in the neighboring wards from going to sleep. These 
 unfortunate insane persons received the public charity only amid 
 torments which nothing but death could end. The other wards con- 
 tained about two thousand patients of all sexes and ages, lying al- 
 most everywhere two in the same bed ; and I saw that the bed 
 linen was insufficient and in very bad condition, while the food 
 was all of poor quality. I summoned the then chief of the hospi- 
 tals and other charities, and told him my determination, in three par- 
 ticulars : (i) to remove the very next day all the insane to the asy- 
 lums of Charenton and Bicetre, Avhere the other insane were cared 
 for ; (2) to establish at once a special hospital for sick children ex- 
 clusively, and to assemble and treat such there ; (3) to admit to the 
 Hotel Dieu thereafter only the adult sick of both sexes, and not to 
 admit those until their physical condition had been carefully deter- 
 
90 PARISIAN EXPERIENCES 
 
 mined. Will it be credited that the chief, a very reasonable and 
 well-informed man, opposed these measures ? He told me that I 
 was acting contrary to the fundamental principle of the Hotel Dieu, 
 which by its constitution was ordered to receive the sick of all 
 kinds, whatever the disease, without distinction of age or sex ; that 
 I was perverting such establishments, and that the families of the 
 founders would make protests against the failure to carry out the 
 will of their ancestors. But the next day the maniacs were sent to 
 Charenton and the Bicetre.* 
 
 I have cited this fact, probably known to Dr. Earle, though 
 taken from a volume printed since his death, in order to show 
 how slow is the process, even in the more advanced communi- 
 ties, of improvements such as Pinel, Chaptal, Dr. Howe, and 
 Dr. Earle have suggested or initiated in the care of the insane 
 and the general reformation of a traditional system. From the 
 outset of his special studies Dr. Earle seems to have been 
 guided by his good sense, his logical, inductive turn of mind, 
 and his benevolent heart to those simple, judicious, and useful 
 methods of treatment which have not yet established them- 
 selves firmly even in his native State, though gradually super- 
 seding the old fanciful, routmary usages. 
 
 Accustomed in America to the rather languid and perfunc- 
 tory performance of the duties of medical instruction and care 
 which then prevailed. Dr. Earle was surprised at the arduous 
 activity of his Parisian professors. He says in one of his let- 
 ters of 1838: — 
 
 Although the most volatile of Europeans, the French furnish a 
 very large number of the most learned men. No nation has pro- 
 duced more profound students in the abstract sciences, and their 
 professional men are paragons of industry. To visit in the hospitals 
 from fifty to one hundred patients, and prescribe for them by candle- 
 light in the morning ; then to give a lecture of an hour before break- 
 fast ; between breakfast and dinner to visit an extensive circle of 
 patients in private practice, and perhaps attend the meeting of a 
 medical society ; after dinner (at 6 p.m.) to pass the evening in por- 
 
 • " Mes Souvenirs de Napoleon, par le Comte Chaptal," Paris, 1893. This interesting book 
 contains not only what its name implies, anecdotes of Napoleon I., but also Chaptal's autobiography, 
 and other facts concerning this greatest of French chemists, and one of the best organizers even in 
 hat most organizing of nations, the French. 
 
1837-1839 99 
 
 ing over professional books or in writing some original essay, — such 
 is the life of any one of the more eminent physicians of Paris. The 
 honors and emoluments of the profession scarcely will recompense 
 this unremitting toil. 
 
 His observations extended to very minute and curious par- 
 ticulars of the French modes of life. He says : — 
 
 No class of persons are more healthy in appearance than the most 
 respectable of the laboring women of Paris ; yet they are seen in 
 the coldest weather threading the streets with nothing on their heads 
 but a muslin cap. They act upon the old maxim, — " Keep the feet 
 warm and the head cool." You will find that over woollen stockings 
 and thick shoes they not unfrequently wear socks lined with wool, 
 and sometimes over these the wooden shoes. In thus preserving by 
 dress the natural heat of the body, they can do without much artifi- 
 cial heat. Last winter was colder in Paris than any previous one 
 for more than a century, the mercury several times standing at zero. 
 Yet a Frenchman in an apartment adjoining mine in the Place 
 Odeon, and who spent most of his evenings at home, had no fire in 
 his room the whole winter. In the spring of 1839 ^ returned from 
 Havre to New York in that dubious season when it is too warm to 
 keep up a fire and yet too cold for comfort. However, we had none. 
 On the coldest days, when the American ladies shivered in the 
 cabin, in bonnet and shawl, there were Frenchwomen sitting on deck 
 and sewing, with neither shawls nor bonnets. 
 
 In Paris, as in Edinburgh, Leyden, and Florence, the anatomical 
 museums are open to the general public, and are visited by large 
 numbers of ladies ; while in America they are almost held sacred to 
 the use of the medical profession. At the University of Leyden I 
 was shown through by a woman, who called my attention particu- 
 larly to some of the most revolting preparations as the most curious 
 in the collection. In Paris the show-windows of the shops for the 
 sale of natural history specimens are ornamented (shall I say ?) with 
 children's skeletons, — some of them infants, — a practice which I do 
 not mention for imitation. In contrast with the hesitation of our 
 countrywomen in 1839 to take up the useful study of anatomy, I may 
 say that Miss Leatham, of Wakefield, in Yorkshire, who afterwards 
 married John Bright, the statesman, but who was then studying with 
 a private tutor, showed me the Avork on anatomy which she and her 
 
lOO HOMCEOPATHY IN 1 838 
 
 sister were studying, and said it was one of the requisites of a good 
 education for Englishwomen. 
 
 In Paris (February, 1838) I made my first acquaintance with 
 European homceopathy. It was at a soiree of Joseph and Elizabeth 
 Fry, at which were Lady Fitz-James and Lady Bethune, from Scot- 
 land. I was standing by the fire, conversing with Josiah Forster, 
 when Anne Knight* came to me to ask what the word was which 
 she had just heard me apply to the doctrine of the homoeopathists. 
 I told her 'twas "infinitesimal." She stepped back to the two ladies 
 with whom she had been talking. I followed her, saying, " I hope 
 neither of you favors that doctrine." " Voila the professor of the 
 doctrine," said Anne Knight, pointing to one of the two ladies from 
 Britain. We then entered upon a learned discussion, in which my 
 opponent showed her knowledge of the profession by the readiness 
 with which she employed its technical terms. She related several 
 cases of wonderful cures by the treatment, — cases, too, which had 
 been given up as hopeless by the regular practitioners. When she 
 had done, in steps the other lady (who was no other and no less than 
 Lady Bethune) as an ally, and asserted that she once had a child en- 
 tirely cured of " convulsions," and another of quite as formidable a 
 disease, by the homoeopathic treatment. Then the first (the lady 
 physician), a young Englishwoman with a profusion of golden curls. 
 Miss Ferrier, drew from her reticule a box about five inches by four 
 and an inch thick, looking externally like a miniature case. It did 
 contain a miniature, sure enough; but of what? Of a druggist's 
 shop, or the whole magazine of ^sculapius ! There were no less 
 than one hundred and twenty bottles of pills in it, besides many 
 powders ; and, moreover, in each bottle there were from one hundred 
 to two hundred pills ! There were as many different medicines as 
 bottles, the pills, however, all alike in appearance, being white, and 
 the size of a grain of mustard-seed. All are made of the same 
 neutral substance, and derive their virtues from being dipped into 
 a solution of each medicine. So it may be imagined how large a 
 quantity of the medicament one of these little pills coated with a 
 solution can contain. Well, after getting an idea of this quantity 
 fairly fixed in your mind, mark the following : Lady Bethune is her- 
 self taking one of these medicines. She dissolves otie pill in five 
 
 • This was an English Quakeress, temporarily residing at Paris in order to bring influence from 
 England to bear on the French government and Chambers in favor of abolishing slavery in the 
 
1837-1839 lOI 
 
 tablespoonfuls of water, and then takes ten drops of that water each 
 morning ! She was ordered to take a teaspoonful every morning, 
 but she found it was too much for her ! I asked her ladyship, since 
 the physicians of both schools employ the same medicines, how it 
 was possible that in one case so minute a quantity should have an 
 effect greater than one hundred or one thousand times as much in 
 another case. Her answer was that the virtues of the specifics are 
 brought out by friction." * 
 
 Dr. Earle himself, however, was rather surprised at the small 
 quantity of medicine given by his instructors in their hospital 
 practice, which he followed with great interest every day that 
 he went through with them. He says : — 
 
 Since I left America, I have not seen an emetic given, nor heard 
 of one ordered to be administered. Louis never gives them, unless, 
 perhaps, in cases of poisoning where there is no stomach-pump at 
 hand. In small-pox no medicine is given ; and in three-fourths of 
 the cases of typhoid fever the patient is merely put upon " absolute 
 diet," with a bottle of seltzer water daily. There is a great differ- 
 ence between the French and the American practice in this respect. 
 
 Aprils 1838. — I have now " followed," as the French say, the hospi- 
 tals for more than six months, and have taken down in French more 
 than two hundred pages of good histories of cases of disease, to say 
 nothing of an earlier hundred pages, — imperfect, because they were 
 written before I well understood the language. I can now write 
 French (as you perceive), and read Italian with nearly the same 
 facility that I could read French when I left home. 
 
 At this time, and for some months before, he had been at 
 the hospital from 7 to 10 a.m. and from 3 to 5 or 5.30 p.m. But 
 this did not prevent him from seeing company. He says : — 
 
 Feb. 8, 1838. — At 9 P.M. I took the omnibus to go to the soiree 
 of the American minister, General Lewis Cass, who lives near Anne 
 Knight's, two miles from my Hotel de la Place de I'Odeon. When 
 we had gone about two-thirds of the way, an elderly man got into the 
 
 ♦Although homceopathy was introduced in America by 182 1, and in England somewhat earlier, 
 this is the first mention I have found of women practising it in either country. At present many 
 women practise medicine in England, as well as in the United States. The IMatemite Hospital, for 
 the instruction of women in midwifery, was opened by Chaptal in Paris early in the century. See his 
 " Souvenirs." 
 
102 GENERAL CASS'S SOIREE 
 
 'bus, and told the conductor to let him down at the end of the Rue 
 Matignon, in which General Cass lives, I suspected he was going 
 to the same soiree ; and, on looking at him, I perceived he wore the 
 badge of the Legion of Honor, — a red ribbon, worn usually in the 
 upper buttonhole but one on the left side of the coat. As we 
 alighted together, I ventured to say to him, in view of the mud in 
 the street, " II y a beaucoup de boue," which served as an opening for 
 conversation. He asked my country, profession, name, etc. (in this 
 order), and said he had himself travelled in Egypt and Great Britain, 
 and hoped to go to America ; mentioning the names of several 
 American societies of which he is an honorary member, among them 
 the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Philosophical 
 Society of Philadelphia. I then asked his name, which was Jullien 
 de Paris, he said. In the house of General Cass we had further 
 conversation ; and he handed me a note, which I found to read thus : 
 " Encyclopedic Dinners. These banquets, at which habitually as- 
 semble a certain number of the friends of science and of the public 
 good, and many honorable men of all countries, — where fortuitous 
 meetings have often led to lasting relations, reciprocally agreeable 
 and useful, — were established in 1815, and have continued, without 
 interruption, ever since." (Then followed an invitation for me to 
 the next dinner, February 13, signed "Jullien de Paris.") I returned 
 an acceptance. 
 
 At General Cass's the servants were in small-clothes, and wore a 
 gilt eagle on the end of the upright coat collar on each side. Going 
 from the anteroom, in which our overcoats were left, we passed 
 through a billiard-room, where women as well as men played during 
 the evening, and entered an elegant drawing-room, as our names 
 were pronounced in a loud voice by the usher. Except this an- 
 nouncement there were no introductions ; but any guest is quite free 
 to address any other without an introduction. General Cass and his 
 youngest daughter (of three) were present, Mrs. Cass being in- 
 disposed. This oflficiating daughter, a genteel girl of perhaps 
 eighteen, with dark hair and dark blue eyes, performed her duties 
 comme il faut. About twenty American and French guests were 
 present when we arrived, and twenty or thirty succeeded us. We 
 were treated to tea and cake and ice-cream several times during the 
 evening. The gentlemen at such soirees carry their hats the whole 
 evening, some, to save labor, suspending them from a button on the 
 left side. Upon the whole the gathering was a little too stiff, con- 
 
1837-1839 I03 
 
 versation not being so general or continual as if more French people 
 had been present. At 11.30 my friend and I took a citadine (a 
 small hackney coach), and drove back to the Place de I'Odeon. 
 
 Februa?y 13. — I went at 6 p.m., the appointed hour, to meet M, 
 Jullien's company at the encyclopedic dinner, or reunion des nations. 
 Before seven fifty-five guests had assembled, among whom were the 
 president (M. Jullien), Sir Sydney Smith of the siege of Acre, Counts 
 Orsoni and Ugoni of Italy, Joseph M. White, a member of our Con- 
 gress, Professor Menai of Rome, Professor Schotley of Breslau, Rev, 
 Edward N. Kirk of Albany, Dr. Evans of Philadelphia, a young 
 Mr. Harrison of Baltimore, one or two members of the Chamber 
 of Deputies, several notables from Spain and Portugal, others from 
 England, Scotland, Denmark, etc. We sat down to dinner at seven, 
 around a table with three extensions. At the head of the centre and 
 connecting table sat M. Jullien, with Sir Sydney at his left. I had a 
 seat beside Count Orsoni, who was exceedingly sociable, and 
 promised to give me letters to the Roman princes, when I should go 
 to Italy. Another Italian offered to give me a letter to Silvio Pellico, 
 with whom he is acquainted. The courses at dinner were about 
 fifteen, with vin ordinaire and champagne, at discretion. When 
 about to open the champagne, M. Jullien rose to make a speech, in 
 which he gave an account of the origin and progress of the society, 
 recited the names of distinguished men who had previously dined 
 there and of those then present. He had a compliment for each of 
 those, as well as for the country each represented, which, of course, 
 were received with much hand-clapping and drumming upon the 
 tables. He was followed by Sir Sydney in a speech. When he had 
 ended and the whole room was ringing with applause, M. Jullien 
 rose ; and the two kissed each other as fervently as if they had been 
 sisters. 
 
 A Portuguese gentleman then spoke, with the evident purpose of 
 lauding France and the French with all the fulsome compliments in 
 his vocabulary, and to set England and the English in bold contrast. 
 At this the English present began to look sour ; and soon the speaker 
 was called to order by a Frenchman sitting near, who declared that 
 in such a place, where persons from so many countries were as- 
 sembled, there ought to be no invidious comparisons. The Portugee 
 sat down in silence ; but, when the room resounded with cries of 
 " Parlez, parlez ! " he rose again, said a few civil words, and took his 
 seat again. He was followed by another from Portugal, and then by 
 
I04 MRS. FRY IN PARIS 
 
 one or two Frenchmen, after which our Congressman White made a 
 very good speech in English, apologizing at first for not speaking 
 French. He dwelt on the pleasure he felt in being present, and pro- 
 ceeded to compare this " reunion of nations " around the table to the 
 United States, which of itself is a reunion of nations. At this the 
 applause was loud and long, perhaps more so than if his remarks had 
 been understood by half the company. M. JulUen, in closing, passed 
 a high eulogium upon the United States for having made great and 
 successful exertions in the cause of temperance, and said, " Honor 
 to the country which, though so remote, has sent us an agent " 
 (Robert Baird, then present) " to establish temperance societies in 
 France and on the Continent! " During the dinner Count Ugoni had 
 an epileptic seizure, and was carried from the table. He soon re- 
 covered, and was taken home. 
 
 It was in this same winter of 1837-38 that Mrs. Fry, who in 
 a former visit to France had observed the unsatisfactory state 
 of the prisons, made herself an agent in Paris to effect an ame- 
 lioration in this respect. She was accompanied by her husband 
 and other English and American Quakers, and made a deep 
 impression. Dr. Earle, as already mentioned (p. 84), was 
 often present at her meetings, and at the private gatherings of 
 her own circle, and has recorded many incidents. Twenty 
 years before, when not yet forty, she had begun those visits to 
 Newgate that have made her so famous. She was now nearly 
 sixty, and her life was to be continued but a few years more. 
 She reached Paris, not in the spring, as Mr. Hare says in " The 
 Gurneys of Earlham," but late in January, 1838, and on the 5th 
 of February held a meeting which Dr. Earle thus describes : — 
 
 This evening I went to a gathering of English, Americans, and 
 French at the rooms of an Englishman named Kemp, in Rue Mt. 
 Thabor. Perhaps fifty were there when I arrived, and took a seat 
 beside a lady from New York. They were passing tea and cake as 
 at an evening party, having no license from the police for a public 
 meeting. The London Friends soon came in, and, as I had a com- 
 fortable fauteuil, I yielded it to Elizabeth Fry, and took a chair 
 near. Mrs, Fry was very sociable. She had a word for each one 
 present, speaking to all who were within speaking distance. On 
 
1837-1S39 loS 
 
 my left was a young lady I had not seen before. Elizabeth Fry 
 asked her and a young man beside her whether they were Ameri- 
 cans or English. They said, "Americans." "From what part?" 
 "Boston." "Ah! a beautiful city. I understand some relations of 
 mine, the Backhouses, — thou knows them " (turning to me), — " were 
 very much pleased with it. May I not ask your names ? " " Salis- 
 bury, cousins of the Salisburies of Worcester." After the tea-cups 
 had been collected, an EngUshman, who has lived many years in 
 Paris, advanced to the middle of the room, and began questioning 
 Mrs. Fry, asking her how long she had been in Paris, if she had 
 been there before ("Yes, in Normandy last year, and then in 
 Paris " ), how she liked Paris, what was the moral state of the people, 
 etc. She answered much as she afterwards wrote to her sister, 
 " Such a nation ! such a numerous and superior people, filling such 
 a place in the world ! and Satan appearing in no common degree to 
 be seeking to destroy them." She then returned the compliment by 
 asking him the same questions. He said there had been great 
 improvement in the French people during the fifteen years since 
 1823. Bibles are more read, religious meetings more attended, 
 schools better organized, etc. Josiah Forster then rose, and related 
 the methods of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He next 
 spoke of the belief of Friends with regard to women appearing in 
 the ministry, and of the motives of Elizabeth Fry in coming to 
 Paris ; and he finished by reading her certificates from the monthly 
 and quarterly meetings and that from the meeting of ministers and 
 elders. After a short silence Mrs. Fry addressed the audience at 
 length, chiefly upon the state of the Parisians and French generally, 
 of the means by which all English and American residents or travel- 
 lers might do good, and of their duty to do it. She spoke also of 
 the benefit she believed to arise in every family from a daily assem- 
 bling of its members to read the Scriptures, and she urged the 
 importance of a period of silence after such reading. As to her 
 membership in the Society of Friends, she said that, although con- 
 vinced she was in the proper course for herself, she believed she felt 
 no sectarianism, but was ready to give the right hand of fellowship 
 to those of any faith who loved the Lord with sincerity. She after- 
 wards appeared in supplication [prayed], and the meeting was closed. 
 Most of the audience remained half an hour in conversation, and a 
 large number of tracts thrown on the table for distribution were 
 taken away by them. The wives of three or four of the French 
 
Io6 HORSELESS CARRIAGES OF 1 838 
 
 nobility were present, and a month later (March 5) Mrs. Fry called 
 on the king and queen by invitation. She thinks the queen a very 
 agreeable and even interesting woman, and the Duchess of Orleans 
 an uncommon person. 
 
 Indeed, Mrs. Fry went so far in her communications to her 
 family as to call the mother of the present Comte de Paris a 
 very valuable young person, which was greater praise than per- 
 haps it sounds to those not used to the Quaker moderation of 
 statement. 
 
 At a friend's house Dr. Earle saw a strange sight : — 
 
 " At I. Sargent's in the Champs filysees, before sitting down to 
 dinner, we heard a great rumbling in the street; and, stepping to the 
 window, what should we see but a locomotive rolling in cloudy majesty 
 along the Alle'e d'Antar directly in front of the house ? It was a 
 very heavy engine, having six large, broad wheels, the hindermost ap- 
 parently six feet in diameter. Attached to it was a tender, and one 
 of the largest-sized diligences, the latter filled inside with passengers, 
 and covered with them outside, somewhat as the branch of a tree is 
 covered with bees when a swarm has lighted there. This odd train 
 was going from eight to ten miles an hour. Some horses in the 
 street were much frightened at it, and one so much so that he fell, 
 throwing his rider headlong, but on the greensward under the trees 
 beside the A\\6e, so that he received little injury. 
 
 jFel>. 21, 1838. — A French gentleman (M. St. Antoine, a chev- 
 alier of the Legion of Honor), who is an active member of the French 
 Society for the Abolition of Slavery, gave me an invitation to attend 
 a meeting of one of its committees to-day. Accordingly, I went with 
 him from his house in the Place Vendome to the palace of the 
 Chamber of Deputies in which the meeting was held. Among those 
 present were the Comte d'Harcourt, the Marquis of Rochefoucauld, 
 and several deputies. M. de Lamartine, the poet and author, was to 
 have been there, but was kept away by illness. He is a member of 
 the committee. Query. — Would the meeting of such a society be 
 tolerated in the Capitol at Washington ? * 
 
 • Certainly not in 1838, nor for many years after. Professor Daubeny, an Oxford professor, tlien 
 travelling in this country, heard Mr. Calhoun declare (Jan. 4, 1838) in the Senate at Washington that, 
 to advocate the abolition of slavery as immoral, would be " a direct and dangerous attack on the insti- 
 tutions of all the slaveholding states." 
 
1837-1839 I07 
 
 Upon his introduction to General Cass, who was then Amer- 
 ican minister at Paris, Dr. Earle found that statesman ready to 
 converse on the slavery question, and perhaps with more free- 
 dom than he would have done a few years later or even at that 
 date (Feb. 5, 1838), had he been in America. The diary says: 
 
 At noon, after a morning spent at the hospital clinic, I went to de- 
 liver my letter of introduction from Dr. Griscom to General Cass. I 
 found him in his office or study. Perhaps it might be called the 
 latter, since he devoteth two hours each morning to the study of 
 French. I know not when I have been made to feel immediately 
 so much at ease when first introduced to one of the powerful of the 
 earth.* He was in his robe de c/iambre, a very comfortable garment, 
 much worn in Paris. He took oif his turtle-shell-frame spectacles, 
 adjusted his sandy wig, and went to talking, first about the Canadian 
 question and then upon abolition. He thinks the burning of the 
 steamer " Caroline " f will not cause a rupture between England and 
 the United States, and quoted the conduct of General Jackson in 
 Florida and of Commodore Porter in the West Indies as being cases 
 of even greater infringement of the rights and the peace of other 
 nations than was the act now in question. As to slavery, he says he 
 has been astonished to find so general an abhorrence of that system 
 by Europeans. In his exact words, " It is impossible to convince 
 them of the justice of holding the negroes in bondage a single 
 moment." He made no exceptions. I asked him what he thought 
 of the prospect of a dissolution of the Union. " A man may as well 
 talk of committing suicide," was his reply, "as the South to talk of 
 dissolving the Union. She has the elements of death within herself ; 
 and, the moment the separation should be effected, those elements 
 would begin to operate. The slaves would rise, and there would be 
 
 *Lewis Cass (born in Exeter, N.H., Oct. g, 1782, died in Detroit June 17, 1866) was the son of 
 Major Jonathan Cass of the Revolutionary army, and was himself an officer in the United States 
 army in the War of 1812, rising to the rank of general in 1813. He soon became governor of Michi- 
 gan Territory, and held that position with credit and profit to himself until President Jackson made 
 him Secretary of War in 183 1. Jackson sent him minister to France in 1836, where he remained until 
 1842, and was an important personage. He was in the Senate from 1845 to 184S, when he was de- 
 feated by General Taylor as candidate for President in consequence of the formation of the Free-soil 
 party and the nomination of Van Buren and Adams at Buffalo. Under Buchanan he was Secretary of 
 State from 1857 to December, i860, when he resigned because Buchanan refused to re-enforce Major 
 Anderson in Fort Sumter. He supported the Union against the South, and survived the Civil War. 
 
 t The burning of the " Caroline" by the Canadian forces in the rebellion of 1S37 was long a griev- 
 ance against England, but was settled by Webster's treaty of 1842. 
 
Io8 AMERICAN SLAVERY 
 
 no military force to repress their insurrection. Besides " (and here 
 I got a new idea), " the Western States would not go with the South, 
 because the control of the waters of the Mississippi would then 
 belong to both nations. This Indiana, Illinois, and probably Ken- 
 tucky would not suffer. They would not let Mississippi and Ten- 
 nessee go with the South, if so disposed ; for those three States would 
 not yield the control of the mouth of the great river." That is 
 very plausible. He regrets the course of the Abolitionists, thinks 
 the condition of the slaves has been made worse by it, and that 
 in Virginia the abolition of slavery has been retarded by it. (He 
 does not remember that Moses was near when Pharaoh oppressed 
 the children of Israel.) While conversing on Canada, I mentioned 
 the remark of an Englishman with whom I had been talking lately 
 about the patriotism of the Canadian rebels ; and he quoted the 
 definition of " patriotism " by Dr. Johnson, — " the last refuge of a 
 scoundrel." Whereupon General Cass quoted the remark of Horace 
 Walpole (I think), who said, " If you only reject some imperious 
 and impudent demand, up jumps a patriot." 
 
 The slave question was much agitated all over the world at 
 that time ; and Dr. Earle in Paris often came upon incidents of 
 its discussion. He says : — 
 
 Feb. lo, 1838, Su7iday. — Took the omnibus at 11 a.m. to go 
 to Anne Knight's meeting. There was a young man inside, to whom, 
 as he had the New York Commercial Advertiser in his hand, I vent- 
 ured to speak. He was a native of Georgia, he said, and had spent 
 four years in Massachusetts. He wished John Quincy Adams was 
 dead. " No, I don't wish any person dead ; but I should like some- 
 thing to occur to throw him out of Congress." A moment after he 
 said, "Garrison ought to be hung or else imprisoned for life." He 
 admitted that the answer of Mr. Adams to Waddy Thompson, of 
 South Carolina, after the introduction of the resolution to expel Mr. 
 Adams from the House of Representatives last winter, was the best 
 thing of the kind he ever read.* I asked him to go to the meeting, 
 and hear Elizabeth Fry. He went with me, and said he liked her 
 
 * In February, 1S37, '^I''- Adams (bom July 1 1, 1767, died Feb. 23, 1848), who had been a member of 
 Congress from Massachusetts, after leaving the Presidency in 1829, was successful in defeating a vote 
 of expulsion offered in consequence of his presenting anti-slavery petitions. His eloquence and 
 courage were remarkable, and he had frequent occasion for their exercise in the long contest for the 
 right of petition which he kept up against the Southern slave-owners and their Northern allies. 
 
1837-1839 I09 
 
 preaching very well. About twenty-five were at this meeting ; and 
 Mrs. Fry began her sermon with the texts, " Say to the North, Give 
 up, and to the South, Hold not back," and " Come unto me, all ye 
 who labor, etc." I afterwards dined and spent the evening with 
 Isaac Sargent and family in company with Anne Knight. She thinks 
 Lord Brougham a traitor to the cause of the Abolitionists, and says 
 that by their means he climbed the ladder of fame, and, having 
 reached the top, forgot his former zeal. She further quoted some 
 one who was present in the House of Lords when he presented the 
 famous Ladies' Petition some four years ago, and who said he did it 
 with very much the air of a school-boy going to be whipped. This is 
 the first time I have heard that noble lord spoken of in such terms. 
 Late in the evening Dr. Godfrey, of London, invited me to meeting 
 on the 12th at the house of a Wesleyan clergyman, who lives here as 
 superintendent of missionary stations in France. 
 
 February 12. — I accompanied Dr. Godfrey to the meeting, where 
 about forty were present, among them several young physicians of 
 my acquaintance. After the cake and tea had been passed, during 
 which there was the sociability of a tea-party, Mrs. Fry gave an 
 account of her visits to five of the Parisian prisons, where she had 
 been the preceding week. She had found but little wanting in 
 them, so far as personal comfort is concerned, but a total destitu- 
 tion of the means of moral and religious instruction. They are thus 
 superior to the English prisons in comfort, but inferior in moral cult- 
 ure. Josiah Forster spoke at considerable length upon slavery and 
 the slave-trade, giving a particular account of the existing state of 
 the trade and of the horrors of the middle passage. 
 
 March 28. — Last First Day I attended the meeting at Anne 
 Knight's, and was agreeably surprised in finding there some English 
 Friends, with whom I became acquainted in London. They are 
 
 Robert Ware Fox, his wife, two young Foxes, their daughters, 
 
 Fox, brother of Robert, his wife, and a grand-daughter. They reside 
 at Penjerrick, near Falmouth, where R. W. Fox is the American con- 
 sul. After a sojourn of a few days in Paris they go to Switzerland, 
 after a tour in France. 
 
 April. — The Foxes have gone to Southern France. Robert Fox 
 has much celebrity as a man of scientific acquirements. His brother 
 is less known in the same line. I am enchanted (to use a word 
 altogether French) with their families. They are all very intelligent. 
 
no THE ARNOLDS OF NEW BEDFORD 
 
 My friend Sargent and I accompanied them one day to Notre Dame 
 and the manufactory of the Gobelin tapestry. 
 
 In Paris Dr. Earle met a lady from New Bedford, with whom 
 he soon became intimate. Why they never married is not per- 
 fectly known ; the acquaintance continued for years ; and the 
 recollection of Elizabeth Arnold may have prevented any sub- 
 sequent engagement. He says : — 
 
 Faf'is, April 21, 1838. — A few days ago I met at Anne Knight's 
 a lady whom I had several times seen at the reunions while Elizabeth 
 Fry was here. We had even conversed, each remaining ignorant of 
 the other's name, and each supposing the other to be English. This 
 day A. Knight said to me, " This lady is from thy country." That 
 was enough, and we began to talk. She said she was from New 
 England. I said I was. She then declared she was from Massachu- 
 setts. "That is my native State." "I know well by reputation 
 persons of your name," said she, having learned my name from 
 A. Knight; "and my father is acquainted with them." "Who?" 
 I asked. " Oh, there was a Pliny Earle and a Silas Earle." " Just 
 so. I am the son of Pliny and the nephew of Silas." " From what 
 place are you?" "From New Bedford. Are you acquainted with 
 Thomas Greene, who lives there ? " " Yes, very well. I have often 
 heard him speak of a Mr. Earle M'ho is a conchologist." "That is 
 my brother Milton; but your name, if you please?" "It is Ar- 
 nold." (She is the wife of James Arnold, who returned to New 
 Bedford in the fall ; while she and her daughter Elizabeth have 
 passed the winter in Paris.) 
 
 This acquaintance thus begun was kept up in England in 
 June, whither the Arnolds went in May, and Dr. Earle soon 
 after, as already mentioned. 
 
 The Arnolds early in June went from London to Holland for 
 a few weeks, then came back to England for a tour through 
 the southern counties, and soon afterwards returned to New 
 Bedford ; while the young physician, freed from his medical 
 pursuits in France, went also to Holland, and then to Switzer- 
 land and Italy. In communicating this plan of travel to his 
 sisters Lucy and Eliza at Leicester, he said : — 
 
I837-I839 III 
 
 For some months I have regarded a journey through the south 
 of Europe as a labor Httle to be desired, and yet I have a pencha?it to 
 go. I wish to see the Eternal City: it would gratify me to stand on 
 the Acropolis. But, to travel through Holland, Switzerland, Italy, 
 and Greece, time will be required. To see those countries well, I 
 should have at least a year. You will perceive, then, that I cannot 
 return to America next autumn. But it is my intention to return 
 early in the spring of 1839. 
 
 This plan he began to carry out by a visit to Holland and 
 Belgium in July, 1838. He says, writing in August : — 
 
 James Arnold gave me a letter to John S. Mollet, a Friend who 
 resides in Amsterdam, the only member of our society in that city. 
 I found him without occupation, a man of leisure ; and he accom- 
 panied me to the public institutions and the curiosities of Amsterdam. 
 It was particularly agreeable thus to find a friend in a country where 
 I did not understand the language. I also made there the acquaint- 
 ance of Ramon de la Sagra, a Spaniard of celebrity, who travelled 
 in the United States in the summer of 1835, ^.nd published an 
 account of his journey in a book of five hundred pages. He was 
 twice in Worcester, where he visited the hall of the American Anti- 
 quarian Society and the State Lunatic Hospital. He was enchanted 
 with America, and speaks complimentarily of Dr. Woodward, the 
 hospital superintendent. I had intended to go up the Rhine to 
 Switzerland, but was ill in Belgium, and remained several days in 
 Antwerp in the hope of full recovery, but at length decided to 
 return to Paris, where I am not yet (August 15) entirely well. 
 
 Aug. 26, 1838. — I have been occupying myself in illness by 
 reading the French " History of the Revolution," by M. Thiers, the 
 journalist turned statesman. It is in eight volumes, and I am now 
 in the third. Interesting, but rather too minute in detail. Several 
 of my Paris friends call, too, and thus help to relieve the ennui of 
 the sick-room. Dr. Kean, of Providence, who lives very near, comes 
 in two or three times a day. He is un bon e7tfa?it, as the Savoyard 
 says, who has the care of my chamber. Then I have a young Irish 
 friend, a physician, who first came to Paris three years ago, 
 before he studied medicine, to withdraw himself from painful asso- 
 ciations, after the death of a young lady to whom he was affianced. 
 Time, that potent physician, seems to have brought him solace. He 
 
112 FRIENDS OF DR. EARLE IN PARIS 
 
 was with me yesterday nearly five hours, relating many anecdotes of 
 O'Connell, the great agitator, and giving me much information about 
 the manners and customs of his countrymen. To-day he has been 
 here an hour and a half, in high spirits, and kept me laughing, some- 
 times to tears, almost the whole time. He told many anecdotes of 
 Dean Swift, of Curran, and of his own Irish acquaintance. A third 
 friend is another Irish physician. Dr. Newenham, who was educated 
 in German schools. Handsome in person, in intellect highly cul- 
 tivated, and endowed with all the moral virtues, he is physically 
 small, somewhat effeminate, and of a very mild disposition. But he 
 is an enthusiast ; and his conversation, enlivened by all the gesticula- 
 tion of the French people, is particularly attractive. A fourth friend 
 is an English physician, young, highly gifted, enthusiastic, and some- 
 what chimerical. I first met him in this Hotel de la Place de 
 rOdeon, the second day after I took these rooms last year. Since 
 that time (little more than a year) he has shown me the titles of four 
 or five books which he is going to write. One is to be a large 
 medical work in several volumes ; another upon PHat populaire, or 
 the lower classes of the people of Paris ; a third, in opposition to the 
 national church of England ; fourth, a code of laws or system of 
 government, under which nobody would be oppressed or unhappy. 
 While generally pursuing his studies in the hospitals, he also has had 
 his thoughts upon the future. At one time he is going to serve in 
 the army, at another in the navy. Sometimes he meditates the life 
 of a recluse, in which he can study, write, become renowned, and 
 render great service to science and mankind. Sometimes he intends 
 to marry, and live a country life in England ; and again he is going 
 to start off, with some friends, immediately for New Holland, there 
 to found a colony under the beneficent system just mentioned. Such 
 a medley bespeaks the lunatic, or the man of brilliant imagination, or 
 else a particularly active and vivacious mind, or, finally, a lover. I 
 think that in this case there is a little of the last. 
 
 August 31. — The Parisians are now making a great noise over the 
 birth of the high and mighty Louis Philippe Albert, Count of Paris, 
 and son of the Duke of Orleans. On the 28th the king and the 
 royal family attended a "Te Deum " at Notre Dame; and the next 
 day there was a grand fete, similar to those of May i and July 29. 
 
 The " Acte de Naissance," which is published in the journals, 
 signed by members of the royal family and the ministers who were 
 
1837-1839 113 
 
 present at the birth, is a curiosity. The municipal government of 
 Paris has presented the baby with a sword costing 35,000 francs 
 ($7,000). The little fellow would make a droll figure wearing it, 
 
 Sept. 14, 1838. — Since I returned to Paris in July I have 
 read " Belgium and Germany," in two volumes, and " Paris and the 
 Parisians," in three, both by Mrs. Trollope, " Homeward Bound," by 
 Cooper, and five volumes of Thiers's " French Revolution," to say 
 nothing of Galignani's Messejiger, Le Siede, and other daily news- 
 papers, or of two volumes of the Londo?i Keepsake, brought in by 
 my good friend, Dr. Newenham. My friends continue their frequent 
 visits, some in the morning, some in the afternoon, others in the 
 evening. Indeed, my chamber has become an evening rendezvous, 
 where are generally three or four persons. Dr. Spencer has missed 
 but one evening in the last ten days. 
 
 Paris, October 26. — It is now past 11 p.m., and I am expect- 
 ing to leave Paris in the diligence at seven to-morrow morning. My 
 place is taken, my trunks packed, for a three days' journey day and 
 night in succession. ... I have given up the idea of going further 
 east than Venice and further south than Naples and Paestum. I 
 devote three months to Italy, and three here in the spring, and mean 
 to sail from Havre about the ist of May, 1839; ^^^^ ^s, six months 
 from now. 
 
 This plan was much altered, as will be seen ; and before 
 Christmas Dr. Earle was in Constantinople, where, he says, 
 "my eyes rested on St. Sophia and her sister mosques in the 
 city of Mahound, and I wandered through the streets of Stam- 
 boul, among congregated thousands of the nations of the East, 
 where everything is novel, — now admiring, now deploring." 
 His diary thus continues : — 
 
 Nov. I, 1838. — After three and a half days' travel by way of Dijon 
 and over the Jura, day and night, I arrived here October 30 (at 
 Geneva), situated not only upon the blue and rushing Rhone, but 
 also on 
 
 Clear placid Leman, thy contrasted lake 
 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, 
 
 as you remember Byron says in " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," where 
 also he mentions Ferney, the residence of Voltaire, which I have 
 
114 SWITZERLAND IN 1838 
 
 visited. Did I speak in my letters from England of a Dr. Fauconnet, 
 who boarded at John Burtt's when I did last year? Well, after 
 travels in Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Austria, he has returned 
 to his home near Geneva, where I found him yesterday ; and he has 
 the kindness to act as cicerone for me. His father died recently ; 
 but he still lives with his mother and sister (the handsomest girl in 
 Switzerland) in a pretty little cottage among the environs of Geneva. 
 I have taken tea and spent the evening with him and them. Their 
 house is surrounded by an ample garden of flowers and fruits, and 
 overlooks the lake, whose waters dash but a dozen rods away. 
 
 St. Maiirice, November 4. — Leaving Geneva by steamboat, I went 
 up the lake by Lausanne, Clarens, Montreux, etc., to Villeneuve, at 
 the place where the Rhone enters the lake, and thence went back a 
 short distance to the Castle of Chillon. I was conducted through 
 that by a French-speaking woman, whose tongue ran as fast as a 
 locomotive, going two ways at once. She told me the history of a 
 young man who was imprisoned there at the same time with Bonni- 
 vard (who was Byron's " Prisoner of Chillon "), making a tale which, 
 in the hands of Byron, might have equalled any of his poems. She 
 added that the person who showed Byron and Shelley through 
 Chillon neglected to tell them this. 
 
 From Villeneuve I came to this place, a most romantically wild 
 and picturesque situation in the valley of the upper Rhone. Suppose 
 the village church, with its steeple as tall as that of Worcester Old 
 South, with a huge rock rising perpendicular beside it and towering 
 high above the steeple, — a rock which would put any of ours in 
 Worcester County to the blush, — and yet small enough to wish to 
 hide itself when placed beside those I shall see in crossing the 
 Simplon. St. Maurice is all at the foot of this rock ; and here the 
 two routes from Geneva to the Simplon intersect, the one passing 
 round the lake and up the Rhone valley, as I came, the other, con- 
 structed in part by Napoleon in his passage from Geneva to Milan, 
 over the Simplon, running through Douvaine, Thonon, and Bouveret, 
 and thence up the Rhone valley to St. Maurice. From here I follow 
 Napoleon's route to Milan. 
 
 Milan, November, 1838. — My companions from St. Maurice in the 
 diligence were a young Swiss merchant going to Milan and a young 
 Italian widow from Udine, on the north shore of the Adriatic, return- 
 ing from Geneva to her native town. We filled the coupe' of the 
 
1837-1839 115 
 
 vehicle until we arrived at the frontier of Sardinia, where the young 
 Swiss was stopped, likely to be detained fifteen days because his pass- 
 port was not €71 regie, — a specimen of the beauties of monarchical 
 government. At Dorao d' Ossola, the next town where we stayed after 
 passing the frontier, his place was taken by two young Catholic 
 priests, seventeen years old (we now had an Italian diligence which 
 holds six passengers, as did that English one mentioned in the Anti- 
 Jacobin, — 
 
 So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides, 
 
 The Derby dilly, carrv'ing six insides), 
 
 one of whom resembled our ideas of a priest as much as chalk does 
 cheese. He was one of the handsomest youths I ever saw, with a 
 noble head, and features in which manly firmness and dignity were 
 admirably mingled with effeminate beauty. He was in the sacerdotal 
 robe, with a hat as large as that formerly worn by Friend Ichabod 
 Sylvester, and differing from that only in being cocked tricorne. Qi 
 French birth, but educated in Italy, he spoke the two languages with 
 the greatest fluency ; and, what with talking, laughing, and taking 
 snuff, he succeeded in occupying every moment. He was none of 
 your delicate snuff-takers, either, who must have the black maccoboy. 
 On the contrary, he used the common yellow, taken in such quantities 
 that his upper lip was the color of a pumpkin, and seemingly per- 
 manently stained ; for, when wiped with his handkerchief, it was not 
 changed in color. 
 
 At the tavern, in the village of Simplon, which stands at a height 
 (4,856 feet) 1,500 feet higher than the top of Monadnoc, we saw an 
 English family of six persons who had been detained there a week 
 because their passport had not been properly signed. Descending 
 from here, I once felt greatly in danger. In most places this road 
 over the Alps has no fence upon the dangerous side, even where the 
 precipice is of the greatest height, with a yawning gulf on one side 
 and an overshadowing mountain cliff on the other. There are only 
 stone posts, two feet high and twelve or fifteen feet asunder, forming 
 a very imperfect barrier ; and in places the road turns very short and 
 at less than a right angle. We were going at a brisk trot, the road 
 steep, when we came to one of these short turns. The German 
 postilion pulled the rein of his horse, when snap ! went the strap 
 which tied the heads of the two horses together. With such a 
 harness as we had (it would disgrace the plough-horse of a good 
 
Il6 DR. EARLE IN MILAN 
 
 New England farmer), this was the failing of an important part. The 
 off-horse was left perfectly beyond control, and, instead of turning 
 as he ought, he took Davy Crockett's advice,* and went straight 
 ahead. I never shall forget that moment. Having taken a seat 
 with our German guide, I could see all that passed, as well as the 
 horrid gulf below us. The blood rushed to my heart, my sight 
 became dim, and my limbs as feeble as an infant's. The risk was 
 enough to rouse our phlegmatic guide ; and, by dint of his swearing, 
 and the mastery by the postilion of the horse he was bestriding, we 
 succeeded in turning just in time to shun the guard-posts. 
 
 I know of no view more lovely than that from the top of the 
 central spire of the great marble cathedral of Milan, which I 
 ascended one day. While enjoying it, I was joined by a party of 
 Italian ladies and gentlemen, one of whom at once asked me, in 
 French, if I was a Russian. " No, I am an American." " 0,0,0! 
 ella e Americano " (third person feminine instead of masculine for 
 " He is," agreeably to Italian usage) burst from the mouths of two 
 or three at once. One of the men spoke English, and had been in 
 England. He said they took me for a Russian because many from 
 that country are now in Milan, in the suite of the crown prince of 
 Russia. Had I been a brother, I could not have expected so much 
 attention as I received from this Italian party. They were going to 
 the imperial palace to see the apartments, and invited me to go with 
 them. I went with them through the richest suite of rooms I have 
 yet seen ; and then one of the party, a physician, invited me home 
 with him. I accepted, and the next day he went with me to the 
 hospital, etc. (Query. — Would an Italian, encountered for the first 
 time by a party of Bostonians in the cupola of the State House, 
 receive similar attentions ?) 
 
 It will sufficiently appear already that the young American, 
 with all his modesty, and really by virtue of it, was a charming 
 person to the Europeans whom he encountered, since he was 
 everywhere welcomed and made at home. At that time the 
 number of his countrymen travelling in Europe was not large ; 
 and the rapid growth of liberal political sentiment, by reaction 
 from the repression and police surveillance which followed the 
 
 •The Tennessee marksman, whose legendary sayings were once common in America; among 
 others, " First make sure you're right, tlien go ahead." 
 
1837-1839 117 
 
 Napoleonic wars and the Greek Revolution, had made the 
 republicanism of the United States much in favor among the 
 educated men of the Continent. Nor would it have been easy 
 to find a better representative of the republican simplicity 
 which America was then thought to favor than was this 
 Massachusetts Quaker, fresh from the home of Franklin in 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 Venice, Dec. i, 1838. — The Italian widow, who joined our travelling 
 party at St. Maurice, came in company with me as far as Venice ; 
 and, upon parting, she gave me a handsome bead purse in return for 
 my kindness, — '■^per la vostra bonta^ She speaks French well ; but 
 I requested her to talk Italian with me, so that, from conversing 
 with her and other passengers, I became enabled, not parlare niolto 
 bene, but un poco, before reaching this seat of the Queen of the 
 Adriatic. Before arriving here, I had not sufficiently learned one 
 truth, — that reading poetry, or poetical descriptions of places, or 
 looking at engravings (flattered views, as they are nowadays), is one 
 thing, but visiting the reality is quite another. I had expected, not 
 withstanding the assertion of Byron, — 
 
 In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. 
 And silent rows the songless gondolier, — 
 
 to find the Venetian boatmen altogether composed of poetry. But 
 the kaleidoscope has turned : the picture is changed, and I behold it 
 now in all the sublimity of truth. I do not recollect to have felt 
 actually in danger but twice since I left Leicester, — on the Alps, as 
 already described, and here just before I was setting forth for 
 Greece. I had some difficulty with a gondolier, about sunset, 
 because I would not pay him twice as much as he had agreed to 
 work for. He had threatened me severely, and, finally, on leaving, 
 told me I should have trouble in getting to the steamboat, which, as 
 in nine-tenths of the European ports, lay at anchor some distance 
 from the shore. In order to avoid danger, I asked my landlord to 
 get me another gondolier from another part of the city, which he did. 
 I still feared a coalition with other gondoliers, but go I must. The 
 price was agreed upon (being twice as much as an Italian would 
 have paid), and I got into his gondola. It was ten o'clock, the moon 
 not risen ; and, consequently, it was dark. Off we set, the gondolier 
 
Il8 VENICE AND NAPLES 
 
 rowing through a series of canals about ten feet wide, unlighted, and 
 bordered on both sides with stone houses rising directly from the 
 water, five or six stories high. Not a lighted window was to be seen, 
 and nothing heard but the rippling water. My luggage might have 
 been temptation enough, I thought, particularly after what had 
 passed that day, to place me where the waters would leave no 
 record. I never breathed more freely than when we emerged from 
 these narrow canals into the Grand Canal, near its junction with the 
 Giudecca. The gondolier now stopped his boat, came to the window 
 of the little cabin in which I sat, and said, " If you will pay me two 
 zwantzigers [twice what I had agreed], I'll row you to the steamer 
 by way of the Grand Canal." I knew more of the location than the 
 fellow thought ; for he could not row me any other way, except by 
 going back and rowing four or five miles round. I told him to row 
 along, I should not give it. " But it will take an hour to row there." 
 This "raised my Ebenezer," for I knew it would not take more than 
 five minutes of good rowing. So I mustered what Italian I had, and 
 reeled it off to him. He took away his head, muttering ; but in 
 a few minutes I was on board the steamer. 
 
 The visit to Naples and Rome was postponed until Dr. 
 Earle should have returned from Greece and Turkey, for which 
 he sailed in the steamer which he thus boarded in the dark 
 waters of Venice. He reached Malta on his return in January, 
 left it in February for Syracuse, Catania, and Messina, touch- 
 ing briefly at those ports, and sailing between Scylla and 
 Charybdis, and very near the perpetually burning volcanic 
 island of Stromboli, the " Faro," or lighthouse, of Italy, reached 
 Naples before March. A letter written in Italian to his sisters 
 at Leicester gives these few particulars of his journey through 
 Western Italy and France, back to Paris, where he arrived 
 early in April, 1839 : — 
 
 I was ten days in Naples and its vicinity, visiting the chief places 
 of interest, in company with three Englishmen. We ascended 
 Vesuvius together on a magnificently beautiful day, and next made 
 a journey of archaeological interest to Herculaneum, Pompeii, and 
 Paestum. From Naples I went to Rome in thirty-six hours; and the 
 journey from Rome to Florence, visiting the cataract of Terni on the 
 
1837-1839 119 
 
 way, occupied six days. My stay in Rome was so brief, and there 
 were so many churches, ruins, statues, pictures, and other things to 
 be seen in that wonderful city that I was constantly occupied. 
 From Florence my route was down the Arno Valley to Pisa and 
 Leghorn, and thence by steamer to Marseilles. Upon the whole, I 
 think that in each important city of Italy I enjoyed about as much 
 as in boyhood, when going to the High Rock, to Bumskit, or to the 
 Mill, to "go in SAvimming." 
 
 From Marseilles my route was by way of Avignon, Lyons, and 
 Chalons, to Paris; and here I am (April 12) in the same hotel 
 (Place de I'Odeon) which was my home last year. Elizabeth Fry is 
 again in the city, but I have not seen her yet. So busy am I in 
 attending the hospitals, taking a course of practical lessons in 
 surgery, and in much else that I want to do before leaving for 
 America that hitherto I have not called on Dr. Mott or Anne 
 Knight. 
 
 It is worth mentioning that, although Charles Sumner 
 arrived in Paris early in 1838, and remained there four months, 
 there is no record in his letters or those of Dr. Earle that they 
 ever met. They must have done so at the receptions of 
 General Cass, which both attended, and of which both gave 
 striking accounts. But the pursuits and associations of the 
 two young Americans * were then so unlike that they can have 
 had little in common. Afterwards they were good friends, and 
 often met in Washington. In a few weeks after reaching 
 Paris from Italy, Dr. Earle sailed for America. 
 
 *■ Sumner, writing from Paris, Feb. 27, 1838, to Longfellow, the poet, says: "Mrs. Fry has been 
 at Paris, exciting some attention on the subject of prisons. The French, by the way, are just waking 
 up on that subject, and also on that of railroads." So little did he then concern himself with a matter 
 that afterwards engaged his earnest efforts that this is the only allusion to Mrs. Fry in his published 
 letters from France and England in 1838-39. But he heard Louis and Magendie lecture in Paris; 
 and of the latter he says (Feb. 9, 1838): "He is a man apparently about fifty" (in fact, fifty-five), 
 "rather short and stout, with a countenance marked by the small-pox. He is renowned for killing 
 cats and dogs : there were no less than three murdered dogs brought upon the table while I was 
 there, — at the College Royal, — in order to illustrate the different appearance of the blood at certain 
 times after death." Sumner also followed Velpeau one day through the wards of the Charite, and 
 heard him lecture clinically. Magendie died in 1855, but Velpeau lived till 1867. The latter was bom 
 in 1795, and was twelve years younger than Magendie. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 GREECE, TURKEY, AND MALTA IN 1 838-39. 
 
 In November, 1838, after travelling through Switzerland and 
 Northern Italy, Dr. Earle sailed from Venice to Patras, on the 
 Gulf of Lepanto, at the western entrance of the Gulf of 
 Corinth, and thence proceeded to Athens and Marathon. 
 From Athens he sailed to Constantinople, and returned thence 
 to Western Europe by way of Malta, where he was compelled 
 to spend three weeks in quarantine in January, 1839. Many 
 adventures befell him in this rather adventurous journey; for 
 at that time Greece was not the quiet and civilized region 
 which the tourist now sees in visiting only those places 
 reached by our young physician. He says: — 
 
 At Patras I landed, a perfect stranger, ignorant of the modern 
 Greek tongue, but knowing there was an American missionary there, 
 I walked into the market-place of the town, where I saw a man who, 
 I felt convinced, was an American, and asked him if he spoke 
 English. " Yes, sir." " Do you know an American missionary 
 here ? " "I am the man," said he ; and he went with me to the 
 schools and other places of interest in the town. His name is 
 Cephas Pasco, and he came from Stafford, in Connecticut. I dined 
 with him, and he gave me letters of introduction for Athens. I 
 witnessed here the packing of the small grapes which we call Zante 
 currants, and which grow in large quantities along the Corinthian 
 Gulf, from Patras to Corinth, as well as in the southern parts of the 
 Peloponnesus. It is said that, if you are to dine at a tavern, you 
 should never look into the kitchen ; and a like remark might be 
 made about the packing and lading of currants. I will only say that, 
 while one man stands among them as they lie in a large pen or 
 vault, another, with his naked feet well greased, gets into the cask 
 and treads them down. Such as fall out of the shovel, cask, or boxes 
 upon the dusty pier, where they are loaded into boats, are carefully 
 swept up and put in with the others. 
 
1838-1839 121 
 
 At Athens I made many acquaintances. The American mission- 
 aries there were then Rev. J. H. Hill of New York, Rev. Jonas King 
 of Windsor, Mass., and Rev, Nathan Benjamin, also from Western 
 Massachusetts. Dr. Roeser, the Bavarian physician of the Bavarian 
 King of Greece, was my good friend ; and I was indebted to him for 
 my election into the Medical Society of Athens, of which I have 
 ever since been a member, and for which I wrote a thesis while de- 
 tained in quarantine at Malta in January. In my first visit to the 
 antiquities of Athens, I went on horseback, though the distances 
 were small, accompanied by Messrs. John H. Hill and Benjamin. 
 From the neighborhood of Mr. Hill's school, near the gate of the new 
 Agora [the Stoa of Hadrian], we went eastward, and crossed the 
 Ilissus, where no water was then to be seen, to the Stadium of 
 Herodes Atticus.* Its oval form is nearly perfect, and the tunnel 
 through the hill at its eastern extremity, through which the Pana- 
 thenaic procession may have passed, remains ; but the marble seats 
 with which its interior was furnished by the wealthy Herod of Attica 
 (who also had a great estate at Marathon and along by the sides of 
 Pentelicus) have all disappeared. The original Stadium was made 
 by Lycurgus, — not the mythical Spartan, but an eminent citizen of 
 Athens, in the fourth century B.C. Returning, we entered a new 
 Protestant cemetery [where, thirty-seven years later, George Finlay 
 was buried], and thence to the terrace and ruins of the temple of 
 Jupiter Olympus, originally the most magnificent of Grecian temples, 
 550 feet long and 170 feet wide, and flanked on each of its two sides 
 with a double row of 20 Corinthian columns, while at each front was 
 a triple row of 10, in all 120 columns, each nearly 60 feet in height 
 and 5/^ in diameter. Only 16 of them are now standing, and the 
 beauty of these is disfigured by large holes chiselled in them for 
 the purpose of extracting the leaden and iron clamps which bound 
 the marble drums together. Yet some of the flutings are still as 
 perfect as if they came but yesterday from the sculptor's hand. 
 Upon a small portion of the architrave which remains, supported 
 by some of the pillars, I saw a small building, of modern construc- 
 tion, which, report says, was once inhabited by a monk. Near by 
 is the Arch of Hadrian, through which we passed, and along by the 
 
 *This has lately (1S96) been restored by a wealthy Greek, Mr. Averoff, to something like its 
 former magnificence ; and his purpose is to replace the temporary wooden seats, from which tens of 
 thousands saw the Athenian games in the spring of 1896, by marble ones, hewn from the unexhausted 
 quarries of Pentelicus, whence Herodes supplied his chairs and benches. 
 
122 ATHENS IN 1838 
 
 military hospital to the so-called Prison of Socrates, — small caves 
 hewn in the rock on the declivity of a hill ; thence by the crumbling 
 monument of unknown Philopappus to the Pnyx Hill, on which pub- 
 lic meetings were held, and where Demosthenes and other orators 
 harangued their fellow-citizens. Standing there, the Athenian saw 
 the plain of Athens spread at his feet, the groves of Academus in 
 the northern distance, Hymettus with its lofty ridges on the right, 
 as he faced the Acropolis, with its costly magnificence in marble 
 and gold. On the left lay Salamis, and behind him the sea and 
 islands. This closed our first day's sight-seeing. 
 
 Modern Athens has recovered but slowly from the dilapidation 
 and depopulation in which the Turks left it in 1832. It then had 
 but about 2,000 inhabitants, though before the Revolution of 182 1 
 it may have had 12,000. Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of the 
 poet whose Lake region I visited in 1837, was here in October, 1832 ; 
 and his account is dismal enough. "The town of Athens," he say, 
 " is now lying in ruins. The streets are almost deserted : nearly 
 all the houses are without roofs. The churches are reduced to bare 
 walls and heaps of stone and mortar. There is but one church in 
 which service is performed. A few new wooden houses, one or 
 two more solid structures, and the two lines of planked sheds which 
 form the bazaar are the inhabited dwellings of which Athens can 
 boast." 
 
 Things had changed much for the better in the six years before 
 my visit. The whole population of Greece was less than 800,000, 
 but of these some 20,000 were in Athens. The king, Otho, made 
 it his residence in 1834, with his court and the foreign ministers; 
 and a royal palace was going up on a great square, which the 
 frugal Greeks viewed with a rueful eye, because costing them 
 millions of their drachmas. I saw many comfortable houses, and 
 some which are even elegant. The finest building in the city, 
 however, was a hospital. The most densely peopled part of Athens, 
 on the north side of the Acropolis, was a mass of wretched buildings, 
 most of them but one story and none more than two stories. From 
 one corner of this quarter ran the street of -^olus, — the Wall Street 
 of the city. There on the sidewalks, had there been any, were men 
 and women seated on the ground or on low benches, some selling 
 oranges, others chestnuts, roast or boiled ; while behind small tables, 
 piled with stamped paper money or bags of specie, sat the money- 
 
1838-1839 123 
 
 changer, as in the temple at Jerusalem. The awnings in front of 
 the shops were fastened, not to posts or supporting braces, but by 
 cords stretched across the street, and tied to the opposite buildings ; 
 while other cords spanned the same street, on which clothes were 
 hung to dry, — the chief street being thus a laundry-yard. Many of 
 the shops have the whole front thrown open to the street ; and in 
 them the occupants, particularly the tailors and tobacco-workers, sit 
 on the floor at their trades. None of the streets were paved, and 
 most of them were filthy. To insure safety from the vile condition 
 of the streets and also from robbery or assassination, every one who 
 goes out in the evening is required by law to carry a lantern, as in 
 the days of Diogenes. 
 
 This custom once led my friend. Dr. Roeser, into a ludicrous 
 situation. Though the most learned man in Athens, he was absent- 
 minded, and accustomed to have his evening lantern carried before 
 him by a servant. Being about to leave an evening party, he came 
 to the door with hat and cane, and stepped into the dark street, just 
 as a stranger with his lantern was passing. Mistaking this for his 
 man's lantern. Dr. Roeser followed it trustfully. The two had gone 
 some distance when the stranger, perceiving that he was followed by 
 a man without a light, quickened his step. So did the doctor. He 
 then walked slower. The doctor did the same. Finding, after a 
 while, that his pursuer kept about the same distance behind, the man 
 grew alarmed and started to run. So did Dr. Roeser, and more 
 than kept up. Street after street was quickly passed, and they were 
 already in the suburbs. The open fields or some place of refuge 
 were the only alternatives for the shadowed and enlightening 
 stranger. He chose the latter. A large door stood open. He ran 
 within, and in the twinkling of his own lantern closed it upon the 
 doctor, creaking as it turned on rusty hinges. Thus aroused to con- 
 sciousness that something was wrong, Dr. Roeser looked about him, 
 and found himself beneath the lofty portico of the old temple of 
 Theseus. When I questioned him on the subject, he said that he 
 ran because he supposed his man was taking him to some patient 
 whose case was urgent. 
 
 Those who had lived long among the Greeks united in giving them 
 a bad name. One of them said to me, " I cannot trust a Greek with 
 my back turned." As a people, they seem to be quick-witted, shrewd, 
 but suspicious, fickle, and treacherous. Like most mountaineers, 
 
124 ^ VISIT TO MARATHON 
 
 they are hardy, bold, and independent ; and, taking advantage of their 
 facilities for retreat beyond detection, no wonder, when poverty 
 presses hard on a proud spirit, that they sometimes resort to rob- 
 bery. And perhaps there was never a time when the country was 
 more infested with brigands than while I was there. I had been in 
 Athens but a few days when a policeman was killed and another 
 wounded in an ineffectual attempt to capture a band of them on the 
 road to Marathon. Soon after two of their leaders voluntarily gave 
 themselves up, vainly hoping for pardon by such a surrender, — a 
 custom which prevailed under the Turks. I was one day riding up 
 a street, when I saw before me, and near where my street crosses 
 ^olus Street, a dense crowd of people ; while others were rushing 
 up. I alighted, pushed into the crowd, and soon saw what caused 
 the excitement. Amidst a motley assemblage of red caps, black hats, 
 turbans, fezzes, mustaches, long beards, and ferocious faces, were 
 four men mounted on donkeys, their arms pinioned, their faces cov- 
 ered with blood, and one of them giving evidence of a wound by rude 
 dressings, red with blood. They were brigands, just captured near 
 the Marathon road ; and in the skirmish with soldiers and peasants 
 one of the robbers had been killed and several wounded. 
 
 Life is rarely taken by the bandits, who are satisfied with the spoils 
 without murder. But woe to the unlucky traveller whose purse 
 is not garnished ! His life may be granted, but he may expect the 
 bastinado. An English gentleman and artist, Edward Noel, a cousin 
 of Lady Byron, has an estate in Eubcea (Achmet Aga), bought from 
 the confiscated lands of the Turks when theyfleft the island in 1834. 
 Being about to visit his property, and knowing the dangers of the 
 road, he left most of his money in Athens. On the way he was 
 beset by brigands, who, finding so little in his purse, advised him to 
 carry more the next journey, and, lest he should forget to do so, 
 gave him a sound whipping.* 
 
 In spite of the brigands I determined to visit Marathon, for 
 which purpose I got a guide and a pair of horses. My route took me 
 through Kephissia, at the foot of Pentelicus, and was good at first; 
 but the last few miles it was a mere bridle-path, over steep and lofty 
 
 * Mr. Noel was also interested, in 1870, in obtaining the release of the Englishmen seized by brig- 
 ands at Pikermi, a ravine on another and shorter road to Marathon than that described.by Dr. Earle. 
 In spite of his well-meant efforts and those of his son, Mr. Francis Noel, who now (1898) owns the 
 Achmet Aga estate, the Englishmen were shot by the brigands; but this led to such vigorous action 
 by the Greek authorities that for a quarter of a century the roads to Marathon have been as safe as that 
 from Worcester to Leicester. I have tried them. — F. B. S. 
 
1838-1839 125 
 
 hills, through deep, rocky ravines, and in some places as difficult for 
 a horse as an ordinary flight of stone stairs. Yet this was called by 
 the Greek authorities a " carrossable " road, though you never met 
 a carriage on it. Now and then we encountered men or women, 
 sometimes riding and sometimes driving laden beasts, on their way 
 to market; sometimes only a man with a gun slung across his 
 shoulder, going to Athens or Kephissia. 
 
 The country through which our route lay may thus be described 
 to a Leicester citizen : Let all the stone fences and other en- 
 closures be removed from the three townships of Leicester, Pax- 
 ton, and Holden ; cover the hills and valleys with low whortle- 
 berry bushes or the "high-bush blueberry"; let the cows be the 
 only path-makers — not a single stone being removed by man — 
 from our house at Mulberry Grove over the top of the Indian hill 
 Asnebumskit, in a nearly straight line, — and you will get some con- 
 ception of the region and the road by which my guide and I travelled 
 on our steeds. However, in some places it was as much worse than 
 that as that would be worse than a good English road ; and this is 
 no exaggeration. I took with me as guide a Greek who was recom- 
 mended as being honest ; but at one point I felt some misgivings, in 
 view of the fact that five brigands had either been captured or sur- 
 rendered to the Chorophylakes, or gens-d'armes, since I had reached 
 Athens from Corfu and Patras. We were near the foot of Mount 
 Pentelicus * when this guide pretended to have taken the wrong path, 
 and made off through the bushes towards the mountain. From some 
 things which had occurred earlier I felt a little suspicious, and 
 now I began to consider myself in danger. After suffering from 
 fears for a while, I said to myself, "Well, I'll see it through," and 
 was perfectly easy from that time on. We soon came into another 
 path, and reached Marathon before night. I spent the night at the 
 village of Lower Souli, two miles from the battle-mound, and re- 
 turned safely to Athens the next day. But within forty-eight hours 
 after my return the three brigands already mentioned were brought 
 
 * Dr. Earle was taking the old route to Marathon (there are three), leading through Kephissia, 
 Stamata, and over Aphorismos. His guide's perplexity evidently arose from his wish to take the steep 
 Vrana road, which branches off from the Marathona road, a little west of Stamata. Apparently, he 
 went finally down the gorge in which lay the ancient deme of Thespis, " Icaria,'' where the American 
 School at Athens in iSSS excavated the remains of a small temple, and identified the home of 
 Thespis, in whose traditional honor the region is still called " Dionyso," his dramas having grown 
 up around the festival of Dionysus, the Grecian Bacchus, whose legends connect him with this Mara- 
 thonian region. Dr. Earle's immunity from brigands was probably due to this choice of roads by his 
 guide, safer than that by Pikermi. 
 
126 MARATHON IN 1838 
 
 in by the gens-d'armes from the route to Marathon, where they were 
 captured after a struggle in which they were wounded, one of their 
 comrades killed, and several of the Chorophylakes killed or wounded. 
 The field of Marathon is a plain six miles long and two or three 
 miles wnde, and nearly as level as the surface of a quiet sea. On its 
 eastern side is the Bay of Marathon, beyond which rise the high 
 mountains of Negropont. Its other sides are shut in by the Attic 
 mountains of Argalaki, Aphorismos (a spur of Pentelicus), Kotroni, 
 Koraki, and on the north-east the hills of Apano-Souli, which separate 
 Marathon from Rhamnus. When I saw the battlefield, a very small 
 part of it was rudely cultivated, the rest covered with short grass, 
 except in a few marshy places, where grew a profusion of rushes. 
 Rude shepherds guided us to the southern extremity of the plain, 
 where are the remains of a few marble columns, which are mentioned 
 by Dr. E. D. Clarke in his account of the plain, visited by him in 
 the beginning of the century. But the tumulus (Soros) is the most 
 striking object, a little south of the centre of the plain, broad at the 
 base, conical in form, and from thirty to forty feet high. Some 
 shrubbery and flowers grow near its summit, on which, as I sat, 
 these lines depict the quiet of the place : — 
 
 Here, as upon this rising mound 
 I sit and cast my vision round, 
 'Tis silence all, save when a note 
 Comes, on the creeping breeze afloat, 
 From yonder rugged mountain rock, 
 Where the rude shepherd guards his flock.* 
 
 Twilight was already yielding to the deeper shades of night when 
 we left this mound, and pursued our way to the village, two miles to 
 the north, where we were to pass the night. Arriving at the only 
 house open to travellers, we ascended a flight of stone steps leading 
 (outside) to the second story, where I remained in the open air for 
 some minutes, while my dragoman went in to ask for lodging. He 
 was absent some time, being obliged to tell who we were, whence 
 
 • From " Marathon, and Other Poems," by Pliny Earle, M.D., published by Henry Perkins at 
 Philadelphia in 1841, and containing many of the verses the young schoolmaster and physician had 
 been writing and printing in newspapers and magazines since 1830. They have little merit as poetry, 
 but preserve the memor)- of places and persons that impressed themselves on Dr. Earle's mind in 
 youth. The smooth and varied metres show the influence of Byron, Scott, Willis, Whittier, and 
 Bryant; but there is little originalit>- of thought, though much calm depth of feeling. A diffuse prose 
 style also marks the writings of the same period, which I have often shortened in quoting. 
 
1838-1839 127 
 
 we came, etc. Finally, he came out and asked me to walk in. By 
 the sole light of some dying embers on the hearth I saw beside the 
 fireplace in one corner of the room two boys and a man of say 
 forty-five years, lying on blankets spread upon the floor ; while two 
 women, one of them advanced in years, sat on low stools, such as 
 that on which 
 
 Immortal Alfred sat, 
 Who swayed, the sceptre of his infant realms. 
 
 The other woman was younger ; and there were two seated men, appar- 
 ently under thirty. The elder woman lighted a candle, and showed 
 me to an apartment seven feet by ten, with but one window and no 
 glass, two old chairs, the frame of a looking-glass, and a small pine 
 table, on which was a goodly pile of coarse wheaten loaves, recently 
 from the oven. There was no bed : a mattress laid on the floor was 
 to serve. My guide brought in a chicken, provided by him at 
 Athens, our landlady furnished a knife, some salt, a piece of goat's- 
 milk cheese, and cut for us one of the said loaves. I called for a 
 tumbler of water. It was brought ; but, while I drank it, the land- 
 lady looked at me in blank astonishment, desiring the dragoman to 
 tell me that it would certainly make me ill, and that wine was the 
 only thing fit for a man's stomach. 
 
 I gathered many flowers at Marathon, either at the village in the 
 morning or on the plain, — the anemone, which I had already found on 
 the Areopagus, and which blooms in Attica all winter, the autumn 
 crocus, the rock rose, etc. In spring the jonquil blooms abundantly 
 near the battlefield. While returning to Athens along the rapid 
 river that flows beside Marathona, and forms the marsh near the sea, 
 in which so many of the Persians were slain, and over the rocks of 
 Kotroni and Aphorismos, we stopped at a kapheneion (cafe) in 
 Kephissia, and took coffee, a la Turqiie^ without milk. The room 
 was thronged with men, most of them smoking, and many appearing 
 to be under the influence of the resin-wine of the country, which 
 they had drunk in honor of the patron saint of the day. There was 
 no floor ; but upon one of the tables standing on the earth I spread 
 my herbarium, and, taking some flowers which had been placed 
 in the crown of my hat as I came along, I began to prepare them for 
 preservation. One of the men came up, and looked over my 
 shoulder. He was followed by another, he by a third, and so on 
 until my table was surrounded by a group of beings most ferocious in 
 
128 THE MODERN GREEKS 
 
 aspect, but chattering, laughing, and looking astonished that any 
 such flowers should be thought valuable.* The}' took up some of 
 them, turned them over and over, and examined them sharply, as if to 
 find something remarkable they had never seen before in these 
 flowers with which they had been familiar from childhood. My 
 dragoman then told them a story of the wonderful medicinal proper- 
 ties of such flowers, and the great cures they might effect. There- 
 upon the men laid do\\Ti the loulouthia (posies, the common word for 
 all flowers in Greece), and began to converse in lower tones and 
 with a mysterious air. Those who were nearest me withdrew a step 
 or tv\'o, and all gazed with their bloodshot eyes, in still greater 
 wonder. 
 
 Dr. Earle was particularly struck, as most tourists have 
 been, with the great attention paid to education in Greece. He 
 thought the Lancastrian school at Patras and a girls' school 
 there, which he visited, were very satisfactory ; and he much 
 admired the private school for girls established by Rev. J. H. 
 Hill and his wife at Athens. In 1838 he described it thus : — 
 
 This school is divided into five departments, and contains about 
 four hundred pupils, in a large building near the gate of the new 
 Agora. That department called the " Troy Seminary," under the 
 care of Mrs. Hill, is very flourishing, and is the best school for girls 
 in Greece. It cannot fail to exert a powerful influence for good in 
 both Greece and Turkey by sending forth so many highly educated 
 young women where a prejudice against female education has long 
 prevailed.! 
 
 The Greek religion, with its pictured saints, its genuflexions, 
 ceremonies, and antiquated ritual, naturally did not please the 
 
 • The collections of plants and flowers made by Dr. Earle in Greece and elsewhere in Europe 
 gave him opportunity to send dried specimens to many of his female friends in America and 
 England, particularly to the literary ladies of America, Miss H. F. Gould, Mrs. Sigoumey, Mrs. 
 S. J. Hale, Mrs. Amelia Welby, of Kentucky, and others, who acknowledged the graceful attention in 
 pleasant notes and sometimes in poems. The trait of childish curiosity here remarked among the 
 Greeks, and their general ignorance of the botany of their own ever-blooming land, is familiar to all 
 who travel in rural Greece. I had occasion to pass the night at the village of Marathona forty-five years 
 after Dr. Earle. It had much grown and improved in the interval, and the battle-plain is now 
 well cultivated in vineyarda. 
 
 t This anticipation has been fulfilled ; and now the education of girls is carried as far in Greece at 
 public expense as in most nations, though only a portion of them partake of it. They have even 
 gained entrance to some classes at the University of Athens; while excellent private and endowed 
 
1838-1839 129 
 
 young Massachusetts Quaker; but the native liberality of his 
 soul led him to see good in these forms, so repugnant to his 
 own simple service. He says : — 
 
 In Corfu, then under English control, where I landed on the 
 voyage from Trieste to Patras, I accompanied a young Greek to a 
 church, an ancient structure, miserable in its externals, but internally 
 rich and beautiful. On the walls were pictures of the saints, with 
 tapers burning before them. The ceiling was wrought with the 
 most elaborate carving, adorned with gold and paintings or mosaics ; 
 while chandeliers of massive silver hung suspended, with lighted 
 tapers at evening and on saints' days. On either side of the high 
 altar was a small chapel, entered from the church by a doorway. 
 The body of the church was filled with such a medley of beings as I 
 had never before seen in a place of worship. There, mingled to- 
 gether in unspeakable confusion, were riches and poverty, youth and 
 age, beauty and deformity, the apparently devout and the evidently 
 indifferent, those who flaunt in rags and those who flutter in bro- 
 cade. 
 
 The snowy caniese and the shaggy capote 
 
 of the Albanian and the Greek, the Turkish robe and tvu^ban, and 
 the stiff costume of Western Europe. While the priest performed 
 the service at the altar, on the steps beside it sat a young mother, 
 whose infant was lying before her at the feet of the image of Jesus. 
 Crowds of people continually entered during the service, approached 
 and kissed the images of the saints, and then retired. Such as 
 remained long stood on either side of the church, with their faces 
 towards the altar. Nobody sat. Many also entered the side chapel 
 on the right, a room so nearly dark that to me, standing almost in 
 front of the door, nothing could be distinguished within except a full- 
 length figure of the Savior, covered with burnished silver. This 
 picture shone in the feeble rays of the one small taper with which 
 the chapel was lighted, I joined the throng and entered the door, 
 a grateful odor of roses and of incense meeting me as I drew near, 
 and increasing as we entered. I stepped aside from the doorway to 
 make room for those who followed me ; but, though inside and 
 breathing the delightful fragrance, I could at first see nothing dis- 
 
 schools for girls exist in that city of 130,000 people, besides the successors of Mrs. Hill's school. 
 Those devoted missionaries and their assistants have long been dead. 
 
130 VOYAGE IN THE ARCHIPELAGO 
 
 tinctly but the image of the Savior. Gradually the few surround- 
 ing objects became discernible. Before me in the centre of the 
 chapel, and so large as to fill a third part of its area, was a sarcopha- 
 gus of massive silver, containing the body of a saint, and covered 
 with figures an^d allegorical devices, curiously wrought. Old men 
 and young, matron and maid, drew near, and kissed it with all the 
 fervor of ^joparent devotion. Immediately beside me, and at the 
 foot of ^he sarcophagus, two women, in convent garb, were kneeling, 
 and ^ motionless as if they were marble statues. I had never 
 beeji in a situation where external surroundings were better arranged 
 to waken a feeling of devotion. 
 
 Returning to the church, I took my former position, but found the 
 building thronged with beggars. The old and infirm, the youthful 
 and deformed, the cripple, the madman, the moping idiot, — in short, 
 all that one ever meets of distortion in shape and wretchedness in 
 condition, among mendicants, was there. They formed themselves 
 into a row, which reached the whole distance round the interior of 
 the church, and thus they passed along, in pitiable succession, im- 
 ploring alms, '■'■per V amore di Dio,''^ for the love of God ; and many 
 an obole or mezzo-obole (the minute coins of the Ionian Islands) 
 was dropped into hat or hand, to aid the supplicants. And thus, I 
 thought, for once in my life have I seen, within a Christian church, 
 some close approximation to that pure democracy which is a domi- 
 nant ideal in the teachings of the New Testament. 
 
 After touching at Smyrna, where he visited the traditional 
 spot of Polycarp's martyrdom, near that Asian city, Dr. Earle 
 proceeded to Constantinople. His mention of the saint's hold 
 on Mahometans, as well as Christians, is curious : — 
 
 Upon a declivity of the mountainous ridge which bounds the city 
 of Smyrna to the east, at a place near the ancient walls command- 
 ing an extensive and lovely view of the bay, the town, and its 
 environs, there is a solitary cypress. Beneath it, on one side, is a 
 sepulchral monument ; on the other, a large stone, before which faith- 
 ful Moslem are accustomed to kneel in prayer, with faces directed 
 towards Mecca, the " city of the Prophet." It was here that Poly- 
 carp, bishop of the church at Smyrna and a disciple of Saint John, 
 the apostle, suffered martyrdom. It is further said, either by this 
 tradition or by authentic history, that the people who were present 
 
1838-1839 131 
 
 ran down the hill to procure fagots with which to burn the body. 
 And in December, 1838, when I was there, a magazine of fagots, 
 near the base of the ridge, was to be seen, which had existed from 
 time immemorial. If it seems inconsistent for the Mahometans to 
 pray at the tomb of Polycarp, it should be remembered that many of 
 those whom Mahomet wished to proselyte were Christians, accus- 
 tomed to worship their martyrs ; and it is a proof of his sagacity that 
 he encouraged what he could not hope wholly to eradicate. 
 
 It was just after leaving Smyrna in the French steamer 
 "Dante," on his return to France, that a view and a colloquy 
 occurred which left a strong impression on the voyager's mind, 
 from the beauty of the one and the oddity of the other. Those 
 who have sailed in those seas in such magical weather wall 
 appreciate Dr. Earle's raptures. 
 
 On the afternoon of Dec. 31, 1838, we were sailing between Scio 
 and Asia Minor. The summits of the Chian Mountains lifted them- 
 selves to the heavens, covered with snow ; and, as evening drew near, 
 though we had passed the island, its mountains were still in view, 
 like a blue cloud, snow-topped, resting on the horizon. The last 
 gUmmering rays of the sun lighted them, as he went down behind 
 the dark, western waters of the Archipelago. The time and the 
 place were adapted to a thousand pleasing associations. Olympus, 
 Smyrna, and Scio were behind us ; and before us was Greece, with 
 its exhaustless store of memories. We were carried back, in reverie, 
 to the days, in this clime, when poesy was young, — when among those 
 sunlit mountains Homer was tuning his harp or instructing his 
 pupils in the art of song.* As the twilight shadows deepened, the 
 moon, round as the battle-shield of the ancestors of Ossian, — " O 
 thou thatrollest in heaven, round as the shield of my fathers ! whence 
 hast thou thy beams, O Sun? whence thy everlasting light?" — was 
 rising in the cloudless sky. And when the last vestige of day had 
 departed, and heaven was illuminated as for a festival by her milder 
 beams, the waters of the ^gean gave them brilliantly back from a 
 surface unruffled by the lightest breeze. The air was bland ; and the 
 night, though the last of the year, might have been mistaken for one 
 
 *It is on this island, the ancient Chios, that tradition places the " School of Homer" ; and the 
 place (a kind of theatre) is still shown. 
 
132 VOYAGE IN THE ARCHIPELAGO 
 
 of those which give beauty to our earlier autumn. The passengers 
 came up from the cabin to enjoy the bright scene from the deck, — a 
 motley assemblage, such as may usually be seen on the steam-vessels 
 that traverse the Eastern Mediterranean. Turks, Greeks, Armenians, 
 Jews, English, French, Italians, and Germans were among them, 
 even Egyptians, Arabs, and Algerines. 
 
 Among them was a Jewish rabbi, from Muscovy, on his way to 
 Italy, with a venerable, gray-bearded servant. He was quite the 
 finest-looking Hebrew and one of the handsomest men I ever saw. 
 His eyes, brows, hair, and profuse beard were black as jet, his skin 
 light and transparent, his face full, and his head noble. His small, 
 soft, white hand indicated an exemption from toil, of which his 
 octogenarian servant must have been aware from sad experience. 
 As I paused in walking the deck to look upwards and fix the points 
 of the compass by the North Star, the rabbi advanced, and inquired 
 if I had studied astronomy, then put the same question concerning 
 algebra, geometry, and astrology, and went on to point out the 
 mysteries of those sciences, in which he said he was profoundly 
 interested. Thence he advanced to the topic of religion, and de- 
 claimed in no measured terms against the Protestants, who, as he 
 believed, were seeking to revolutionize the religious world. Having 
 uttered his anathemas, he asked me whether I was a Jew, a Catholic, 
 or a Protestant. Being answered, he said no more upon religion ; 
 but, as if to show that, though he detested Protestants as a class, he 
 had no hostility to me as an individual, he called his servant, and 
 ordered a peace-offering, — not salt, but coffee. That venerable man 
 soon returned, bringing two tumblers of the beverage. As I took 
 from him the one meant for me, I asked him a question about one of 
 the subjects we had been discussing. "No, no," cried the rabbi, 
 "don't ask him any question : he is an old fool." The rejected 
 servant walked off in silence, as if he took for granted all his master 
 said; while the rabbi sipped his coffee. Then, looking cautiously 
 about, to see that no one was near, he took my hand, led me to the 
 side of the vessel, and, as we leaned against the taffrail, said, " Ah ! 
 I have a great secret to tell you, — a very great secret." 
 
 " And what may it be ? " 
 
 " 'Tis a most sublime and mysterious thing " (here his countenance 
 kindled with a smile, and his dark eyes turned towards the heavens) : 
 " I have discovered what the wise men of all ages have been seeking 
 
1838-1839 - 133 
 
 in vain. I have found the means of changing the baser metals into 
 gold. Oh, it's a most wonderful thing." 
 
 In the long conversation that followed, I learned that he professed 
 to have discovered the magic power once ascribed to the chimerical 
 philosopher's stone. It actually resides in a vegetable growing near 
 Mecca. The stalk of this plant, according to hirn, is of a golden 
 color. Its flowers have the odor of musk. It will operate (thus far) 
 only upon brass, lead, silver, and mercury. Iron has withstood its 
 operation, — a fortunate circumstance, I thought, since we should be 
 quite too luxurious, riding on rails and driving ploughshares made 
 of shining gold. 
 
 There are few records of Dr. Earle's visit to Constantinople, 
 except those which relate to the insane asylum there, — the 
 Timar-hane, then adjacent to the mosque of Suleiman. His 
 companions in the city of the sultan were Rev. William 
 Goodell and two other American missionaries, Henry A. 
 Homes, afterwards State Librarian of New York at Albany, 
 and William Schofler ; Dr. Millingen (the friend of Byron, and 
 of George Finlay, who was long the Sultan's physician), and 
 Foster Rhodes, also in the Sultan's employ. Dr, Millingen 
 was an Englishman, of Dutch ancestry, who had been with 
 Byron in his last illness at Missolonghi, afterwards in the 
 Greek Revolutionary army with Finlay, and, when captured 
 with the Greeks, at the taking of Navarino in 1825, was in- 
 duced or forced to enter the service of Ibrahim Pasha, who dev- 
 astated the Morea ; from which, after an interval, he passed 
 into the employ of JMahmoud at Constantinople. He was an 
 archaeologist, like his father and his descendants, some of 
 whom still remain at Constantinople, where I saw them in 
 1S93. At the time of Dr. Earle's brief visit (December, 
 1838) Dr. Millingen had resided in Turkey more than ten 
 years ; and it was through his good offices that the young 
 American was admitted, during the feast of Bairam, to the dis- 
 mal corridors where the maniacs were chained. ]\Ir. Goodell 
 and Mr. Rhodes seem to have gone with him. What he saw 
 there is concisely related in his first book, " A Visit to Thir- 
 teen Asylums for the Insane in Europe," which he published 
 
134 PROFANITY IN THE LEVANT 
 
 as a sort of certificate of his fitness to write on the subject that 
 afterwards chiefly employed his pen. But he has left on record 
 a few of those pleasant anecdotes which have been cited so 
 freely in previous chapters. 
 
 Mr. Goodell, one of the American missionaries at Constantinople, 
 told me there that a very intelligent and pious Greek lady, who had 
 been converted to Protestantism, and enjoyed the services at the 
 missionary meetings, once remarked to him that, though she had no 
 acquaintance with the English language, she yet liked to hear it 
 spoken. " It sounds so finely," she said, " when uttered by those 
 who, in conversation, frequently use the phrase, ' God d — n your 
 soul,' "which the new convert seems to have thought some form of 
 blessing. Mr. Goodell explained to her the real meaning of the 
 phrase ; and, as may be supposed, she was greatly shocked at her 
 mistaking an oath for the chief beauty of our language. This re- 
 minded me of what happened on my trip from Athens to Marathon, 
 when my guide told me he knew Greek, Italian, French, and Ger- 
 man, but no English. What was my surprise, then, as we were rid- 
 ing at a brisk trot through the valley that borders the northern base 
 of Pentelicus,* to hear from him the same startling curse which had 
 deceived the ear of the convert of Constantinople. It rang through 
 the clear and silent air with fearful distinctness. I turned round to 
 ascertain whence it proceeded, and saw that, my guide's horse hav- 
 ing become unruly, he was attempting to calm him with whips, spurs, 
 and English imprecations. "Ah," said I, "people generally learn 
 the worst things first." 
 
 The relations of Dr. Millingen with Dr. Earle in 1838 did 
 not permit him to learn in detail the events of his life among 
 the Turks, which had begun in 1825 at the capture of Navarino, 
 though he did not become official court physician until a year 
 or more after Dr. Earle's visit. With the exception of Byron's 
 friend, Trelavvny, Millingen was the only Englishman remain- 
 ing in the Greek revolutionary service for some little time after 
 Byron's death, in April, 1824, as he says himself in an account 
 from which I now quote. Dr. Millingen remained in Greece 
 (1824) where, after recovering from the typhoid fever then 
 
 ♦This was between Kepliissia and Stamata, before reaching where tlie path turns off to the right 
 for Icaria. 
 
1838-1839 135 
 
 prevalent at Missolonghi, and which attacked him soon after 
 Lord Byron's death (probably a disease of the same nature as 
 that which proved fatal to the noble poet), he entered again 
 into active service. 
 
 I was then appointed officially to join the forces encamped at 
 Ligovitzi in Acarnania, under the command of Mavrocordato, and 
 remained there until the termination of that campaign. In 1825, 
 Navarino being closely besieged by the Egyptian army (under Ibra- 
 him Pasha), and its garrison having repeatedly, yet ineffectually, 
 solicited medical assistance in behalf of the daily increasing sick and 
 wounded, — none of the medical officers in the Greek service proving 
 willing to undertake so arduous a mission, — George Conduriottis, 
 then president, invited me to do so. I accepted his proposal, 
 and, after eluding the enemy's vigilance, succeeded in entering 
 that fortress in Mavrocordato's company. From that day, in the 
 midst of the dangers of an uninterrupted bombardment by land 
 and sea, I continued, unassisted and unpaid, to perform the duties 
 incumbent on the physician and surgeon, until, reduced to extrem- 
 ities, the garrison capitulated, and, after surrendering its arms, 
 embarked for Kalamata. I was detained by Ibrahim Pasha, when 
 on my way to the place of embarkation. Nor did I volunteer into 
 his service, as my detractors have said, as if, for the sake of better 
 pay, I had basely deserted the banner of the Cross to follow the 
 standard of the Crescent. I was then fully aware that by accepting 
 the Egyptian service I might in a few years have realized as con- 
 siderable a fortune as other physicians have done.* But, far from 
 being influenced by this consideration, I no sooner reached Modon 
 than I wrote (12th and igth of June, 1825) to a friend at Cepha- 
 lonia, requesting him to apply to the British authorities for a pass- 
 port, without which no vessel would receive me, it being my 
 intention to embark secretly. On the 8th of September following 
 Lord Howard de Walden wrote to my friends as follows : " Mr. 
 Canning directs me to acquaint you that the fact (admitted in Dr. 
 Millingen's letters) of his having been found in the service of the 
 Greeks, must preclude Mr. Canning from recommending his case to 
 His Majesty's Embassy at the Porte for interference, as the protec- 
 tion of government cannot be extended to British subjects engaging 
 in foreign service against an act of Parliament." It was not before 
 
 *Sir Henry Holland, the son-in-law of Sydney Smith, had been phj'sician to AH Pasha. 
 
136 TURKISH CUSTOMS 
 
 November, 1826, that I was allowed to go to Smyrna, and not till 
 fourteen years after that the reigning Sultan appointed me one of his 
 court physicians. 
 
 The feast of Bairam, in course of which Dr. Earle made his 
 visit both to Smyrna and Constantinople, continues thirty days, 
 and corresponds roughly to our Christmas holidays. As ob- 
 served by him, the details are curious : — 
 
 The poor work on these days as usual ; but the rich close their 
 shops, though many of them are willing to do business. Only the 
 large-tailed breed of sheep are used in sacrifices then, at least in 
 Asia Minor, where they are bred. They are killed at two or three 
 years old, and cost about two dollars. Each good Mussulman is ex- 
 pected to sacrifice a sheep every year ; and the superstition is that, 
 if he should die before the next feast, that sheep will carry him into 
 Paradise. For the three bridges over the rivers of milk, honey, and 
 butter, which encircle Paradise, are so narrow that only a sheep can 
 cross them ; and the departed, on arriving at these streams, must 
 bestride a sheep they have sacrificed. The rich often kill several 
 sheep, for precaution, and give the mutton to the poor. Flocks of 
 these sacred animals now and then are seen at pasture near Smyrna, 
 where the numerous Greeks are not allowed to own them, no Greek 
 being wanted in the Moslem heaven. 
 
 Constantinople is built on an angular point of land, something 
 like New York, which it resembles in several other ways. Pera, 
 where the Franks live, is situated as Brooklyn is to New York, 
 though the stream between is narrower. The streets are narrow and 
 filthy, abounding in dogs and Hned with tall wooden houses. The 
 old Roman city was on Seraglio Point and the high land behind it. 
 And here is the mosque of St. Sophia and that of Suleiman, near 
 which I found the insane lodged in a one-story building, arranged 
 round a central court, like the caravanseries of Turkey and Asia 
 Minor. A corridor runs on the outer side of this court, and gives 
 access to the rooms and the wards. Within the court-yard we found 
 many persons, mostly youths or boys, who had come out of curiosity 
 or to bring gifts to their insane friends. Outside of the few asylums 
 the insane are regarded by the Mahometans as sacred creatures, 
 and their incoherent language as divinely given. Dr. Millingen says 
 he has known the wandering lunatic to be entertained for weeks by 
 
1838-1839 137 
 
 strangers, who treated him with distinguished consideration. But 
 the treatment in the Timar-hane was far from hospitable. In the 
 first room we saw an inmate fastened by the neck with a chain six 
 feet long, itself made fast through an unglazed window to the ex- 
 ternal wall. Two other patients were in the same room, chained in 
 the same manner. Indeed, of the forty or fifty patients found there, 
 but one was unchained. The length of the chains was so graduated 
 as just to allow the inmate to lie down on a rude bed of boards and 
 blankets.* The unchained man was secluded in a room, having sev- 
 eral times broken his chain. He had been confined there fifteen 
 years, and was a chronic maniac, raving and noisy, but not probably 
 homicidal (though he threatens to kill those who gaze at him), were he 
 properly treated, as Pinel treated the maniacs at the Bicetre in 1793. 
 Yet the patients appeared in good health, are frequently seen by a 
 physician, and were talking with their visitors while we were present, 
 who gave them tobacco, lighted their pipes for them, and supplied 
 them with food of various kinds, and even money. 
 
 Dr. Earle was impressed, as all travellers are, with the Turk- 
 ish cemeteries, especially that at Scutari, on the Asiatic side of 
 the Bosphorus. He says : — 
 
 The almost boundless cemeteries of Constantinople and Scutari 
 have long been objects of admiration. The noble cypresses consti- 
 tute their chief beauty, apart from their situation on the picturesque 
 shores of the Bosphorus. In many of them the grounds are not en- 
 closed, the graves are neglected, and the turban-crowned headstones 
 are either falUng or actually lying on the ground. The passing 
 breeze — and in that region the breeze is almost always passing, 
 so steadily does it blow down the Bosphorus — makes a low and 
 plaintive murmur in the evergreen branchlets of the cypress, and 
 reaches the heart with an eloquence unknown to lecture or to 
 homily. 
 
 * At that early date chaining the maniacal or wandering insane was customary all over the world , 
 with the exception of a few communities, where the teachings of Pinel, Tuke, Horace Mann, and 
 others, had shown the needless barbarity of it. But it has not yet entirely been " dismissed to the 
 moon," as Emerson said of some similar absurdity. In visiting the new county almshouse of Hills- 
 borough at Grasmere, a few miles from Manchester, N.H.,in November, 1S96, I found three patients 
 wearing chains, and those women. I was obliged to tell the keeper, who seemed to see no impropriety 
 in it, that it was twenty-five years since I had seen an insane man wearing a chain, although I must 
 have visited fifty thousand lunatics, in all parts of the world, in that inten'al of time. A little more 
 than twenty years before I had caused the release from seclusion of a woman at the Tewksbury Alms- 
 house of Massachusetts, whose condition, except the chain, was much like that of the Turkish men 
 seen by Dr. Earle. 
 
138 MALTA IX 1839 
 
 Leaving these scenes, the young voyager returned by 
 Smyrna and Athens to Malta, where he was forced to a longer 
 stay than in any of the more famous places of his tour. He 
 took advantage of this to give his friends fuller details of 
 his life there than at either Athens or Constantinople. 
 
 I had pleasant companions from Smyrna (one of them the Jewish 
 transmuter of metals), but the sea was tremendously rough after the 
 calm evening between Scio and Syra. We were six days from that 
 island to ]\Ialta. S)Tra is one of the Cyclades; and, though we 
 left it and the other " sick ladies " behind, we had sick gentlemen 
 enough before we arrived here, on the 7th of January, 1839. We 
 were making the same voyage (in rather shorter time) that Saint 
 Paul made when they beat up and down so many days ; and I have 
 since seen the spot where he landed, and where " there came a viper 
 out of the heat and fastened upon his hand." You know that com- 
 mentators and others differ in regard to this landing, some maintain- 
 ing that it was upon Meleda, in the Adriatic, and not this Melita, 
 that the shipwrecked apostle to the Gentiles found refuge. This 
 sea is not commonly called " Adria," nor are there venomous 
 serpents here now ; nor were the residents in Paul's time strictly 
 barbarians, as he calls them. But he may have styled all men " bar- 
 barous " (jargoning) who did not speak Greek, like himself ; and the 
 poisonous vipers may all have been killed in eighteen hundred years. 
 At any rate, the weight of argument is in favor of Malta. So I went 
 to see the pretty, rocky little gulf called St. Paul's Bay. It is on the 
 northern coast, six or seven miles from the capital, Valetta, the whole 
 island being but twenty miles long, twelve wide, and sixty in circuit, 
 A tower and several small houses are at the head of the bay, and a 
 small stone church stands where the fire and the viper are said to 
 have been. Its interior is but ordinary. A large but inferior paint- 
 ing of the shipwreck hangs behind the altar, and two others on the 
 same subject on the side walls. A small image of Christ, crowned 
 with thorns, stood on one side, in a glazed case, before which a 
 taper was burning ; and engravings of events in his life hung here 
 and there in the church. 
 
 The needful miracle ascribed to saintly presence is shown at 
 another church of Saint Paul, in Citth Notabile, where the sacristan 
 lighted torches and led the way, downstairs and through a dark alley, 
 
1838-1839 139 
 
 into the Grotto of Saint Paul, a circular cave hewn in the island 
 rock, twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter, and, in the centre, eight 
 feet high. A marble statue of Paul stands there ; and tradition says 
 that he and Saint Luke, with Trophimius, lived here for three 
 months. Consequently, the sacristan told us, though whole ship- 
 loads of the rock have been carried away from this cave, its dimen- 
 sions remain unchanged, the rock supplying by growth the loss of its 
 surface. He then beat off a few pieces with his pickaxe, and gave 
 them to us, saying that they would cure the bite of a viper or other 
 venomous thing, if rubbed on the bite at once, " provided you only 
 have sufficient faith." Another grotto where miracles of an earlier 
 faith were wrought is that of Calypso, at the foot of a hill in v>hich 
 are many other small grots, mostly now used as houses or store- 
 houses by peasants. I visited it, and found a spring of clear water 
 running through this cave of Calypso (Homer speaks of four foun- 
 tains) and thence into a large basin, from which it is drawn out to 
 fertilize a beautiful garden below. Yet some say Gozo, a few miles 
 away from Malta, was really Calypso's island ; and her grotto is also 
 shown there, which I did not see. But a recent tourist says it is in a 
 rock overhanging the Bay of Ramla, with a very narrow entrance, 
 quite too small for a goddess, and, in his opinion, " a very safe 
 retreat for a company of foxes." I must therefore believe that the 
 Maltese cavern was that which the old Greek fox, Ulysses, inhabited 
 for a time. Byron thought so, too, and places here the scene of that 
 leap which Telemachus took, at the suggestion of Mentor and Fene- 
 lon ; but he lets us choose either island : — 
 
 But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, 
 
 The sister tenants of the middle deep : 
 There for the weary still a haven smiles, 
 
 Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, 
 
 And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep 
 For him who dared prefer a mortal bride. 
 
 Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap 
 Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide, — 
 While, thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.* 
 
 It is supposed that Malta furnishes 700 species of indigenous 
 plants. Dr. Zerafa in his botanical treatise names 644. Were 
 
 *Childe Harold, Canto II. xxix. In the verse following this B5rron bestotv'S the name of Calypso 
 on Lady Spencer, under the designation of " Fair Florence" ; and this episode in his voyage up the 
 Mediterranean was perhaps his only reason for placing Calypso in Malta. Homer's geography, as we 
 all know, was strictly poetical and ideal ; but a recent wTiter (S. Butler) puts Calj^pso west of Sicily. 
 
140 QUARANTINE AT MALTA 
 
 it not that the earth produces two or three crops in a year, 
 so large a population as 120,000 could not be supported here. 
 Frost is never seen, and, though there are hail-storms, snow 
 never falls. In summer it rarely rains. The sirocco, which blows 
 most in early autumn, is oppressive to foreigners, especially the con- 
 sumptive, who often come here from England. John Hookham 
 Frere, the poet and translator, has lived here for his health since 
 18 16. The language of the Maltese is, like the Albanian, unwritten. 
 Some Greek asked an Albanian the history of his alphabet. " It 
 was written on a cabbage-leaf," was the answer; " and an ass came 
 by, and ate it up." Italian is used in the courts ; and English, which 
 was introduced in 1800, when the island was captured from the 
 French, is in the schools, and becoming more and more universal. 
 The costumes are peculiar ; and the top-hat is in disfavor, as 
 generally in the Orient. When the English hat first went to 
 Damascus, the people disliked it so much that they have since 
 spoken of an Englishman as " Aboo-tanjara," "the father of a pot." 
 The poorer peasants seldom wear shoes : if they have a pair, they 
 keep them for great occasions. A woman was overheard the other 
 day to ask her companion how long she had owned her shoes. 
 " Since the year of the plague," was the answer ; that is, 1813 ! 
 
 There are more than one thousand ordained priests and friars in 
 Malta, and nearly three thousand abbati are preparing for ordina- 
 tion. When we visited Citta Vecchia (the same as Notabile), it is 
 no exaggeration to say that a majority of those we met in the streets 
 were either priests or beggars. Several monasteries are here, the 
 most remarkable being that of the Capuchins, in which, when a 
 monk dies, he is dried, dressed up in his robes, and set in a niche 
 until his bones fall apart, the skulls being afterwards ranged in rows 
 along the ceiling of the Carneria, or charnel-house. 
 
 At our lazzaretto the three weeks of quarantine * passed off rapidly. 
 We had accommodations in a splendid fortress. My room-mate was a 
 Swiss merchant, several years resident in Naples, — a man of thirt)'- 
 
 • It is to be remarked tliat the rules of quarantine liad long been observed at Malta ; for, when 
 George Sandys, traveller and poet, was there in 1610, he came near encountering the same seclusion 
 which Dr. Earle underwent in 1839. It was in June that this early voyager put into the harbor of 
 Valetta, and, not being allowed to land in the city, for fear of infection, liad this adventure : " I was 
 left alone on a naked promontory, right against the city, remote from the concourse of people, 
 without provision, and not knowing how to dispose of myself. At length a little boat made towards 
 me, rowed by an officer appointed to attend on strangers that had no fratiqite, lest others should 
 receive infection, who carried me into the liollow lianging of a rock, where I was for the night to 
 take up my lodging, and the day following to be conveyed by him into the Lazzaretto, there to remain 
 
183S-1839 141 
 
 five, and a pleasant companion. We talked and read and wrote, and 
 walked and laughed and smoked a la Ttirque, and told stories and 
 conundrums and enigmas and anagrams, and picked flowers and 
 collected shells, and ate oranges at four cents a dozen, and glorious 
 musk-melons, as cheap as need be ; and thus the time slipped by 
 swiftly and pleasantly. Nor did we play it all away, as you might 
 infer from the above. For, aside from some reading, my comrade 
 wrote letters in such abundance that I find paper is more than twice 
 as dear here as in Paris, and made figures without number ; while 
 I, besides a medical essay for Dr. Roeser to present in my name to 
 the Medical Society of Athens, translated and wrote out the transla- 
 tion of two hundred and eighty pages of a medical work, which I in- 
 tend to have published, if some one does not get the start of me. 
 There are more than nine hundred pages in all, and I mean to 
 finish it before reaching America. 
 
 Nor were we two alone in our prison enjoyments. (I say prison 
 because we were limited to a part of the space enclosed by the 
 fortress walls, about an acre of ground ; and yet on that acre I 
 found no less than sixteen species of wild flowers in blossom in this 
 month of January.) Among our companions were a Greek merchant 
 and his wife, on their way to the island of Gerby on the coast of 
 Biledulgerid, where he has a sponge-fishery, with forty divers engaged 
 in plunging after sponges, as they do at Kalymnos near Syria. The 
 best sponge-fishers can stay three minutes under water. Then we 
 had a young Greek, going to Toulon by order of King Otho, to learn 
 in the navy-yard there what Peter the Great did at Saardam. The 
 five persons named, including me, clubbed together, hired a man- 
 servant, cooking utensils, etc., and lived chez nous as snugly as need 
 be. At any early hour in the morning the servant brought us, each 
 one in his chamber, a cup of black coffee, — a luxury which the 
 Americans have yet to learn to appreciate. At ten a.m. we all 
 
 thirty or forty days, before I could be admitted into the city. But the Great IMaster the next morning, 
 as he sate in council, granted me pratique. So I came into the city, and was kindly entertained for 
 three weeks' space, where with much contentment I remained." 
 
 What Sandys saw of the inhabitants and their then rulers, the Knights of St. John, may be quoted 
 in contrast with Dr. Earle's observations. He found but some twenty thousand people on the island, 
 and says: " The Malteses are little less tawny than the Moors, especially those of the country, who go 
 half-clad, and are indeed a miserable people ; but the citizens are altogether Frenchified, the Great 
 Master and major part of the knights being Frenchmen. Their markets they keep on Sundays. 
 They stir early and late, in regard of the immoderate heat, and sleep at noonday. Their country is no 
 other than a rock covered over with earth, but two feet deep where deepest. The soil produceth 
 no grain but barley. Bread made of it, with olives, is the villagers' ordinary diet. The inhabitants 
 die more with age than diseases." 
 
142 LIFE IN MALTA 
 
 assembled in the apartment of the Greek, and breakfasted on bread 
 and butter and cafe au lait. (This, by the way, our countrymen 
 never will make good until they brow7i the coffee instead of burning 
 it, boil the milk, and sweeten with loaf-sugar.) I took tea with our 
 former consul in Malta yesterday. They had brown sugar on the 
 table, the first time I have seen any since I left New York. 
 
 At four P.M. we dined in quarantine, always having four changes,— 
 (i) soup, (2 and 3) two different kinds of meat, and (4) dessert, 
 consisting of cheese, oranges, raisins, melons, almonds, etc. Poor 
 Life Harrud [Eliphalet Harwood, of Leicester], when he said, " I hain't 
 come to broth yit," had yet to learn that soup is as needful at the 
 dinner of a European as potatoes to an Irishman, I might say to 
 an American. After finishing our meal, we went upstairs, and ended 
 by smoking a pipe, drinking a cup of Turkish coffee, etc. I will 
 give you a recipe for making coffee a la Turqiie. Take your own 
 coffee-pot when you have done breakfast, and nothing will run from 
 the spout but grounds mixed with a little liquid. Then seek the 
 smallest earthen salt-cellar you can find or, what is nearer the thing, 
 a cup in an infant's set of miniature dishes. Pour the cup or salt- 
 cellar two-thirds full of said liquid, and it is ready for use. Only be 
 very careful not to put in any sugar.* 
 
 We came out of quarantine January 27, five days ago ; and I have 
 been working a great part of the time since, — writing, reading, 
 translating, and packing shells. Mr. Eynard, our former consul 
 here, with whom I took tea, lives in a house where there is as much 
 space, I think, as in our whole Leicester house in a single room. 
 It is certainly as high, — an old palace, built by a member of the cele- 
 brated order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who were ex- 
 pelled from Malta by Napoleon in 1798. Mr. Eynard has introduced 
 me at an extensive library and reading-room of the English, where I 
 have brought myself up even with the times, having fallen a month 
 or two behind in crossing the line between Western and Eastern 
 Europe. A vessel arrived January 31 from Boston in thirty-six days, 
 having left that city the day I left Constantinople (December 26). 
 It brought files of several Boston papers to our present consul, a 
 
 • This is scarcely just to the present mode of makinR that favorite beverage of the Greeks and 
 Armenians as well as the Turks. Indeed, Turkish coffee is now served at the best hotels in South- 
 eastern Europe, and is sipped by the tourists of all nations with gusto, except, possibly, by the 
 French. The young physician had lived so long in Paris, to which he was now returning for a month, 
 that he was impatient of any but the French cookery. Much sugar is now served with these tiny 
 cups of Turkish coffee, and the making of it is a part of the economy of the humblest Greek cabin. 
 
1838-1839 143 
 
 Mr. Andrews ; and I have been looking them over to-day. It is quite 
 reviving to get news so fresh from a place so near home. I send 
 you from here a half-barrel filled with straw and other natural curi- 
 osities. All the shells not marked are from Smyrna. You will per- 
 ceive there are some from Marathon, the Acropolis, etc., valuable, 
 from their locality, as mementos. 
 
 Dr. Earle's tour in the Levant ended at Malta. It had occu- 
 pied less than four months, and w^as never repeated. Yet no 
 portion of his extensive travels seems to have given him greater 
 pleasure. It was one of the dreams of his later life to go 
 round the world from California, and approach Egypt, Syria, 
 and Greece from the Orient; but this plan was given up in 
 consequence of the death of his proposed companion. 
 
 The Insane in Malta. 
 
 After visiting asylums for the insane in Milan, Venice, and Con- 
 stantinople, Dr. Earle gave some attention to the insane in Malta, 
 where in 1839 ^^ reported 130 lunatics in a population of 120,000. 
 " The asylum for their reception and treatment," he says, " is at 
 Floriana, in the suburbs of Valetta. The building is old and very 
 incommodious. Baths have recently been constructed. In 18 12 
 the use of chains — those implements of confinement and torture, fit 
 only for wild beasts — was entirely abolished. The patients have 
 ever been, and still are, mingled together, irrespective of stage or 
 intensity of disease. A division of the incurable from the curable 
 is about to be made. Most of the patients are remarkably quiet. 
 Many died of Asiatic cholera in the summer of 1837. The superin- 
 tendent could not tell me the precise proportion of cures effected 
 here, but thinks it exceeds 50 per cent. The number seen was 90, 
 — 40 men and 50 women, — the proportion of women to men insane 
 in Malta being usually as 3 to 2. A very large proportion perform 
 manual labor. The principal employments are gardening, sewing, 
 knitting, spinning, and domestic affairs. Of three yards adjacent to 
 the building, one is planted with orange-trees, another is a kitchen 
 garden cultivated by the patients." It is doubtful if any other 
 American physician ever inspected the Valetta Asylum in the sixty 
 years since elapsed. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BEGINNING PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 
 
 Dr. Earle had now completed his medical studies begun 
 at Providence six years earlier, and finished by a few weeks at 
 Paris after his return from Malta and Italy in the spring of 
 1839. H^ '^^^ ^^ ^^s thirtieth year, had made the grand tour 
 in a fashion of his own, and had begun those special studies 
 concerning insanity which were to occupy the next half-century 
 of his professional life. With these qualifications and experi- 
 ences, he returned from Europe ; and, after a visit to his mother, 
 sisters, and brothers at Leicester and Worcester, he estab- 
 Hshed himself as a physician in Philadelphia, where his brother 
 Thomas had long been in practice as a lawyer. From an 
 essay published some years later, we may learn something of 
 the general average of medical knowledge and practice where 
 Dr. Earle began his professional career, and in the years from 
 1837 to 1844. 
 
 My medical education was received at the school in which Dr. 
 Benjamin Rush had been a professor ; and, along with respect, 
 esteem, and affection for the professors at whose feet I sat, I im- 
 bibed reverence for Dr. Rush. But his theories of the pathology 
 and his principles of the therapeutics of insanity, and the incon- 
 sistencies into which these led him, did not die with their originator. 
 His " Medical Enquiries and Observations " has had a circulation 
 among American physicians more extensive than that of the works 
 of all other authors upon mental disorders. These theories and 
 principles, and the method of treatment recommended by him (fre- 
 quent and copious bleeding), are still to a very considerable extent in 
 vogue over a vast extent of inland territory in America ; and the 
 professor of the practice of medicine in our largest medical school 
 inculcates that method of treatment and its supporting theories. It 
 is not a fact, therefore, that in America Dr. Rush is " almost without 
 
1839-1845 145 
 
 a follower," nor that his arguments have lost their force and author- 
 it)^ When physicians having the care of the insane began to de- 
 nounce venesection, they were confronted by what was considered 
 the paramount authority of Dr. Rush. They were told, " You crazy 
 doctors ride hobbies," as if Dr. Rush were not as liable to hobby- 
 riding as Dr. Ray or Dr. Bell. No individual authority could over- 
 come the far-prevailing (but, happily, not, as formerly, the all-per- 
 vading) influence of Rush in the United States. Even in England 
 his theories still live, according to Dr. Munro, who in 1856 said: 
 "The term 'mania' has become inveterately associated, among prac- 
 titioners of the old school (many of whom still exist), with a strength 
 to be pulled down, — a disease requiring antiphlogistic treatment. 
 He bleeds, he blisters, he purges, and finds the fury mitigated for a 
 time. Therefore, this practitioner says again, ' Mania must result 
 from excess of power.' " I believe that Dr. Rush's theories are an- 
 nually consigning hundreds prematurely to the grave, and hundreds 
 more to premature insanity ; while the book which inculcates them is 
 not only extant, but probably to be found in more libraries than all 
 other books on the same subject." 
 
 Although these remarks, made in 1857, relate to one special 
 form of disease v^^ith which Dr. Earle had then become very 
 familiar by long observation, it is almost equally true that 
 " heroic " treatment was the rule in ordinary practice. We 
 have seen with what surprise Dr. Earle noted the small amount 
 of drugs given in doses by the French hospital physicians. 
 This was because medical science — never very complete — ■ 
 was exceedingly imperfect sixty years ago in America as com- 
 pared with its present state. In 1839, when he opened a gen- 
 eral office in Philadelphia, a considerable revolt had broken out 
 in New England and other parts of the country against the 
 extreme use of mercury, then very common ; and the homoe- 
 opathists, of whom Dr. Earle heard for the first time in a prac- 
 tical way at Paris, soon made their crusade throughout the 
 Northern States against the use of large doses in general. Dr. 
 Earle was never the first to innovate on the professional prac- 
 tice of his day ; but, on the other hand, he was firm and con- 
 scientious in the support of what he believed to be for the good 
 
146 MEDICAL SCIENCE IN 1840 
 
 of patients. And it is probable that he was drawn from general 
 practice into the specialty in which he became so distinguished 
 by his perception of the good field it offered for improving the 
 traditional usages, without shocking too much the professional 
 body of which he was a young and unknown member. At any 
 rate, he had not long been at work in Philadelphia before he 
 was asked to take a place as physician in the small hospital for 
 the insane maintained by the Quakers of that vicinity, and 
 known as " The Friends' Retreat," at Frankford, now a part of 
 the great city of Penn and Franklin. He began his service 
 there in the summer of 1840 ; and one of his first experiences 
 led him to a cardinal principle in the care of the insane, — not 
 to deceive them nor allow others to do so. Writing to his 
 Leicester family (Sept. 30, 1840), he says: — 
 
 We have a C. E. here from Maryland, who, in homely phrase, is 
 " crazy as a loon," but improving rapidly. When she arrived, her 
 husband, a brother, and two sisters came with her. After a while 
 we walked out into the garden, C. walking with me. While I amused 
 her, these relatives slipped away, and were off before she was aware 
 of it. For a month afterwards she believed that I had ordered her 
 friends to be murdered, and, having assumed the name of her hus- 
 band, was making pretensions to her hand. Finally, this delusion 
 was removed by the receipt of letters (written at my request) from 
 all those who came with her. Never again shall I insist on detaining 
 a patient by deception or stratagem. It shall be straightforward 
 work. 
 
 It was fortunate for the young alienist that he could begin 
 his real life-work in a small asylum like that of his own relig- 
 ious society and among persons naturally inclined to favor his 
 efforts. Frankford was thus to him a preparatory school, in 
 which he learned, without too much controversy or publicity, 
 what to do and what to avoid. Nor was his time too fully 
 occupied to forbid his lecturing on scientific, literary, and 
 general topics. This he did often and to general acceptance. 
 He won some local applause also as a poet and a contributor to 
 the magazines of that early day, the Knickerbocker of New 
 
1839-1845 147 
 
 York, and the venture which that brilliant, erratic genius, 
 Edgar Poe, was then first making in Philadelphia. Oct. 15, 
 
 1 840, Dr. Earle says : — 
 
 I have written several pieces this summer, which I would send to 
 thee [his sister Eliza] if I had time to copy them in an easy position. 
 [He was ill from blood-poisoning in consequence of an autopsy at 
 the Retreat.] I will copy one, which I think a little posterior to the 
 others, the " Sohloquy of an Octogenarian."* . . . 
 
 'Tis nearly past, this fitful dream 
 Whose phantoms gladden to deceive, etc. 
 
 Edgar A. Poe, formerly editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, 
 is about to commence a journal similar to the Knickerbocker in 
 Philadelphia. I have sent this piece to him, and have received an 
 answer, in which he says the lines are " beautiful," and " shall 
 certainly appear in the first number." Another of the cast-off scoriae 
 of my brain is an " Address to a Flower," brought from Mars' Hill, 
 in this measure : — 
 
 Bright flower of the Orient, bathed in the dyes 
 That crimson the vault of Hellenean skies, 
 Fanned by zephyrs which over Pentelicus blew, 
 And nurtured by drops of Hymettean dew, 
 Or by vapors, perchance, on the breeze wafted o'er 
 From the Hieron Helian of old Epidaure.f 
 
 I have forwarded it to the Knickerbocker. 
 
 This poem came out in the volume printed by Dr. Earle in 
 
 1841, entitled "Marathon, and Other Poems," where it begins 
 page 104. The verses " To my Mother," at page S6 of the 
 same volume, were those which appeared in the Knickerbocker 
 of July, 1840, and were written at Passignano in Italy, in 1839. 
 Poe wrote to Dr. Earle, Oct. 10, 1840, from Philadelphia, in a 
 beautiful hand, thus : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your kind letter dated the 2d inst. was postmarked 
 the 8th, and I have only this morning received it. I hasten to thank 
 
 * Published in "Marathon, and Other Poems," Philadelphia, 1S41. 
 
 t These Grecian place-names are brought in to give the right Attic flavor to the lines ; and the fact 
 that Pentelicus is east-north-east from the Areopagus would not hinder the south-west wind (zephyr) 
 
140 LITERARY LABORS 
 
 you for the interest you have taken in my contemplated magazine, 
 and for the beautiful lines " By an Octogenarian," They shall 
 certainly appear in the first number. You must allow me to consider 
 such offerings, however, as anything but " unsubstantial encourage- 
 ment." Believe me that good poetry is far rarer, and therefore far 
 more acceptable to the publisher of a journal, than even that rara 
 avis, money itself. 
 
 Should you be able to aid my cause in Frankford by a good word 
 with your neighbors, I hope that you will be inclined to do so. Much 
 depends upon the list I may have before the first of December. I 
 send you a prospectus, believing that the objects set forth in it are, 
 upon the whole, such as your candor will approve. 
 
 Very truly and respectfully, 
 Yr. ob. St., 
 Dr. Pliny Earle. Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 The name of this long-expected journal, whose first number 
 never appeared, was to be The Penn Magazine. It was first 
 announced June 13, 1840, as to come out the next January, 
 then deferred to March i, 1841, and then given up entirely, 
 Poe taking charge of Grahavis Magazine instead. The Penn 
 was to be monthly, to publish a thousand pages a year, in 
 two volumes ; and its price was five dollars a year. Its chief 
 object was given as "an absolutely independent criticism," and 
 this was to be something unique and not yet seen, — 
 
 Yielding no point either to the vanity of the author, or to the 
 assumptions of antique prejudice, or to the involute and anonymous 
 cant of the quarterlies, or to the arrogance of those organized cliques, 
 which, hanging on like nightmares upon American literature, manu- 
 facture, at the nod of our principal booksellers, a pseudo-public 
 opinion by wholesale. 
 
 These were brave words, and Dr. PLarle waited for six 
 months to see them fulfilled. Then he gathered up his early 
 and later verses into a volume, as mentioned, and dealt no 
 
 from blowing "over Pentelicus" after fanning the poet's flower, which was a scarlet anemone. 
 " Epidaure" is the French version of that Hieron of yEsculapius near the old town of Epidauros on 
 the coast of Argolis, a short sail from Athens, — called " Helian," I fancy, from the commingling of 
 Apollo and his mythical son, who was nursed by goats on the mountain overlooking the temple. 
 
1839-1845 149 
 
 more with Mr. Poe. His verses in the July Knickerbocker 
 (then edited by Lewis Gaylord Clarke) had brought him a new 
 acquaintance at the inopportune time of sickness, which had 
 delayed the posting of his " Soliloquy " to Poe. He thus notes 
 the fact (Oct. 15, 1840) : — 
 
 Yesterday Thomas Wright, a Hicksite, formerly of New York 
 City, but now of Hudson, came to see me with a letter of introduction 
 from J. Turnpenny. He found me en deshabille parfaite, with a 
 cotton shirt on, the left sleeve and side of which were saturated with 
 blood and lead-water, the bedclothes in very similar condition (my 
 bed not having been made, my hands and face not washed, nor even 
 my head combed for sixty hours), with two nurses working over me, 
 and forty leeches filling themselves at my arm. He stayed a few 
 minutes, talked a little, seemed as kind and familiar as if we had 
 been acquainted forty years, and then left. I wondered what the 
 man came for, and to-day have had an explanation from J. Turn- 
 penny, who heard of my serious illness and called to see me. Last 
 summer he was at the house of Wright, in Hudson, just after the 
 Knickerbocker with my verses came out. Wright was " very much 
 taken " with the stanzas, and wondered who Pliny Earle was. 
 Turnpenny informed him. And now, being this way on business, as 
 I presume, he took the opportunity of seeing me. During our 
 interview he said nothing about poetry ; but, after going back to 
 town, he told J. T. " to thank Pliny Earle for me for writing that 
 piece, and say to him that I have taken one verse of it, 
 
 Thou whose locks are hoary, etc., 
 
 to myself." I wish the author were half as good as a perusal of that 
 piece would lead people to suspect. 
 
 This brief comment on an incident so flattering to an author's 
 vanity illustrates Dr. Earle's view of his literary work. He 
 desired it to have an instructive and moral effect, or else he 
 wrote merely for the entertainment of readers easily amused. 
 His true vocation was something different ; and, after a few 
 years, he gave up literature. Phrenology went the same way, 
 but after a longer interval ; for, as already intimated, Dr. Earle 
 
I^O PHRENOLOGY EXExMPLIFIED 
 
 had taken much interest in that queer half-science, now gone 
 to decay. Early in 1842 he wrote : — 
 
 The examination of Stephen Earle's head and of mine, by L. N. Fow- 
 ler did more to convince me of the practical utility of phrenology — 
 not to say of its truth as a science — than anything else that I ever 
 saw, read, or heard. Stephen was told what I believe he might 
 have been rather than what he is. But, for myself, I doubt if any 
 of my nearest relatives or most intimate friends could have given 
 a more accurate synopsis of my character. Dr. Barber* could 
 titillate the ears of his audience, and talk most eloquently of " the 
 sensible fibres of the corporeal organization," "the infinitesimal cor- 
 puscles constituting the basis of the wonderful temple of the human 
 economy," of the " transcendental, heaven-born, heaven-bound 
 ethereal essence, which, under the diverse modifications of the su- 
 perior sentiments, elevates man above the brutes that perish " ; he 
 can recite 
 
 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, — roll ! 
 
 and " Ha-a-a-ail ho-o-o-oly Light!" but, as for the power of ap- 
 preciating character by the craniological developments, he had 
 hardly a tittle. 
 
 In describing one of Dr. Earle's confused patients at Frank- 
 ford, phrenology comes in : — 
 
 He is unsettled, restless, and constantly worrying about something. 
 His Conscientiousness thinks that the buttons of his vest, which are 
 covered with plain black " lasting," are too gay. His Reverence is 
 in an inexplicable quandary in regard to a copy of Scott's Family 
 Bible, which it and Acquisitiveness procured. After the purchase, 
 Reverence, reading the commentary, became dissatisfied, and openly 
 promulgated dissatisfaction. Hereupon De^tructiveness advised to 
 burn the book, " That would be a wise expedient for the commen- 
 tary," remarked Reverence ; " but for the text it would be sacri- 
 legious, and to separate them is impossible." Benevolence, hearing 
 this colloquy, proposed to give the book away. " And contaminate 
 
 • This was a rhetorical Briton, who made a figure in Boston and Cambridge, for a time, by his reci- 
 tations, readings, and, finally, by lecturing on phrenology. The brothers Fowler were very different 
 persons,— shrewd and gifted in Hogarth's art, " to see the manners in the face." 
 
1839-1845 iSi 
 
 somebody else, eh ? " cried Reverence, holding up both hands in 
 astonishment. At this point Secretiveness whispered that, if he had 
 the management, he would box the book up, and hide it among the 
 lumber of the garret. " And thus contaminate posterity," exclaimed 
 Reverence and Philoprogenitiveness, simultaneously. Here the 
 consultation ended, and poor Reverence can see no way out of the 
 dilemma. Acquisitiveness and Conscientiousness have long been in 
 combat. The former came into possession of some notes of hand, 
 and, on the day they were to be renewed, sat down composedly to 
 cast compound interest on the several sums. At this moment Con- 
 scientiousness came in, declaring that Acquisitiveness was doing 
 wrong. " Bigot ! " cried Acquisitiveness : " you are always meddling 
 with other people's affairs." "But you outrage justice," said Con- 
 scientiousness, in a tone that showed he was spurred on by his 
 neighbor. Firmness. " Grumble, and growl away," retorted Acquisi- 
 tiveness. " I shall stick to my text, and pocket the compound inter- 
 est." The field was won by the last speaker. Conscientiousness 
 retreated, but has kept up a kind of predatory warfare ever since. 
 
 This is a good account, in the jargon of that day, of the 
 divided mind of many insane persons. As for the intricate 
 problems of mind and matter, which even the casual study of 
 insanity calls up for solution, we find this utterance of Dr. 
 Earle, after the preliminary years of his life in asylums : — 
 
 The longer I live, the more am I impressed with a belief in the 
 all-controlling supremacy of mind over matter, of the far-reaching, 
 mysterious power of the divine intelligence within, and of the 
 limited bounds of present knowledge, compared with what is to be 
 known when mind shall have thrown off its fetters of clay. Science 
 is proud, even presumptuous ; but how much cause for humility in 
 the fact that it cannot trace one particle of its knowledge upward, 
 through effects, to the original cause and centre of all things ! 
 Science is lost at once in the mazes of uncertainty and ignorance, 
 whenever it attempts to fathom mind itself. 
 
 Early in 1844 Dr. Earle gave up his prefatory work in Phila- 
 delphia, and entered on his more public career by taking 
 charge for five years of the New York Asylum for the Insane 
 
152 PATIENCE EARLE S LETTER 
 
 at Bloomingdale, a large and wealthy foundation for the care 
 and cure of insanity, which had been receiving patients ever 
 since 1821. In course of his life there he had much to do with 
 settling the family affairs at Leicester, which are mentioned in 
 the following letter from his mother. She wrote him from 
 Mulberry Grove on his thirty-sixth birthday, when she was 
 seventy-five years old. 
 
 Leicester, 12 mo., 31, 1845. 
 
 Dear Son, — "Procrastination is the thief of time." I have neg- 
 lected answering thy agreeable and obliging letter for no other 
 reason than what is contained in the above often quoted adage, and 
 my seeming inability to write, arising from such a total disuse of a 
 pen, and want of energy sufficient to make a beginning. 
 
 We are all in about our usual state of health. Jonah, I think, is 
 better this winter than he has been for the same length of time for 
 several years. He makes himself quite useful at the barn, is going 
 to-night to help the Methodists watch the old year out and the new 
 one in. Thy Uncle Jonah is quite sick, has been pretty much con- 
 fined to his bed for two weeks ; and there seems little probability of 
 his recovery at his advanced age. 
 
 With regard to the business thou wrote about, I should be exceed- 
 ingly glad to have it settled ; and I see no prospect of any other way 
 but for thee to do it, and for myself it matters but very little how. 
 I feel entirely willing it should be done in a way that thou would 
 not be much of a loser, and, if thou couldst come and attend to it 
 thyself, should be very glad to see thee, and shall be perfectly will- 
 ing to arrange the business in a way that appears to be right, and 
 that will be satisfactory to thee. We have paid out a great deal for 
 repairs, etc., besides the debt to Waldo. But I feel very desirous to 
 see it settled, and shall consider it a great favor for thee to do it. 
 
 There are some other things that I want to consult about ; and I 
 feel as though they ought to be seen to before it is too late, and very 
 sensibly feel that whatever I do must of necessity be done soon. So 
 that, if thou canst make it at all consistent with thy employment to 
 come, I should feel very glad and greatly obliged ; and I think we 
 may get our matters satisfactorily arranged, and so as to be a great 
 relief to my mind. 
 
 Since writing the above, I have received thy letter, and think 
 
1839-1845 153 
 
 the way thou proposes may likely be the best. I have long 
 thought that there niight be a part of the land sold off, to good 
 advantage, at some future time. If thou should conclude to come, 
 please to let us know when. 
 
 We are in hopes thy Uncle Jonah is getting better, though he is 
 very weak, and it will be hard for him to regain his strength. 
 
 They have been making a survey for a railroad from Worcester to 
 Barre, and past between Amos's factory and WilHam's. Please to 
 write soon. Thy affectionate mother, 
 
 Patience Earle. 
 
 This epistle verifies the character given of Mrs. Earle by her 
 son, — affectionate, sensible, and patient, with no remarkable 
 gift of expression, but much perception and practical faculty. 
 Her son Jonah, here mentioned, was the youngest of her nine 
 children, and, except Sarah Hadwen, the earliest to die. He 
 was odd and not brilliant, but noted for occasional turns of wit, 
 and with the family admiration for beauty. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ASYLUM LABORS AND EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Seldom has a specialist in the care of the insane been more 
 carefully and gradually trained for that difficult work than was 
 Dr. Earle. His graduating thesis at Philadelphia in 1837 was 
 on the general subject of Insanity, in regard to which he had 
 been frequently an observer of the treatment of patients by 
 Dr. S. B. Woodward at the Massachusetts Lunatic Hospital 
 in Worcester. This gentleman, "whose affable manners and 
 enthusiasm in his work," says Dr. Earle, "were well calculated 
 to fascinate a neophyte in the profession," was long at the 
 head of the Worcester Hospital, and ranks high among the 
 earlier specialists of America. A part of Dr. Earle's thesis was 
 published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, (to 
 which he contributed for nearly half a century) in August, 
 1838, under the too comprehensive title of "The Causes, Dura- 
 tion, Termination, and Moral Treatment of Insanity," neither 
 of which divisions of the subject could be very well known to 
 the medical student at that early date ; but the statistics in- 
 volved in the treatise were then more numerous than any 
 collection of them before published in the United States. In 
 this, the peculiar field of Dr. Earle as a theorizer on Insanity, 
 he was thus at work betimes ; and he was one of the first to see 
 that any useful theory must have careful statistics for its basis. 
 He showed this demonstratively in his " History of the Bloom- 
 ingdale Asylum," published in 1848, — a volume containing 
 statistical records of all the cases received there from the 
 opening of that New York asylum in 1821 to the close of 
 1844. These were thoroughly analyzed, and so presented as 
 to lead easily to general conclusions, towards which Dr. Earle 
 was working his way by close and systematic observation of 
 his patients. 
 
 Examples of his method and results may be given. When he 
 
1839-1S47 155 
 
 took charge of patients at Frankford, the great authority of 
 Dr. Rush, as before intimated, had begun to wane after half 
 a century, and there were sceptics who questioned the Rush 
 specific of bleeding the insane ; but this practice was still much 
 in vogue at Frankford, though not so universally as Rush had 
 urged. Head-shaving, blistering, or liberal cupping of the 
 scalp were also often prescribed by the visiting physicians, 
 whose authority was greater than that of the young resident. 
 Dr. Earle soon convinced himself that such treatment did more 
 harm than good, and never prescribed it. At Bloomingdale he 
 followed the same safe course, rarely using venesection there, 
 and never cupping the scalp. When, finally, he wrote an essay 
 on the subject, his own observations confirmed the great 
 authorities he cited against bleeding. His studies of the 
 rapidity of pulse in the insane were pursued for years at Frank- 
 ford and Bloomingdale, and his essays, when published, carried 
 conviction. At that time (before 1846) an extract of Conium 
 TnaculatiLm was very extensively used upon the insane, but its 
 precise results were in doubt. In order to learn, by actual 
 experiment, both the effect of this drug and the comparative 
 strength of the American and English preparations of it, Dr. 
 Earle himself took a succession of constantly enlarging doses, 
 and thus learned experimentally that it did not have the effect 
 generally ascribed to it. From the first he had relied on moral 
 treatment rather than on drugs and mechanical aids ; and, 
 though he found that invention of professional indolence, the 
 "tranquillizing chair," in use both at Frankford and Blooming- 
 dale, — together with muffs, wristers, and other leathern induce- 
 ments to quiet, which the attendants employed freely in order 
 to remain quiet themselves, — he soon diminished their use 
 or entirely abolished them. Of course, those abominations 
 of water-torture which he had seen used in Paris * he never 
 employed, any more than the primitive restraining apparatus of 
 Constantinople. But he addressed himself to the mind and 
 moral sense of his patients, introducing lectures and scientific 
 experiments (for the first time in America) and soon a school 
 of instruction for the patients. This he established at Bloom- 
 
 *See pages 94 and 137; also the Appendix. 
 
156 TREATMENT OF THE INSANE 
 
 ingdale in the autumn of 1845, and found it of much value in 
 many ways. His invention has since been rediscovered in many 
 asylums, and sometimes vaunted by more recent experts as 
 their own invention. 
 
 Of the impression made by Dr. Earle on his associates in the 
 slow and difficult task of improving the treatment of the insane, 
 whether rich or poor, in America, I find a striking evidence in 
 a letter from Dr. Edward Jarvis, of Concord, who took the first 
 census of the insane and idiotic in Massachusetts (and up to 
 this time the most complete one) in 1854. A few years later 
 (April, 1857) he thus wrote to Dr. Earle, then living in retire- 
 ment at Leicester, and giving some aid to Judge Washburn in 
 his preparation of a history of that town : — 
 
 You have never been forgotten or ignored by me since I first had 
 the pleasure of meeting you at your asylum (Frankford) in August, 
 1842. Your reception of me was then very cordial, and left a very 
 happy and abiding impression on my mind. I had been long living 
 beyond the mountains in Louisville, Ky. Homesick and disheart- 
 ened, I returned, hoping to meet those who cared for the things that 
 had interested me in Massachusetts. Fortunately, I went to Phila- 
 delphia on my way, and saw you. Your greetings and Dr. Kirk- 
 bride's revived me. You were both strangers to my eye, but not to 
 my sympathies ; for you gave me that cordial sympathy that I had 
 been longing for through the five years of my dwelling in the West. 
 From that moment I felt restored to my Eastern home. You gave 
 me a copy of your " Visit to Thirteen Asylums," and I read and en- 
 joyed it. It opened my eyes to a larger field, for which I had been 
 yearning. 
 
 Dr. Earle was indeed fitted by nature and experience to in- 
 troduce new methods, and recall men from tradition and routine 
 to the teachings of kindly observation and plain good sense. 
 Never too forward in seeking innovation, he based it on his 
 own observation and the authority of men who had tested their 
 own work ; and he never fell back from experience thus gained, 
 whatever might be the popular or the professional delusion of 
 the moment. Coming to a profession much devoted to those 
 false objects of worship named by Bacon "idols of the cave" 
 
1839-1847 157 
 
 and " idols of the forum," he had the advantage of entering 
 late, when his judgment was matured and his knowledge of 
 practical affairs (as we have seen) was much greater than that 
 of the city-bred medical student. He belonged to a body of 
 Christians, also, who looked with cool and searching eyes at 
 most of the shams and hypocrisies of modern life, and sought 
 their guidance from within rather than from without. Yet this 
 freedom of mind was tempered by a moderation that seldom 
 gave offence to prejudice, and by a real respect for the thoughts 
 and feelings of others. As Burke said of Fox, "To his great 
 understanding he joined the utmost degree of moderation, was 
 of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition, 
 and without one drop of gall in his composition." He also 
 deserved that term and that definition given by Hazlitt to one 
 of his characters : " He was by nature a gentleman, by which 
 I mean that he had a certain deference and respect for the 
 person of every man." 
 
 How foreign this often is to the New England nature need 
 not here be insisted on ; nor how often, even when beset by ill- 
 health and misconstrued in his action and motive, Dr. Earle 
 rose above the influence of his locality. Seldom, indeed, do we 
 see the child of nature and the man of the world, simplicity, 
 experience, and urbanity, so mingled as they were in him. If 
 this laid him open to attack and to those wounds which selfish- 
 ness inflicts on sensibility, his fund of benevolence and good 
 sense soon healed the hurts which arrogance and exposed im- 
 posture might make. Nor is it common to find persons so 
 capable of keen mental vision both at long and short range — 
 so telescopic and so microscopic — as he was. Both kinds of 
 vision are needed in the patient investigation of truth, espe- 
 cially in the care of the insane. 
 
 When Dr. Earle took charge of the Bloomingdale Asylum in 
 the city of New York, it had existed for nearly twenty-three 
 years, and contained little more than 100 patients. It had re- 
 ceived in that period about 2,150 patients, at the rate of about 
 90 a year; but these had been admitted 2,937 times, — that is, 
 there were nearly 800 more cases than persons under treat- 
 ment. This fact early called Dr. Earle's attention to the 
 
158 THE BLOOMINGDALE ASYLUM 
 
 fallacy which he afterwards so thoroughly exposed, — founding 
 a percentage of recoveries on the cases rather than the persons. 
 He also saw the necessity of sifting out the inebriates from the 
 actually insane, and of not confounding, as so many of his col- 
 leagues did, temporary sobriety with restored sanity. Among 
 the 2,150 persons who had been received at Bloomingdale, 322, 
 or more than one-seventh, came as inebriates, and had 594 ad- 
 missions, or more than one-fifth of all admissions. They also 
 made more than 500 "recoveries," and some of them were 
 received a dozen times in the twenty-three years. Of 1,841 
 persons really insane when admitted (2,308 cases), the re- 
 coveries were, in all but 726, at the asylum, though 18 more 
 recovered after discharge, so that the percentage of actual 
 recovery in twenty-six years, based on persons, not cases, was 
 but 40, while of these more than 105 relapsed, many of whom 
 died insane. The permanent recoveries, therefore, were less 
 than 34 per cent, (about one-third of all admitted) ; and even 
 this small proportion has not been maintained in the State of 
 New York — and probably not elsewhere — in the half-century 
 that has since elapsed. At the beginning of 1844, when New 
 York (the State) had a population of about 2,500,000, and the 
 city had about 350,000, there were but 751 patients in all the 
 insane asylums then existing. Three years later they had 
 increased to 1,125. There are now (January, 1898) nearly 
 22,000, though the population has only increased to about 
 7,000,000. Permanent recoveries in the mass of the New York 
 City insane are now less than 15 per cent., and in the State at 
 large not above 20 per cent., so that the recovery rate has 
 greatly declined in the half-century following Dr. Earle's re- 
 tirement from the Bloomingdale Asylum, which took place 
 early in 1849. 
 
 For this decline in the recoveries many causes have been 
 alleged, and many hare doubtless existed. But it was Dr. 
 Earle's opinion — resulting from his personal experience in 
 small hospitals and in larger ones — that one great cause was 
 the increasing size of such establishments, which practically 
 forbade that best form of treatment which he and his earlier 
 colleagues, Brigham of Utica, Ray of Providence, Bell at the 
 
1839-1847 159 
 
 McLean Asylum near Boston, Todd and Butler at Hartford, 
 and Kirkbride at Philadelphia (all in small asylums), could give 
 with favorable results. He never abandoned this opinion, 
 which led him, in his later years, into some controversy with 
 those of his specialty who had yielded to the apparent demand 
 for huge asylums under the name of " hospitals," reaching 
 now in some American instances the monstrous total of 2,300 
 inmates, and in the London County Asylum of more than 
 4,000. Speaking at Boston in 1868 before the Massachusetts 
 Medical Society, he said : — 
 
 I desire here to quote from myself an opinion published in 1852, 
 after an examination of the German hospitals and a perusal of 
 much that had been written in Germanic countries : " It appears to 
 me that the true method in regard to lunatic asylums is this : let no 
 institution have more than two hundred patients, and let all receive 
 both curables and incurables in their natural proportion from their 
 respective districts." The only modification which I would now 
 make is an extension of the limit to two hundred and fifty patients, 
 and this only because of the large proportion of incurables among 
 the existing insane. In no other way can the insane be so well and 
 so effectively treated, and the greatest probability of their restoration 
 assured. The superintendent can obtain a sufficiently thorough 
 knowledge of every patient. Inspection by him may be frequent, all 
 details of treatment, medical and moral, may be known to him, and 
 hence the greatest efficiency secured. All the labor of which the 
 patients are capable may be obtained, and a large part of it devoted 
 to the care of the curable, the sick, and the excited, thus diminishing 
 the necessity for paid employees. 
 
 All these advantages were in fact obtained by Dr. Earle at 
 Bloomingdale, so far as the social condition of his patients 
 (mainly from wealthy families, in his time) would permit their 
 manual employment, in regard to which he held equally posi- 
 tive opinions. These he was able to carry out at the North- 
 ampton Hospital, where he spent the last third of his life, 
 having spent the first third in preparing himself, by study and 
 practice of many kinds, to take the best care of the insane. 
 Just before going to Northampton as superintendent, he de- 
 
l6o EMPLOYMENT OF THE INSANE 
 
 livered before the Berkshire Medical School in Pittsfield an 
 address on " Psychologic IMedicine," in which he said : — 
 
 Manual labor is universally eulogized as among the most potent 
 curative means, and yet it is as universally intimated that it is never 
 required of a patient without his cheerful volition. But there are 
 some patients — a class of patients — who can be cured by labor, 
 and apparently by nothing else. If they do not resort to it, they 
 become apathetic and incurable. Very many have thus died who 
 might have been cured by labor. In these cases, why is the only 
 medicament which will effect a cure not prescribed and administered ? 
 If the patient required an emetic, would it not be administered ? If 
 he refused to eat, would he not be fed, if necessary, under coercion ? 
 Yes, drugs and medicine may be forced upon a patient till he be- 
 comes a perfect apothecar)''s shop, and all is right ; but an attempt 
 to force him to the genial, wholesome, and curative exercise of 
 manual labor is an outrage upon humanity. 
 
 No such nonsense disfigured the medical record of Dr. Earle, 
 and he did not allow a supposed public opinion (probably non- 
 existent) to prevent him from administering labor as a remedy 
 and a means of discipline. Whether this had aught to do with 
 his short term of office at New York I have never heard, but 
 it is conceivable. By the time he was offered the position at 
 Northampton, this squeamishness about labor had been over- 
 come, at least for that hospital, the inmates of which were 
 mostly paupers of foreign parentage then ; and he was allowed 
 to employ them on the large farm to such advantage that, after 
 the first year, the work done by patients materially reduced the 
 cost of their support, while it also furnished them with a better 
 dietary of vegetables, milk, fruit, etc., than most of the other 
 Massachusetts hospitals enjoyed. To such an extent was this 
 economy carried, with no stinting of the patients, that this 
 hospital, which he found in debt, and for which it had been 
 needful often to ask State appropriations, did, under his long 
 administration, save from its board-price (fixed by law for the 
 poor at S3. 25 and S3. 50 a week) enough to pay extraordinary 
 expenses in land, buildings, repairs, etc., amounting to some 
 
1839-1847 i6i 
 
 ^200,000. Thus he demonstrated in practice what he taught 
 in theory at Pittsfield and that of which he was convinced at 
 Bloomingdale. 
 
 Had his five years in Bloomingdale done nothing more than 
 enable Dr. Earle to publish his account of that asylum's sta- 
 tistical history since 1821, it would have been time well spent; 
 for in that work he pointed the way to the proper collection 
 and use of statistics of the insane, in which he has been tardily 
 followed by other experts, and by whole States and countries. 
 His standard book on the " Curability of the Insane " was but 
 the development, for a special purpose, of his system in the 
 narrower field of the small asylum he was then directing. The 
 average number of his patients, while at New York, was but 
 125, and they were more largely of native American parentage 
 than can now be found in any hospital near a large American 
 city ; nor had the variety of diseases now included under the 
 loose general term "insanity" become common even in New 
 York. The first case of paresis (now so painfully common 
 even in rural asylums) ever described in the United States was 
 examined and described by Dr. Earle in 1847 3-t his asylum; 
 and subsequent observations on this disease were contributed 
 by him to the Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1849 ^^^ 
 1857, his first paper having appeared there in April, 1847. 
 With his accustomed precision he proposed to call this malady 
 (known to the French who discovered it as paralysie ginerale) 
 by the more exact name of " partio-general paralysis"; but 
 the short Greek term " paresis," generally mispronounced, has 
 supplanted both names, and the English have even carried 
 abbreviation so far as to speak of it as " G. P." In after years 
 Dr. Earle had occasion to see many examples of this disease, 
 but his first diagnosis is believed to have been in the main con- 
 firmed by all his later observation. And this general remark 
 may hold good of both his periods of executive management 
 in small asylums, at Frankford and Bloomingdale, — that he 
 learned therein, at comparative leisure, what he afterwards had 
 occasion to teach and practise on the much more extensive 
 arena where he found himself after his second visit to Europe 
 in 1849. In connection with his duties and his acquired repu- 
 
l62 THE INSANE OF NEW YORK 
 
 tation at Bloomingdale, he was in 1847 appointed, without pre- 
 vious notice to himself, one of a board of physicians to visit the 
 City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, which then con- 
 tained something more than four hundred pauper patients. 
 The governors of Bloomingdale, however, thought this outside 
 duty an interference with his regular work in their asylum, 
 and he made but one official visit to this pauper asylum. 
 Could he have continued in the position, it is probable that 
 this fast-growing and usually ill-managed island establishment 
 would have made a better record for itself. The insane asy- 
 lums of New York City, and those in Kings County, now 
 included in Greater New York, have had great need of the 
 practical sense, the courageous humanity, and the consider- 
 ate frugality of men like Dr. Earle. After a long period of 
 neglect and abuse, often exposed, but never sufficiently cor- 
 rected, they have finally passed under the experienced control 
 of Dr. P. M. Wise, of the State Lunacy Commission of New 
 York ; and it is hoped that they will now attain a character 
 worthy of the great city which sends its unfortunates to fill 
 and overcrowd their wards. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE GERMAN ASYLUMS. 
 
 Next to his later book on Curability, Dr. Earle's chief single 
 work was that which he published in 1853, entitled "Institu- 
 tions for the Insane in Prussia, Austria, and Germany." It 
 grew out of his observations during a second tour in Europe, 
 in 1849, of which mention has already been made. But he 
 took infinite pains to enlarge and correct those observations by 
 a study of the history, statistics, and general character of each 
 establishment inspected, and as many more which he did not 
 see. In all, during the summer and autumn of 1849 he visited 
 thirty-five establishments in Europe, eight in Great Britain, 
 five in Belgium (including Gheel, not yet reformed by govern- 
 ment inspection and control), six in France, seven in Prussian 
 Germany, six in other German States, two in Austria, and 
 finally one in the imperial free city of Frankfort. Few subse- 
 quent visitors from America have seen so many, and none, ex- 
 cept Mr. William P. Letchworth of New York, has published 
 such valuable and impartial accounts of the European asy- 
 lums. Nearly fifty years have since passed, and many have 
 been the changes, social, economical, and political, affecting 
 the countries visited and the whole subject of insanity; but 
 Dr. Earle's book of 230 octavo pages has still much value, 
 both from its historical information and the tone of can- 
 dor and practicality which pervades it. Before its publication 
 German was little studied in the United States. Few young 
 men went to the German universities, and very little was known 
 here of the insane and their treatment in any country where 
 German was the vernacular. Consequently, an important part 
 of human experience on this subject was either wholly unknown 
 or very imperfectly understood ; and a wide range was given 
 to that natural and almost national foible of our countrymen, — 
 the fancy that we surpass all the world in enlightenment and 
 
164 GERMAN ASYLUMS IN 1849 
 
 humanity. Travel and study and the immigration, since 
 1849, of millions of Germans, have modified all this ; but it is 
 even now too common for experts in " psychiatry," as the 
 Germans call the specialty, to neglect the varied and often 
 admirable German asylums, and the literature of the science, 
 various, profound, and often most practical in its teachings, 
 which comes to us from the German-speaking countries, in- 
 cluding Austria and Switzerland. Even in 1849, as Dr. Earle 
 himself remarked, he found in those countries " a long list of 
 men eminent in the specialty, who had produced a surprisingly 
 large amount of published matter, both of speculative research 
 into the origin and essential nature of insanity and of treatises 
 on its practical care and recovery." His personal acquaintances 
 among the men then eminent included Jacobi, at Siegburg near 
 Bonn, Damerow, and Laehr at Halle (near which, at Alt-Scher- 
 bitz, is now the best of all the German asylums, under the 
 charge, for nearly twenty years, of Dr. Paetz), Roller at Ille- 
 nau in Baden, Spurzheim (a cousin of the founder of the 
 pseudo-science of phrenology, who died in Boston and is buried 
 at Mt. Auburn), then at Vienna, and Martini at Leubus in Sile- 
 sia, — all in active service as asylum superintendents, and com- 
 paring favorably in knowledge and practical fitness for their 
 positions with the then prominent alienists of Great Britain and 
 France. Indeed, he was himself surprised to find in Germany 
 " a larger number of institutions, and those in a condition more 
 advanced, than had been suspected." Up to that time neither 
 England, France, nor the United States took much account of 
 German "psychiatry." The name was puzzling. The Germans 
 were viewed as chiefly idle metaphysicians, verging on infidelity, 
 and little notice was taken by the self-satisfied Briton or the 
 roving American of what might be going on among them. Dr. 
 Earle observed at the outset of his work : — 
 
 With a knowledge of the labors of Pinel and Tuke, we Americans 
 had pursued our way without the endeavor to push researches 
 beyond Great Britain and France. We had the excellent work of 
 Dr. Jacobi ; * but he was upon the very borders of France, less distant 
 
 • Translated into English at the suggestion of Samuel Tuke. 
 
I849-I853 165 
 
 from Paris than Marseilles is. Some volumes of Heinroth, the 
 spiritual Heinroth, leader of the " Psychics " and pupil of Pinel, had 
 found their way, in French, across the Atlantic. Institutions at 
 Schleswig, Pirna, Vienna, and Prague, were incidentally mentioned 
 in English and French publications received here. Dr. Ray has 
 visited Siegburg and Illenau. Further than this we knew but little of 
 the German establishments, had no idea of their condition, and 
 knew not even the existence of most of them, and some of those 
 among their very best. 
 
 Dr. Earle seems struck with the fact (which he communicates 
 here and there in his book) that the Saxons were the first 
 reformers of insane asylums in Germany ; and they continue 
 in the lead, in spite of the fame of Vienna. Heinroth was a 
 Saxon (born at Leipzig in 1773, died there in 1843). Reil was a 
 Saxon, and established at Halle in 1805 the first periodical de- 
 voted to mental disease; and it was in Halle, in 1S45, that 
 Dr. Damerow, a Saxon, established and printed the well-known 
 Journal of Psychiatry and PsycJw-legal Medicine, though for 
 convenience it was published at Berlin by Hirschwald. Two 
 years earlier the Provincial Asylum at Nietleben, near Halle, 
 had been opened under Dr. Damerow (1843), from which in 
 July, 1876, was developed the beginning of the asylum at Alt- 
 Scherbitz. The history of this, the latest development of the 
 Saxon spirit of progress in the care of the insane, has been well 
 set forth by the director of Alt-Scherbitz, Dr. Albrecht Paetz, 
 in his volume of 1893, "The Colonization of the Insane in 
 Connection with the Open-door System." The parent asylum, 
 a mile or two out of Halle, which, when visited by Dr. Earle, 
 six years after its opening, had but 262 patients, had become so 
 overcrowded in 1874 that a hundred of its patients were in the 
 spare room of a prison near by ; and when I visited Saxony in 
 1893, half a century after the opening of Nietleben, the two 
 asylums there and at Alt-Scherbitz contained more than 1,300 
 inmates, or five times as many as at Dr. Earle's visit. There 
 was no talk in 1849 of ^^^ "Open-door System"; and Dame- 
 row employed as means of restraint camisoles, muffs, and 
 leathern straps. " But I saw no strong chairs," adds the com- 
 
l66 THE GERMAN ASYLUMS 
 
 passionate American. Even then much work was done on the 
 large farm by the men, and in the kitchen and sewing-room by 
 the women. There were several shops for artisans ("but I did 
 not go into them"); and the farm "produces all the vegetables 
 consumed in the establishment, besides many for market." 
 This good custom of labor, as has been said. Dr. Earle after- 
 wards introduced most effectively at Northampton. More than 
 a third part of the cost of the Alt-Scherbitz asylum for its in- 
 mates is now borne by the product of the labor of its 850 
 patients. 
 
 Dr. Earle entered Germany by the lower Rhine, and made 
 his first visit to Dr. Maximilian Jacobi at the small asylum of 
 Siegburg, on the river Sieg, just above its confluence with the 
 Rhine, north of Bonn. It was an old Benedictine monastery, 
 founded in the eleventh century, and diverted to the use of 
 persons more insane than monks in 1825. It was the first of 
 curative hospitals for insanity in Prussia, and long had a high 
 reputation there and abroad. Its capacity was for two hundred, 
 and the cost of adapting it to its alienist uses was less than 
 ^100,000. Its annual cost in 1849, ^or less than two hundred 
 patients, did not exceed ^30,000. It reported about 30 per 
 cent, of its patients as " cured," but one-fifth of them relapsed. 
 The number of deaths was singularly small. Dr. Jacobi was 
 thought by his visitor to bear a strong resemblance to that 
 handsome old American ahenist. Dr. Woodward, first superin- 
 tendent of the Worcester Hospital, — " his presence command- 
 ing, his manners unpretending and affable, yet with manly 
 dignity." His opinions were sound and frankly expressed : — 
 
 Of every hundred recoveries in the hospital, he thinks that no 
 more than twenty are affected by medical treatment. The rest he 
 attributes to hygienic, disciplinary, and moral means. Manual labor 
 he considers the most effective means for cure, under the head of 
 " moral treatment." A large part of his patients work. They are 
 given to understand, soon after admission, that this is expected of 
 them as a matter of course. The higher-class patients keep the 
 walks in the gardens and grounds clear, and have various light 
 agricultural employments. Patients are also instructed in literary 
 knowledge and in music. 
 
1849-1853 i67 
 
 Nevertheless, the medical means and the mechanical re- 
 straints used by this veteran of the Rhine Province would make 
 a modern alienist " stare and gasp." " He has employed opium 
 with benefit in melancholia, not in mania. He sometimes uses 
 setons. A more favorite external remedy is tartar emetic. The 
 vertex of the head being shaved, antimonial ointment is applied 
 until it produces ulceration. He also hails with pleasure the 
 appearance of intermittent fever among his patients, since it 
 generally results in the permanent cure of several from insanity. 
 The camisole and 'tranquillizing chair' are the principal means 
 of restraint. The patient subjected to the shower-bath, involun- 
 tarily, is confined in a strong chair beneath it." 
 
 Dr Earle noted at Siegburg and elsewhere that German 
 physicians studied mental disease very thoroughly and minutely. 
 " A consultation of all the physicians is held upon every case 
 soon after admission, and frequently afterwards," — a custom of 
 quite recent introduction in most American asylums, if prac- 
 tised at all. Dr. F. at Siegburg " has not only visited all the 
 principal hospitals for the insane wherever the German lan- 
 guage is spoken, but has passed five months in some of the 
 best hospitals in Great Britain, and speaks English fluently." 
 Though quite young, he had contributed to the Zeitschrift 
 filr Psychiatrie articles on " Typical Insanity " and " How to 
 determine Incurability." At Andernach, near Coblenz, and 
 at Diisseldorf, Dr. Earle visited small asylums for the incura- 
 ble, some of whom, as coming from Siegburg, Dr. F, had 
 passed upon. In Andernach were one hundred and twenty 
 patients, at Diisseldorf one hundred and ten. At both the 
 women seemed to do more work than the men, while about 
 equal in number. Dr. F. gave him a letter of introduction to 
 Dr, Snell, of the Nassau Asylum, then at Eberbach, in an old 
 monastery, but soon transferred to new buildings on the Eich- 
 berg, near the more famous Johannisberg, on the Rhine, whence 
 comes the wine of the Metternichs. Visiting this combination 
 of ducal prison and insane hospital. Dr. Earle walked from 
 Erbach, by Elfeld, passing the vineyards of the Steinberg as 
 well as Johannisberg, and found Eberbach, as its name — 
 "boar's brook" — implies, in a valley among hills instead of 
 
1 68 LABOR AND AFTER-CARE IN NASSAU 
 
 at the top of the near ridge of Eichberg, to which its insane 
 inmates were soon removed. He found only one hundred and 
 fifty-one patients, but in its vicinity was an "After-care 
 Society," the first on record, which had been established by 
 Mr. Lindpaintner (described by Dr. Damerow as the last non- 
 medical director of a German institution for the insane) as 
 early as 1829. From that date until 1844 it had aided eighty- 
 one discharged patients, and, before Lindpaintner's death, in 
 1848, many more. The little duchy of Nassau, which in 1849 
 had but four hundred thousand people, thus took the lead in 
 caring for its insane, under the guidance of a layman, — a lesson 
 not lost on Dr. Earle. 
 
 At Eberbach, as elsewhere in Germany, "industry" was the 
 M^atchword of the hospital. At times the wards were almost 
 empty of men, most of whom were at work in the garden or at 
 the grounds of the new hospital on the Eichberg near by, to 
 which all the patients moved a few months later. The chapel 
 of the monks had become a wine-press, and their refectory a 
 sewing-room for the women ; while some of the men were busy 
 at tailoring and other trades. In the high-vaulted and frescoed 
 sewing-room women were spinning as well as sewing and knit- 
 ting. On a hillside not far off the private patients of rank 
 were gardening with hoes and rakes, or weeding the flower- 
 beds. Dr. Snell said that the friends of his patients always 
 wished them to labor, if the medical officer thought it best. 
 Indeed, he thought the fact that general paralysis was almost 
 unknown in the hospital was due to the exercise of so many of 
 his patients in the open air, — a conclusion which Dr. Earle did 
 not accept any more than later alienists would. " The cause 
 must be sought in their habits of life before admission," he 
 thought. 
 
 From Eberbach our tourist proceeded to Frankfort, the 
 home of Goethe, even in whose time there was a small insane 
 hospital. Indeed, it is recorded that in 1728, twenty-one years 
 before the birth of Goethe, funds were raised to improve this 
 Frankfort mad-house. At Dr. Earle's visit the city asylum, 
 managed by Dr. Varrentrapp, — father and son, — contained 83 
 inmates, chiefly paupers, with ten attendants, the city at that 
 
1849-1853 i69 
 
 time containing some 50,000 people. There was no farm, and 
 the work done was mechanical. Evidently, the whole establish- 
 ment impressed the visitor unfavorably. At present Frankfort 
 has 180,000 people, and is one of the richest cities in the world 
 for its size. Its insane are much better provided for. 
 
 Returning down the Rhine to Diisseldorf, the next visit was 
 made to Hildesheim, in Hanover, another old Benedictine mon- 
 astery, dating from looi, converted to an asylum in 1827, and 
 containing in 1849 200 patients, under Dr. Bergmann, Here 
 for the first time Dr. Earle found much use of baths as a part 
 of the medical treatment. 
 
 He also found there two establishments, one for the curable 
 and the other for the incurable, separated only by their gardens 
 and under the same control ; and the curative hospital was in 
 two separate buildings, one for each sex. Consequently, fewer 
 were discharged from the establishment than in cases where 
 no asylum for incurables made part of the plant ; and, of those 
 discharged, the greater part were supposed to be cured. Yet 
 out of 540 cases in four years the cures were but 141 ; while 
 the deaths and removals to the incurable asylum were together 
 161, only 6 out of 257 being entered as "improved." This 
 seemed to Dr. Earle " inconsistent with Dr. Bergmann's char- 
 acter for minuteness and accuracy of investigation." But his 
 baths aroused attention in the American, for such a method, 
 now common, was then little practised here. 
 
 Baths both simple and medicated are used. Here for the first 
 time in an asylum I saw the vapor bath. Cold water is employed 
 in the neuroses of headache, tic-douloureux, sciatica, sleeplessness, 
 hypochondria, hysteria, and general atony. The flexible hose is also 
 used, as I saw it afterwards at Berlin, Illenau, and other places, for 
 applying either the douche or shower affusions upon the head, when 
 the patient is in the warm or the tepid bath. 
 
 Proceeding from Hanover to Halle and Berlin, Dr. Earle 
 noticed that clinical lectures to medical students had long been 
 given in Dr. Ideler's Charity Hospital at Berlin and for a few 
 years at Halle. He afterwards found clinics at Prague, but 
 
lyo IN PRUSSIA AND SAXONY 
 
 not in Vienna, where, however, they were introduced soon after 
 by Dr. Riedel, of Prague, when transferred to the new hospital 
 in Vienna, among the Hlacs and shrubbery of the suburb, where 
 I visited it in 1893. At Berlin he missed seeing Dr. Ideler, 
 but went through the Charity Hospital with the assistant phy- 
 sicians, and was impressed with the truly Prussian discipline, 
 the men-patients all wearing uniform, — a morning gown and 
 striped trousers, — and all rising to salute the staff as they 
 entered the ward. Great stress was laid on baths, and great 
 use made of straps for restraint, particularly bed-straps. Chlo- 
 roform had become a frequent soporific ; and tartar emetic was 
 used for an external irritant, as at Dr. Jacobi's in Siegburg. 
 
 It was not till he reached Sonnenstein, in the kingdom of 
 Saxony, ten miles above Dresden, on the Elbe, that Dr. Earle 
 became really enthusiastic in praise of a German asylum. 
 This one was opened in 181 1, and was the first of the well- 
 organized curative hospitals in any German land ; so success- 
 fully conducted, too, that its reputation rose high, and it served 
 as a model for other States and countries. Its buildings were 
 antiquated, and in some respects inconvenient, but the spirit 
 and discipline of the establishment very satisfactory. Dr. Earle 
 says : — 
 
 I have rarely passed four hours more agreeably and usefully than 
 when I accompanied Dr. Klotz in his morning walk through the 
 establishment. Everything was in good order, bearing unmistakable 
 evidence of industry, system, discipline, and an ever-watchful super- 
 vision. The patients, if seated, rose as we entered the room. They 
 were all well dressed. This has been the case in all the German 
 asylums I have visited, — this was the ninth, — for I have not seen even 
 one patient whose clothes were ragged or patched. At Sonnenstein 
 a high estimate is placed on the curative influence of labor. Some 
 of the men work on the grounds of the institution ; others, with an 
 attendant, upon the neighboring farms. There are workshops for 
 tailors, shoemakers, and some other artisans. Absolute coercion is 
 never resorted to ; but the deprivation and granting of privileges, 
 and even pecuniary recompense, are inducements. Something more 
 than $50 is annually appropriated for these rewards. The purely 
 medical treatment is restricted, as much as possible, to a few simple 
 
1849-1853 171 
 
 remedies, as rhubarb, senna, and saline cathartics. The hope of 
 cure is based on suitable diet, regularity of hours, discipline, exer- 
 cise, amusements, and the other means of moral treatment. Some 
 use is made of baths. In ordinary forms of insanity venesection is 
 never practised. Even local bleeding is rarely prescribed. Ether 
 and chloroform have been tried, but without beneficial results. For 
 262 patients there are 3 medical officers, — Dr. Pienitz, the director 
 (a pupil of Pinel), Dr. Klotz, and Dr. Lessing. Dr. Pienitz has 
 had a number of young physicians under his tuition at Pirna 
 (Sonnenstein), among them Dr. Martini, now at Leubus ; Dr. Roller, 
 at Illenau ; Dr. Flemming, of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; Dr. Jessen, 
 of Schleswig; and Dr. Marcher, of the Royal Danish Asylum at 
 Copenhagen. Dr. Pienitz has been knighted and made Aulic Coun- 
 sellor ; Dr. Martini, Health Counsellor; and Drs. Flemming and 
 Roller, Medical Counsellors, — all titles of much honor. In this 
 kingdom of Saxony the directors of asylums are not merely experts, 
 but judge and jury, so far as insanity is concerned. Their opinion 
 given to the supreme courts is decisive. 
 
 Here, then, the American visitor had found a state of things 
 long desired by him, but never yet attained in the United 
 States. On the other hand, he had never found the asylum 
 buildings satisfactory. They were mostly old and ill-adapted to 
 their final use, though of good example, sometimes, for spa- 
 ciousness. At Illenau, opened in 1842 under Dr. Roller, the 
 pupil of Pienitz, Dr. Earle found buildings specially designed 
 for the insane, as most of our asylums had been. This asylum 
 is in quite another part of Germany from Sonnenstein, near the 
 village of Achern, in the Rhine valley, between Baden-Baden 
 and Strasbourg, and was built for 400 patients. It takes its 
 name from the river 111, a tributary of the Rhine, and was built 
 upon plans of Dr. Roller, to receive the patients of Baden from 
 the old and inadequate asylums of Heidelberg and Pforzheim. 
 Consequently, it received from those two asylums more than 
 250 incurables, so that it could show, at the end of four years, 
 only III cures among nearly 700 patients, while the deaths had 
 been Ty. Its classification of patients was very good, for its 
 period, having been so constructed as to receive ten classes 
 of each sex, — as many as the Danvers Hospital was built for. 
 
172 DR. MARTIXI S ASYLUM AT LEUBUS 
 
 a whole generation later. It had in 1849 one attendant to 
 every five patients, and a medical officer for every 108 patients. 
 Its farm was small (43 acres), and less stress was put upon work 
 than in several of the German asylums. 
 
 Much smaller was the asylum at Leubus, in Silesia, where 
 Dr. Earle found another pupil of Dr. Pienitz, Dr. Moritz 
 Martini, who had been in charge from the opening of the 
 asylum in 1830. In that time he had treated more than 1,500 
 patients; but, of 1,390 of them who had been discharged up to 
 1847, less than half (650) were cured, while more than a sixth 
 (237) had died. Among 150 patients found there by Dr. 
 Earle, 120 were paupers ; but for these eighteen attendants and 
 supervisors were employed, — more than one to every seven 
 patients, — a larger proportion of sane persons than is usually 
 found among the insane poor in our modern asylums. These 
 paupers were clad in uniform, and did much work, both on the 
 little farm of thirty acres and in workshops for weaving, tailor- 
 ing, cabinet-making, carpentry, and shoemaking. One lesson 
 was there learned, which Dr. Earle afterwards put in strict 
 practice at Northampton, where there had been great need of 
 such economy: — 
 
 No supplies, even of a handkerchief, a shoe-string, a broom, or an 
 ounce of salt, can be obtained without an order from the proper 
 officer. If a garment be torn or worn so as to make a new one 
 necessary, or if any article has become unfit for use, these must be 
 produced as evidences. A regular account of debits and credits is 
 kept between the various departments ; and thus unnecessary con- 
 sumption, carelessness, and " sequestration " are guarded against. 
 No institution can ever attain that perfection of good order which is 
 a chief beauty in a piablic or a private establishment without such a 
 system.* 
 
 * Upon his third visit to Europe, in 1871, Dr. Earle made an effort to find Dr. Martini, who was 
 still active in the specialty, though it was forty-one years since he began his labors at Leubus, and 
 almost half a century since he was the pupil of Dr. Pienitz, at Sonnenstein. They failed to meet for 
 a reason which is given in the following most interesting letter from the old alienist; — 
 
 ''Dresden, July 29, 1871. 
 
 " My very dear Colleagiu,— I reached Dresden with my wife the very day that you had set out 
 for Prague; and your letter, dated the 25th, which you had sent to Leubus, only reached me this day. 
 I hasten to thank you for it. It is a precious souvenir for us all, which makes us regret all the more 
 that we could not meet you again, and express to you the affectionate feeling we all cherish for you in 
 
1849-1853 173 
 
 At Brieg and Plagowitz there were asylums for the incurables 
 of Silesia, the former of which Dr. Earle visited, without admir- 
 ing its arrangements. In the three provincial establishments 
 fifty years ago there were about 400 patients, and at Breslau 
 some 30 more ; that is, in four establishments 430 inmates, or 
 less than are now usually kept in one of our American public 
 asylums. Silesia at the time had some 3,000 insane, and a 
 total population of perhaps 2,500,000, or about the same as 
 Massachusetts in 1895. 
 
 Finding himself so near Austria, Dr. Earle proceeded next 
 to the gay capital of that empire, and visited the unique Nar- 
 renthurm (" Maniacs' Tower "), built in 1783-84 by Joseph II. 
 for a mad-house of the old order. Dr. Viszanik, its director, 
 told his visitor it was the first institution in Europe which, 
 from its foundation, was intended exclusively for the insane ; 
 most of the older mad-houses being originally either hospitals 
 for the sick, like the English Bedlam, or poorhouses diverted 
 
 our hearts. Since your visit to Leubus a score of years lias slipped away." (In fact, twenty-two 
 years.) "In that period, characterized by every sort of revolution, political, moral, and religious, in 
 the midst of fearful events, and directed by ideas that have overturned the old order of things- and of 
 principles, I have withdrawn into the circle of my family, and the solitude which I have dwelt in for 
 five-and-forty years ; and I practise there the duties imposed on me by humanity's service, but aided 
 by my dear wife, my auxiliary angel, who has made me forget that text of Matthew's Gospel, ' Arcta 
 via est qus ducit ad vitam.' 
 
 " Fanny married a Herr von Klitzing, proprietor of the estate of Lobetinz (Kreis Neumarkt, 
 Schlesien). She has five children, two sons and three daughters. The eldest, named John, is seven- 
 teen, and sits already in the second class at the high school of Tasser. Three girls come next, — Ella, 
 sixteen ; Fanny, fourteen ; and Catharine, twelve. The younger son, nine years old, bears the name 
 of his grandfather, Moritz. He is a fine lad, full of talents, and with much esprit. May the good God 
 hold over him a protecting hand ! " 
 
 (Up to this point the letter is in fairly good French ; but Dr. Moritz Martini here says, " The 
 French language bothers me {me gefie). Permit me to finish this letter making use of my mother 
 tongue," and continues in German.) 
 
 " Fanny, my only child, has brought up her children admirably. She has the good fortune that 
 all her children are healthy, strong, and well formed, mentally gifted, and good-natured. This com- 
 pensates her for many deprivations which life on a country estate brings with it. Her short distance 
 from us (four miles) makes it possible that we see her often. This now is a favor of fortune for 
 which, at my age of seventy-six years, I cannot thank God enough. The coming May I celebrate 
 my fifty years' jubilee as Doctor Medicus. Should I live beyond that, it is my thought to retire to 
 private life then, and to revise and arrange my Memorabilia. 
 
 "So much about us, who wish you the best fortune for your journey, and with the heartiest 
 greeting commend ourselves to your future remembrance. 
 
 " In true friendship. 
 
 Your respectful Colleague, Dr. Martini. 
 
 " My wife desires the warmest regards." 
 
 This touch of German sentiment indicates the affection which the kind-hearted American tourist 
 inspired wherever he went. He was as welcome to the German alienists as to the English Quakers 
 and the people of Southern Europe. 
 
174 THE BABEL-TOWER OF VIENNA 
 
 to the special restraint of the dangerous insane. The Vienna 
 tower was five stories high, cylindrical, but enclosing a central 
 area, and containing twenty-eight rooms on each floor, except 
 the lower one, which had twenty-seven. The rooms for the 
 insane were along the external wall, entered through a keeper's 
 room, which was the only one on each floor that opened on the 
 stair-landing. The rooms were large ; and many of them had 
 rings and staples, as in the old prisons, for chaining the inmates. 
 In these 139 tower-rooms were formerly kept more than 200 
 insane persons ; and, as described by an English visitor in 1843, 
 it resembled the ancient bedlam more than the modern asylum. 
 He portrayed it as 
 
 A wretched, filthy prison, close and ill-ventilated, its smell over- 
 powering, and the sight of its patients — frantic, chained, and many 
 of them naked — disgusting to the visitor. ... A crowd of country- 
 folk, many of them women, were conducted through the corridors 
 along with me, as a mere matter of curiosity, or as one would go to 
 see a collection of wild beasts. 
 
 Some such spectacle was that seen by Dr. Earle at Con- 
 stantinople, ten years before ; but, when he reached Vienna, 
 this state of things had ceased. Other buildings had been 
 used for the overflow of patients; and, though the faults of con- 
 struction in the old tower were evident, something had been 
 done to correct them. 
 
 The apartments were decently clean, most of them commendably 
 so ; and the patients were neither ragged, filthy, nor in chains. In 
 the upper stories partitions had been removed, so as to unite several 
 rooms in one, for associated dormitories. There was a workshop for 
 making chair-seats and straw mats, and another for paper or paste- 
 board boxes, a large assortment of these being ready for market. 
 But many defects still existed. At dinner time no table was spread, 
 for the very good reason that there was none to spread, and no room 
 for one large enough. The food was brought into the corridor and 
 distributed. Each patient then made himself as comfortable as he 
 could, standing, sitting, or lying, with his dish in his hand, in his lap, 
 or on the floor. 
 
1849-1853 175 
 
 To this description Dr. Earle adds that Dr. Viszanik reported 
 the most brilliant results from trying the cold-water cure on his 
 patients since 1841, "one-third of the patients having been 
 treated with no other medication than cold water, even in the 
 most difficult and compHcated cases." As there were 360 
 patients in 1849, ^^^ nearly 500 in course of a year, this must 
 have meant that 150 a year had been treated by hydropathy, 
 then in its greatest favor; and Dr. Viszanik boasted as many 
 cures as other superintendents. Indeed, the statistics of the 
 Narrenthurm for sixty years seemed to show as many recover- 
 ies as have been made in much better surroundings. Thus 
 from 1784 to 1843, 14,761 cases were admitted, more than 
 13,000 of them in this Babel-tower, as Dr. Earle styles it; and 
 the number of cures was reported as 6,949, nearly one-half of 
 all the cases, while only 3,468 had died. In the rooms of the 
 Vienna General Hospital, where, since 1828, 1,485 insane per- 
 sons were registered (included in the total count above), a 
 still more gratifying recovery rate was reported; for 1,058, or 
 71 per cent., had recovered in fifteen years, and only 142, or 
 less than 10 per cent., had died. Unfortunately, Dr. Earle 
 adds in a note, " Dr. Flemming asserts that the great number 
 of cures chiefly arose from the fact that all cases of delirium 
 tremens and many of febrile delirium admitted into the Gen- 
 eral Hospital were immediately transferred to the insane 
 asylum." Upon these a cold-water treatment would naturally 
 produce a speedy cure.* 
 
 The population of Vienna in 1849 was 422,000. In 1893, 
 when I visited its insane asylums, there were more than 850,000 ; 
 that is, the inhabitants had doubled in forty-four years. But 
 there was a still greater change in the insane enumeration. 
 Dr. Viszanik then received some 500 new admissions a year, 
 and closed the year with about 350 patients. His successors 
 began the year 1892 with nearly 900 patients, received during 
 the year more than 1,000, and among all these cases made but 
 300 recoveries, with more than 200 deaths. That is, the 
 recovery rate had fallen from 48 per cent, to about 16 ; while 
 
 * Dr. Earle had information similar to this from one of the successors of an American superintend - 
 ent, who had this same suspicious abundance of recoveries in a hospital serving a great city, — delirium 
 tremens figuring in hundreds of his cases entered as " insane." 
 
176 AUSTRIAN ASYLUMS 
 
 the death-rate, computed on the whole number, was less than 
 10 per cent. From 1784 to 1843, according to the figures, 
 the death-rate, reckoned in the same way, exceeded 20 percent. 
 The Narrenthurm had long since disappeared or been con- 
 verted to better uses ; and the halls of the present asylum, 
 though overcrowded, like most of the Viennese charities, have 
 witnessed some of the most skilful scientific treatment of 
 insanity, and the most enlightened clinical exposition of its 
 nature and varieties. As the recovery rate has fallen in about 
 the same ratio that scientific knowledge of the malady has 
 risen, we must suppose that much formerly deemed cure was 
 fallacious, and either wholly imaginary or followed by speedy 
 relapses. 
 
 Dr. Riedel, of Prague, who soon took charge of the newer 
 asylum at Vienna (about 1852), was not visited in his Bohemian 
 asylum by Dr. Earle, who reported it favorably by the testimony 
 of others. But he went on from Vienna to the Tyrol, and 
 there, near Innspruck, was received at Hall by Dr. Tschallener, 
 who had been director of a small Tyrolese asylum in a disused 
 monastery for fifteen years. Hall is six miles below Innspruck, 
 on the river Inn ; and the asylum was on the foot-hills of the 
 Salzberg Alps, 7,000 feet in height. It overlooked from its 
 lower elevation "fertile meadows luxuriant with grain, grass, 
 and Indian corn, and interspersed with peasant houses of a 
 Swiss-like architecture, which add a charm of novelty, with a 
 tincture of romance, to the scene." The valley is indeed an 
 extension of Switzerland. 
 
 Hall itself is a small city, not much larger than Concord in 
 Massachusetts ; and the whole of Austrian Tyrol has less than 
 900,000 inhabitants, — served in 1849-50 by two small asylums 
 for the insane, that in Hall containing 100, and that in Trient, 
 near Italy, less than 50. Thus a population larger than that of 
 New Hampshire and Vermont had less than 150 insane in 
 asylums ; while those two New England States at the same 
 date (having then 600,000 people) had more than 400 insane in 
 their two asylums. Indeed, Dr. Tschallener had treated in his 
 asylum in fifteen years less than 400 patients, or no more than 
 Dr. Rockwell at Brattleboro, Vt., was then treating in a single 
 
1849-1853 177 
 
 year. His cures in that time among the Tyrolese were about 
 130, while the deaths exceeded 60. In this small asylum there 
 were schools for the patients and pecuniary rewards for labor 
 done by them. Suicides were treated in a peculiar manner : a 
 large sack containing the patient who was suicidal was hoisted , 
 nearly to the ceiling, so that he could neither escape nor do 
 himself harm. The director gave this account of his discipline : 
 "To the good-humored patients I am good-humored, to the 
 rude unceremonious, to the proud haughty, to the submissive 
 affable, to the peaceable yielding, to the quarrelsome repellent, 
 and to the well-mannered indulgent. Of the simple I am 
 watchful, and of the crafty cautious. He who does not obey 
 voluntarily must be made to obey." Dr. Earle adds : — 
 
 With the disobedient he is patient and long-suffering ; but he 
 assumes that, with rare exceptions, the insane can behave properly 
 if they will. Obedience granted, he then spares no trouble in minis- 
 tering to their enjoyment. He grants all appropriate privileges, 
 assists in their instruction, accompanies them to parties, gives musi- 
 cal soirees for them in his own apartments, and encourages them in 
 labor by pecuniary recompense. Some patients have gone away 
 with as much as $15 thus acquired. 
 
 At Hall Dr. Earle saw the German Zwangstuhl, or " tran- 
 quillizing chair"; and, returning northward to Munich, he 
 found a still worse form of this instrument of torture in use at 
 Giesing, the city asylum of Munich, with but 40 patients, the 
 whole number in all the asylums of Bavaria being then some 
 700. The population of the kingdom was about 4,500,000. It 
 is now 6,000,000 ; and Munich has grown into a large city, with 
 a much larger asylum, built in 1859, and containing, when I 
 visited it in 1893, 600 patients, ox fifteen times as many as Dr. 
 Earle found there. Only some 350 of them, however, belonged 
 to the city of Munich, which then contained 260,000 people as 
 against 100,000 in 1850. There are now ten public asylums in 
 Bavaria and several private ones, the whole number of patients 
 in them now exceeding 5,000, of which number more than 
 1,000 are in Upper Bavaria, with its two public asylums of 
 
lyS RESTRAINT AND PARESIS IN GERMAN ASYLUMS 
 
 Munich and Gabersee. But to return to Dr. Earle. Of Giesing 
 he says : — 
 
 The implements of restraint for Munich are the strait-jacket 
 and the chair. It is of strong plank, put together in the simplest 
 possible form. The sides project farther forward than the patient's 
 body, when seated ; and, from the knees downward, they extend be- 
 yond the feet. Being seated, a door is closed in front of his feet 
 and legs, a lid closed over the thighs, and a board, fitted into grooves, 
 is slipped down in front of the head and body, the head alone being 
 visible to the bystander. To complete his felicity, two blocks of 
 strong wood project over his shoulders, and prevent any attempt to 
 rise. I have seen the insane of the Timar-hane at Constantinople 
 in chains, and I have seen patients in various countries confined in 
 the " tranquillizing chair " ; and I assert that, so far as restraint is 
 concerned, the condition of the Turks was the most comfortable, or, 
 rather, the least fearful, the most desirable. 
 
 Time, which has so much multiplied the poor insane of 
 Munich, has long since relieved them of the tortures of this 
 detestable chair ; and I found the condition of the 600 patients 
 at Munich's Kreis-Irren-Anstalt fairly good in May, 1893. 
 A much better asylum was that of Gabersee, in the Bavarian 
 Oberland, some sixty miles north-east of Munich, vi^ith 300 
 patients in detached houses, — something after the plan of 
 Alt-Scherbitz in Saxony. But one painful circumstance should 
 be mentioned at the Munich asylum, — its enormous number of 
 paretics. When Dr. Earle was in Germany, general paralysis 
 was a new disease in America, and almost unknown in Ireland 
 and other rural regions. As he went from asylum to asylum, 
 he usually asked if any paretics had been treated there, and if 
 any recovered. The answers were various, but the whole num- 
 ber of cases was small in all Germany. But the intelligent 
 young assistant physician who escorted me through the long 
 corridors at Munich told me that, of his 600 patients, 150, or a 
 fourth, were paretics (120 men and 30 women) ; and, of the 270 
 patients admitted the year before, 61, or more than 20 per cent., 
 were paretics. I do not recall so large a proportion anywhere 
 else. 
 
1S49-1853 179 
 
 Dr. Earle's latest visits were made to Winnenthal, near 
 Stuttgard, Illenau (already described), and Stephansfeld, in 
 Alsace, near Strasbourg, — the last named not in Germany in 
 1849, t)ut added by reconquest in 1870. At Winnenthal he 
 met Dr. Zeller, from whom he quotes freely, and saw less 
 restraint there than in any German asylum. It was then 
 a small establishment, with but few more than 100 inmates ; 
 and its system of labor and amusement was very similar to that 
 elsewhere, with larger numbers. At Stephansfeld, however, as 
 at Sonnenstein, Dr. Earle allows himself the luxury of praising 
 what he sees. It was a large asylum, comparatively, for there 
 were 377 patients ; and its industries were well organized. 
 Several of its peculiarities were striking at that time, and he 
 says : — 
 
 A remarkable feature is that none of the windows, except in the 
 small department for the furious (and there they are not glazed), are 
 in any way protected internally or externally. They differ from the 
 ordinary French window only in having the turn-latch, when closed, 
 moved by a tube-key carried by the attendant, and that a few of the 
 sashes are iron. Of more than fifty public institutions for the insane 
 which I have visited, no other is so exempt from what is generally 
 considered necessary. 
 
 Further on he says : — 
 
 Manual labor has here a development surpassing anything of the 
 kind known. Besides the numerous workshops where the patients 
 can be useful, and exercise the trades of cabinet-making, shoemaking, 
 weaving, painting, trough-making, coopering, book-binding, etc., the 
 farm has been extended by bringing a hundred acres of land under 
 cultivation.* The asylum bears the aspect of a farm colony rather 
 than a hospital, the women even being at work weeding the fields, as 
 well as spinning, sewing, laundry work, etc. The number of patients 
 daily employed generally exceeds 180, or almost half the total num- 
 ber. A daily record of this labor has been kept for years, and in 
 
 *Dr. Paetz, in his volume of 1893, already cited, says that in 1878 the Stephansfeld asylum, hav- 
 ing added a department at Hoerdt, extended still farther the open-door and colony system, thus indi- 
 cating that the essential character of the establishment remained unchanged by the German occupation 
 of Alsace in 1870. Indeed, this was from the first of a German rather than a French nature; for the 
 improvements specified began in Germany. 
 
l8o GERMAN ASYLUMS, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 1844 the money payments to patients for work were nearly 8,000 
 francs ($1,600). A portion of this is given to them, the rest reserved 
 till they recover or are otherwise discharged. Since 1842 schools 
 are established for men and for women, the latter under a Sister of 
 Charity. The number of patients in both is sometimes almost 100, 
 or a fourth of the population. Their tranquillity, diligence, and 
 good behavior in the schools is praised by Dr. Roederer, the director. 
 They are taught the common branches, and also history, translation, 
 drawing, and music. Five years ago (May i, 1844) 220 patients, or 
 more than two-thirds of all, made an excursion to a neighboring 
 wood, lasting more than three hours, in great order and quiet. 
 
 Although he visited but 17 German asylums in 1849, Dr. 
 Earle briefly described in his book 39 more, making up his 
 account of them from their reports, from German volumes, and 
 from articles in the German Zeitschrift filr PsycJiiatrie and 
 the French Annates Medico-Psychologiqnes. He also gave 
 a general historical sketch of the German asylums, and quoted 
 freely from the writings of eminent German alienists. Hardly 
 had his book come out, in 1853, when he received a work of 
 Dr. Heinrich Laehr, one of Dr. Damerow's assistants, in which 
 a list was given of all the German asylums in 1852 to the num- 
 ber of 91 public asylums and 20 private ones. This list Dr. 
 Earle inserted in his volume at the end. It is incorrect in 
 some particulars and defective in others, but was then by far 
 the fullest statistical account of the German asylums which had 
 appeared in America. Dr. Laehr republished his list in 1891, 
 bringing it down to include the year 1890; and at that time 
 the German asylums had increased to 222, — most of them 
 much larger than in 1852, — and contained 56,234 patients, — an 
 average of 253 in each. In 1852 the whole number of patients 
 in III asylums was about 11,000, — an average in each of less 
 than 100. The Austrian asylums were included in Laehr's 
 first list, and perhaps in that of 1891 ; but in Austria alone 
 there are more asylum inmates now than were found in all the 
 German-speaking countries in 1852, — that is, more than 12,000. 
 This may serve to show how insanity has been increasing in 
 the regions visited by Dr. Earle — as in all civilized countries — 
 
1849-1853 i8i 
 
 far beyond the gain in population, which has also been con- 
 siderable, especially in the German Empire of to-day. 
 
 Dr. Earle did not enter Hungary in 1849, for it was still in a 
 state of war; but it then had few asylums. In May, 1893, I 
 visited the largest of the Hungarian asylums, at the old capital 
 of Buda, across the Danube from Pesth, which now, united 
 with Buda under the joint name of Buda-Pesth, is the capital of 
 the Austrian emperor's kingdom of Hungary. The Buda-Pesth 
 asylum was opened in 1850, at the close of the civil war. It 
 stands on a high hill, far above the old fortress-ridge of Buda, 
 beside the Danube, and is surrounded by pleasant hills and 
 valleys, which on the nth of May, the date of my visit, were 
 blooming with spring flowers or covered with verdant trees and 
 shrubs. The farm is large and well cultivated by the labor of 
 the patients, who then numbered 800, including 50 of the 
 criminal insane sent there for treatment. The director was 
 Dr. Niedermann, first appointed in 1870, with seven medical 
 assistants, giving one medical officer for every hundred pa- 
 tients. The inmates were equally divided as to sex; but the 
 old building was crowded and architecturally faulty, so that a 
 new asylum for the more violent cases — here quite numerous — 
 was then building elsewhere. The asylum is intended for the 
 whole Comitat of Buda, including the city of Pesth and much 
 surrounding country. There is another Hungarian asylum at 
 Presbourg, where in 1893 abuses had been discovered and were 
 under investigation, in consequence of the death of a patient in 
 his bath. 
 
 In accord with the practice of Dr. Earle, I inquired of Dr. 
 Niedermann the number of his paretic cases, and was rather 
 surprised at his answers. He then had 176 such cases among 
 his 800 patients, more than one-fifth of the whole count. Of 
 these, 160 were men and 16 women, — a fact which perhaps ac- 
 counts for the excess of deaths over recoveries in a year, — 130 
 recoveries and 200 deaths. Reminding Dr. Niedermann that 
 his Austrian and German colleagues were inclined to attribute 
 general paralysis in all cases to syphilis, I was told by him that 
 such a theory was baseless, that in his asylum not half the pare- 
 tic cases could be ascribed to that cause, even as co-operative. 
 
l82 INSANITY IN HUNGARY AND GERMANY 
 
 As the reports of his institution are only printed in Hungarian 
 (not in German, as formerly), I could not review his statistics 
 historically; but he must have been receiving some 400 pa- 
 tients annually, and the increase of insanity in Hungary, with 
 its population of 16,000,000, must be nearly as fast as in the 
 German parts of the Austrian Empire, though perhaps not so 
 fast as among the Bohemians. 
 
 It is evident that between 1838, when Dr. Earle inspected 
 some of the English, French, Dutch, and Italian asylums, and 
 1849, when he made his careful study of those in Germany and 
 Austria, his faith in the "cures " of the insane reported by his 
 professional brethren had lessened perceptibly ; and the care- 
 ful statistics of Dr. Jacobi, at Siegburg, must have had some- 
 thing to do with this scepticism, which later developed into 
 a complete disbelief of the much-paraded figures of American 
 asylums. Of the 661 patients reported cured at Siegburg 
 from 1825 to 1845 (nearly half of the whole number), 322 had 
 not relapsed in the twenty years, and were still living; but 
 259 had relapsed, several more than once, and only 68 had died 
 without a relapse. As the number who had died in a relapse 
 was almost as many (57), it was plain to Dr. Earle that the 
 state of "cure" was a very unstable one; and the subsequent 
 researches of many experts have confirmed this view. But, 
 when he visited the Utrecht asylum in Holland (July, 1838), 
 then under the visitation of Van der Kolk, the Dutch reformer 
 of asylums, he was quite ready to accept the estimate of its 
 physician, that 40 per cent, of the admissions recovered. It 
 was small (94 inmates in 1838), and had not much enlarged 
 fifteen years later, when Dr. Earle's friend. Dr. Hack Tuke, 
 inspected it, while on his wedding tour, in the autumn of 1853 ; 
 for he found but 127 inmates. In reporting its statistics then, 
 Dr. Tuke observed (after quoting the 40 per cent, of recov- 
 eries before 1838), "It is singular that from 1844 to 185 1 the 
 proportion of cures to admissions is considerably less than 
 from 1832 to 1837 inclusive." In fact, the percentage had 
 fallen to 30, and no doubt has grown smaller since.* 
 
 • See a rare pamphlet, " The Asylums of Holland, their Past and Present Condition. By Daniel 
 H. Tuke, M.D. From the Psyckologicaljo7trnat, July i, 1854." When I last saw Dr. Tuke, in 
 
1849-1853 i83 
 
 The great question of separation between the curable and in- 
 curable insane naturally springs from a discovery of the fact 
 (which Dr. Earle seems to have fully learned only in Germany) 
 that less than half the insane can be cured, so as to remain 
 well, and that, consequently, the uncured, and practically in- 
 curable, will accumulate in asylums to the detriment of the 
 curable. Hence, as the result of all his observations. Dr. Earle 
 said in this volume of 1853, what he afterwards repeated, that 
 the true method for hospitals, such as we were then beginning 
 to have in America, as distinguished from mere asylums, is 
 this : — 
 
 Let no institution have more than 200 patients, and let all receive 
 both curables and incurables, in the natural proportion for the ad- 
 mission of the two classes, from the respective districts in which they 
 are located. 
 
 From this position he never varied, and only yielded to a 
 supposed necessity in allowing that larger hospitals might serve 
 some useful purpose ; but, of course, he foresaw that what he had 
 witnessed in Siegburg and other curative establishments in Ger- 
 many would sooner or later occur in the American hospitals, — 
 that is, that the uncured would accumulate, and must either 
 be sent to another place or allowed to hamper the proper work 
 of a hospital. He therefore summarized the argument of Dr. 
 Zeller, of Winnenthal, in favor of separate asylums for the older 
 incurables ; and this is one of the most instructive parts of the 
 volume. He says : — 
 
 It is true that two separate establishments are more expensive than 
 one large enough to accommodate the same number of patients ; but 
 this cost, being subordinate to the welfare of the insane, should be 
 overlooked, since the advantages of institutions independent of each 
 other are more than sufficient to counterbalance the extra expense. 
 
 July, 1893, he lent me this brochure, saying it was his only loose copy, and he might wish to reclaim 
 it. In case he did not, I was to keep it. He also then informed me it was the result of observa- 
 tions made in Holland when on his bridal journey. I had just come from the great asylum of Meer- 
 emberg, which had grown from the 400 inmates whom he found there forty years before to the 1,300 
 seen by me ; and he was much interested in my account of the improvements there, the latest being 
 the care of the male patients by women nurses, under the oversight of Mrs. Van Deventer, the able 
 wife of the director, Dr. Van Deventer. As Dr. Tuke died without reclaiming his pamphlet, I keep 
 it among my valuable possessions. 
 
184 THE STUDY OF INSANITY IN AMERICA 
 
 The spheres of the two institutions (asylum and hospital) are very- 
 different. They are specialties, and can be better conducted by two 
 persons than one. The accumulation of many insane in one estab- 
 lishment, or in the same vicinity, has an unfavorable influence. In 
 asylums for the incurable, various handicrafts may be regularly and 
 systematically pursued. These cannot be prosecuted among curables, 
 because, almost as soon as the patients begin to work, they are 
 discharged. The sight of so many incurables would act unfavorably 
 upon the curable patients. With a patient who, after long residence 
 in one establishment, has been pronounced incurable, a change of 
 scene by his removal to another, the placing of him under care of 
 another physician, and all the new relations, etc., will be the most 
 likely, of all possible means, to effect a cure. If the two institutions 
 be separate, many will be taken from their homes to the curative 
 hospital who might otherwise go to the asylum for incurables. 
 
 Another point in which Dr. Earle learned much, and sought 
 to improve his countrymen by imparting what he had learned, 
 regards the instruction of medical students in mental disorders. 
 Here he was very clear and emphatic ; yet, after the lapse of 
 nearly fifty years, we are still as far from perfection (to use his 
 own phrase) as the Germans were in 1849. They were then, 
 as they are now, far in advance of us and of most nations in 
 this matter. Dr. Earle said : — 
 
 It is safe to say that not one in forty of the graduates of our 
 medical schools has ever read a treatise upon diseases of the mind. 
 The subject of insanity does not enter into the programme of 
 lectures in any of our leading medical schools. In Germany it has 
 long been otherwise. Reil, so long ago as 1803, advised that suit- 
 able persons should be selected from the medical students and placed 
 in the asylums, where, while learning the peculiar art, they might 
 assist in treating the patients. Dr. Roller proposes to take six 
 physicians, immediately after they have completed their other medical 
 studies, into the Illenau asylum as internes, and, after they have re- 
 mained a certain time, exchange them for six more, until all the 
 medical graduates in Baden shall have had this opportunity. A 
 similar practice is pursued at the Charity Hospital in Berlin. A 
 professorship of " psychiatry " (the first) was established in the 
 
1849-1853 i85 
 
 University of Leipzig in 181 1, and long filled by Heinroth. Others 
 have since been founded, and clinical instruction is given at Berlin 
 by Dr. Ideler, at Prague by Dr. Riedel, now at Vienna, and by 
 Damerow at Halle, and others. 
 
 It is only within the last few years, and by no means univer- 
 sally, that the American medical schools have followed the 
 example of these German leaders in teaching the treatment of 
 insanity to medical students. A singular indifference, even 
 aversion, exists in some learned minds still to taking the need- 
 ful means for giving this indispensable instruction. In the 
 year 1879, when the late Governor Talbot of Massachusetts 
 signalized his single year of State administration by securing 
 more reforms in the charitable establishments than have been 
 carried in any three years before or since, I had occasion to 
 call on the late Dr. O. W. Holmes, medical lecturer and poet, 
 to consult him about the feasibility of instructing his medical 
 students at the Harvard School in Boston in mental maladies, 
 and particularly as to clinical lectures in some insane hospital 
 in or near Boston. Dr. Holmes was genial and witty, as always, 
 — agreed that instruction was much needed, and wished it might 
 be given, — but had nothing special to suggest by which it could 
 be bettered. When I suggested clinical lectures, he demurred : 
 they might be indispensable, but think of the effect on the 
 patients ! and he quoted Martial's epigram, — 
 
 Languebam ; sed tu comitatus protinus ad me 
 
 Venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis ; 
 Centum me tetigere manus, Aquilone gelatae. 
 
 Non habui febrem, Symmache : nunc habeo. 
 
 I ailed : 'twas naught ; but, Doctor, yoti came at me, 
 A hundred students clattering in your train ; 
 
 A hundred hands, colder than ice, did pat me. 
 I had no fever : now I feel its pain. 
 
 He left me to draw my own inference, after making my own 
 translation, which I have done above. 
 
 Nor has instruction in mental maladies yet been better 
 organized anywhere in Massachusetts than in the comparatively 
 
l86 THE STUDY OF INSANITY IN AMERICA 
 
 recent Homoeopathic Hospital for the Insane at Westboro, 
 thirty-three miles from Boston, to which a class of students 
 make the long journey weekly in the winter months ; unless 
 it be in the old and wealthy Worcester Hospital, where for 
 medical graduates, four in number, clinical and class instruction 
 as internes is given by an accomplished Swiss alienist, Dr. 
 Adolf Meyer. This is carrying out on a smaller scale what 
 Dr. Roller planned for the duchy of Baden so many years 
 ago. 
 
 Dr. Earle's account of the German asylums, after appearing 
 serially in the American Journal of Insanity at Utica, N.Y. 
 (which he aided in founding), had some circulation as a separate 
 work ; but it was not widely read, and probably brought the 
 author more renown in Europe than at home. It was in 
 advance of the times ; and the paradox was seen, as so often 
 before and since, of the physician best fitted to carry on a 
 hospital for the insane, unable to obtain preferment in his own 
 land, before younger and less gifted but more pushing men, 
 to whose unscientific direction many of the new and costly 
 American asylums fell, in the decade following Dr. Earle's 
 return from his second European tour. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BIDING HIS TIME. 
 
 On the day that Dr. Earle landed in New York from his 
 German tour, his mother died at the old home at Leicester, 
 where the settlement of the family estate and other matters 
 detained him until the latter part of 1852, — not always in the 
 firmest health, but performing much intellectual labor in his 
 chosen field. He had begun for the American Journal of the 
 Medical Sciences, in 1842, a series of short reviews of the annual 
 reports of institutions for the insane, at home and abroad, 
 which came to him in great number and sometimes found in 
 him almost their only intelligent reader. He continued this 
 useful work during his whole retirement at Leicester, both from 
 1849 to 1852, and again from 1854 to 1864, — varying this rural 
 retirement with excursions to Providence, Washington, Caro- 
 lina, Cuba, etc., as he had occasion. It was probably the study 
 of the irregular and often absurd statistical array of figures and 
 percentages in these reports that convinced him how fruitless 
 the existing methods of statistical showing for insanity then 
 were; and, in particular, how far they were from indicating the 
 real facts concerning the curability of the wide-spread and fast- 
 increasing disease, which he had so long been examining, both 
 in detached cases and in the general aggregates of asylums, 
 States, and races. All this was preparation for his discovery 
 and demonstration of the true ratio of curability, and also for 
 his quarter-century of active asylum work at Northampton. 
 But it was weary waiting in some of these inactive years before 
 1864 ; and Dr. Earle bided his time with some impatience and 
 not without days and months of despondency. He lived at 
 Leicester, in a small house, with no display, and amid humble 
 duties of one sort or another. His age was greater than that of 
 Montaigne when that Gascon sage retired to his chateau to 
 spend a calm life among his books ; nor was he so resigned to 
 
l88 DR. EARLE UNEMPLOYED 
 
 quiet and solitude as Montaigne, who had, for all that, as 
 great a love for travel and observation as Dr. Earle, though he 
 never journeyed so far. When he came out from this retire- 
 ment at the end of 1852, he returned to New York, opened an 
 office there for consultation, and soon became a member of the 
 Board of Visiting Physicians to the City Lunatic Asylum, then 
 at Blackwell's Island, and containing comparatively few in- 
 mates. He continued to serve on this board while resident in 
 New York, and thus became more familiar with the pauper 
 insane of a large city than his previous hospital experience had 
 required him to be. This fact renewed his observations on 
 cases of general paralysis, which he had carefully studied and 
 early reported while at the Bloomingdale Asylum, before going 
 abroad in 1849. One of his Bloomingdale cases, after a period 
 of years, appeared to have recovered, — a fact that surprised 
 M. Calmeil, when communicated by Dr. Earle to him at 
 Charenton, in 1849. At that time Calmeil (the first extensive 
 writer on this disease in France) had been for about twenty 
 years at the head of the asylum of Charenton, and had there 
 treated and observed hundreds of cases ; and he assured Dr. 
 Earle that he had never known an instance of complete 
 recovery. Occasionally his patients had improved enough to 
 go home, and now and then to resume their occupations ; but 
 in every such case the malady had resumed its fatal course. 
 Dr. Earle published a record of this recovered case in 1857, 
 having then observed it for nine years ; and it is of sufficient 
 interest to be given here in a shortened form. 
 
 Mr. X. was native and resident in one of the inland counties of 
 New York (born in 1806), of strong constitution and intellect above 
 mediocrity. He went through college and studied law, rising to some 
 eminence in that profession. He married at thirty-four, lived well, 
 and, though not intemperate, indulged freely in the luxuries of the 
 table. One of his paternal uncles had been insane, and a maternal 
 aunt melancholiac. At the age of forty-one, after the decease of a 
 child and some pecuniary troubles, he became depressed, and early 
 in 1848 had a succession of epileptiform fits. These had been pre- 
 ceded by some indications of local paralysis. His mental disease 
 
I850-I856 189 
 
 progressing, he was taken to Bloomingdale in July, 1848, then forty- 
 two years old, and much excited, restless, garrulous, incoherent, and 
 talking of pecuniary speculations which he wished to make in Wall 
 Street. His utterance was rapid, but uncertain, his pulse quickened, 
 his condition costive. This being remedied by cathartics, his excite- 
 ment subsided ; but the paralysis increased, so that in a fortnight 
 he could not walk without stipport. His " delusions of grandeur " 
 became excessive, and continued for months ; his general sensations 
 obtuse, his memory of recent events almost destroyed, his speech 
 variable, and much more imperfect on some days than on others ; 
 his hand unsteady, so that he wrote his name with difficulty, the 
 pupils of his eyes contracted, and one somewhat larger than the 
 other. By the end of September his pulse was regular at 124, and 
 he had all the usual indication of paresis, which continued through 
 October. In November, 1848, he was removed to a private asylum 
 in Flushing, where he began to amend after some months ; and dur- 
 ing the earlier half of 1849 he was discharged, recovered. Dr. 
 Macdonald, the physician, said that no special treatment had been 
 pursued, and that his recovery was due to an effort of nature. In 
 1857, ten years after his first mental symptoms were observed, he 
 was living in excellent health, physical and mental, pursuing an ex- 
 tensive and successful business ; and some years after I learned 
 that he was well, and had accumulated a good fortune. This is the 
 last intelligence received concerning him. 
 
 In 1853 Dr. Earle gave a course of lectures on insanity at 
 the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, and in 1854 
 published his treatise on " Blood-letting in Mental Disorders," 
 from which quotations have already been made. Belief in the 
 sanguinary doctrines of Rush had slowly become less general ; 
 but blood-letting by the lancet was still continued at some 
 asylums, and local superficial bleeding at more. In Dr. Earle's 
 pamphlet were condensed and classified, for analysis, com- 
 parison, or contrast, the opinions of many authors, American, 
 British, and Continental, on the value of venesection in mental 
 disease ; and to this array of authority Dr. Earle added his 
 own extensive observation and practice. Though controverted 
 angrily rather than forcibly, the treatise had an important 
 effect in confirming the sound opinion and converting the 
 
[90 
 
 DR. EARLE IX SOUTH CAROLINA 
 
 doubtful and even the unsound to his own view of the matter. 
 The lancet soon fell into utter disuse, and the scarifying and 
 cupping substitutes then followed. But in the mean time his 
 own health required him to give up active practice. He left 
 New York as a residence in 1854, and returned to Leicester, 
 where his domicile continued to be until he was chosen super- 
 intendent of the hospital at Northampton in 1864. He went 
 forth from this retirement often, to testify as an expert in cases 
 of insanity and for journeys here and there; and for a con- 
 siderable time he visited in Washington, where he was engaged 
 as an expert editor of the "Census Statistics of Insanity," taken 
 in i860. His chief task in that was the writing of an introduc- 
 tory chapter on the causes, treatment, and curability of insanity, 
 with a special history of the amelioration of the treatment of 
 the American insane up to i860. No such historical statement 
 had previously been made ; and it is doubtful if any since has 
 so fully and accurately treated the twenty-five years from 1835 
 to i860, during which Dr. Earle had personal knowledge, by 
 visits, correspondence, and conversation, of what was doing in 
 his chosen specialty. 
 
 Early in the period between 1850 and 1864, Dr. Earle visited 
 the Carolinas and Cuba (February, 1852) in company with his 
 cousin, Mrs. Marcus Spring, and her husband ; and his letters 
 of that date give interesting notes of a state of society now 
 almost as completely passed away as if centuries had intervened 
 instead of less than fifty years. Writing from Charleston, S.C, 
 Feb. I, 1852, to his sister Lucy at Leicester, he said: — 
 
 Time, 9.30 a.m.; place, the Charleston Hotel, room 156; both 
 windows open, though the room is on the north side of the house, 
 and I am just delightfully comfortable, sitting in front of one of 
 them, where the soft air comes upon me in a gentle breeze. The 
 doors and windows seen from my position are many of them open ; 
 and, did I not know to the contrary, I should suppose the season to 
 be late May or early June. I wrote you on January 28, from the 
 store of Rowland & Taft, the latter the son of Bezaleel Taft, of 
 Uxbridge, near Worcester. He is in the cotton trade, and appears 
 to have made a fortune. His wife is a beautiful Irish woman, and. 
 
1850-1856 igi 
 
 like many of the educated women of her country, speaks EngUsh 
 with an elegance of enunciation rarely acquired by Americans. 
 Being acquainted with Dr. Dickson, formerly a professor in a New 
 York medical school, and now in a similar school here, I went to 
 his college towards night, in the hope of meeting him. The regular 
 lectures of the day were over ; but Professor Louis Agassiz was 
 about to begin one upon comparative anatomy, which I attended, 
 and afterwards had a conversation with him and Dr. Dickson. That 
 evening Marcus, Rebecca, Mr. Taft, and I went to the concert of 
 Catharine Hayes, the Irish singer. The rooms were crowded with 
 the elite of Charleston. She sang " Auld Robin Gray " better than 
 I ever heard a ballad sung before, also the " Last Rose of Sum- 
 mer," and took the audience by storm, — or, rather, by zephyr. 
 
 Next day Mrs. Taft called with a coach, and took us to drive. 
 We went several miles out of town near the banks of the Cooper 
 River, then crossed to those of the Ashley, between which two 
 streams Charleston stands on a point of land, as Philadelphia does 
 between the Delaware and Schuylkill. The country is level, the 
 soil sandy, the main roads made of plank. The principal trees are 
 pine, of several species, the willow, magnolia, palmetto, and the 
 wild orange. In many places the pines are covered with much of 
 a beautiful kind of moss, hanging from the limbs in dense clusters, 
 varying from a foot to six feet long. If the tree has not too much, 
 it looks very beautiful ; but some are so completely covered as to 
 have a dreary aspect, the vitality of the tree being generally de- 
 stroyed by this parasite. Negroes, both men and women, were at 
 work in many places, digging and manuring for planting. The 
 weather was so warm we rode without overcoats, with hats off, and 
 the carriage-M'indows open. Coming back, we rode through the 
 principal parts of the city, where ladies in large numbers were 
 promenading in King Street, the fashionable resort, with parasols 
 and spring dresses. 
 
 January 30, in the forenoon, I took a stroll through the market, 
 in a building similar to that of Philadelphia, and extending in length 
 five or six squares. The venders, with very rare exceptions, were 
 negroes ; and the same is true of the purchasers. Chief among the 
 vendibles were great quantities of sweet potatoes, and two edible 
 roots I had never seen before, — the yam and the kanyaji, — besides 
 enormous turnips. Next I went to a slave-auction, where two men. 
 
192 FESTIVITIES IN CHARLESTON 
 
 two women, and three children were sold in four lots. While we 
 were lounging about afterwards, Marcus called at the store of one of 
 his customers, who, upon seeing me, knew me at once. He had been 
 at Bloomingdale two or three times while I was there. He told me 
 that the Friends' meeting-house that formerly existed here had been 
 torn down, the lot remaining vacant. It stood on King Street at 
 a place which is now really the centre of the city. When evening 
 came, we went to another lecture on comparative anatomy by 
 Agassiz, at 5 p.m., and at 7 a lecture on geology by him. The hall 
 yas crowded, and many had to stand ; the lecture one of the most 
 interesting I ever heard. At ten the same evening Marcus, Re- 
 becca (Mrs. Spring), Mr. Taft, and I went to a ball at Dr. Bellinger's. 
 There were about two hundred guests, and we had a fine oppor- 
 tunity of seeing "the beauty and chivalry" of the city. It is the 
 most fashionable season of the year ; and there are many strangers 
 in town, attracted by the season, and perhaps more by the races, 
 which commence next Wednesday, and are patronized by the klite 
 of the land. The belle of the evening was a Miss Caldwell, of North 
 Carolina, a blonde in blue, of sweet eighteen. A band of music, 
 and dancing in two rooms and on the piazza. Four physicians 
 came and spoke to me, having met me at Bloomingdale and other 
 places, but whom I had forgotten as being from Charleston. The 
 supper table was some seventy feet long, plentifully supplied with 
 an almost endless variety of meats, cakes, etc., to say nothing of 
 brandy, sherry, Madeira, and champagne. Marcus and Rebecca 
 left at half-past twelve, and Mr. Taft and I at half-past one. I had 
 expected to see darker complexions in the women, but in that re- 
 spect I should not have known that we were not in New York or 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 January 31, at eleven o'clock, Marcus and I went to a celebration, 
 in the hall of the Charleston College, of the opening of a Museum 
 of Natural History, in which Professor Agassiz had an important 
 part. The hall was densely filled, and many were going away, un- 
 able to find even standing room ; but we wedged ourselves along, 
 and a seat was given me upon the platform, along with the orator 
 (Agassiz) and the college trustees. About four hundred seats on the 
 floor were occupied by ladies ; and, but for the fact that I had once 
 before seen a woman, I might have been embarrassed in meeting the 
 gaze of so many. The chaplain read a prayer ; and then Agassiz 
 
1850-1856 193 
 
 gave an extemporaneous address for about forty minutes, — a most de- 
 cided failure. The Museum was then thrown open, and for an hour 
 or two the audience entertained themselves with the curiosities and 
 with each other. Agassiz receives several hundred dollars more for 
 four months' services here than from his professorship at Harvard 
 College, and he is said to have engaged here for four winters. 
 After dinner (at three o'clock) we went to see the statue of Calhoun 
 at the City Hall, where is also a portrait of Washington by Trum- 
 bull. 
 
 To-day, Sunday, we have been to the Unitarian church to hear Dr. 
 Samuel Oilman, a Northern man, a graduate of Harvard, and author 
 of the college song, " Fair Harvard," who is the husband of Caro- 
 line Oilman, of hterary fame. The Sabbath appears to be observed 
 here quite as strictly as in the Northern cities. In the evening Mar- 
 cus, Rebecca, and I went, upon invitation, to Dr. Oilman's, and 
 passed two hours there very pleasantly. Later we accompanied 
 them to a meeting of the negroes belonging to his church. Their 
 number was not large, the belief and the ceremonies of the Unita- 
 rians being less attractive than those of Baptists and Methodists. 
 
 February 3. — This forenoon attended the auction-sale of about 
 thirty negroes. Dined at Augustus Taft's, in whose garden the daffo- 
 dils are in bloom and the rose-bushes have leaves out of the bud. 
 At 7 P.M. we went to another of Agassiz's lectures, this time on the 
 classification of animals. His manner of treating it was admirable. 
 He illustrates his topics as clearly as any lecturer I ever heard in 
 America or Europe. The hall was crowded, and many of the au- 
 dience were ladies. He is paid by a subscription, and the lectures 
 are free to the public. At 1 1 p.m. I went to the " St. Cecilia's " ball, 
 having received a ticket from Dr. Monefeld, whom I met at Dr. 
 Bellinger's yesterday. The Cecilians are an old society or club, 
 conservative and exclusive, who give three balls each winter, to 
 which strangers may be invited, but which cannot be attended by 
 residents who are not members. About one hundred of each sex 
 were present, with a great display of dress and feminine beauty. 
 As it is now about Smithfield quarterly meeting in Rhode Island, 
 I will mention, in order that the Friends may answer the queries re- 
 lating to me, " Clear, as far as appears," that I only danced twice, 
 and that, being with Miss Howland (two of them), a name prominent 
 in our society, it must have been all right. Besides, I kept good 
 
194 CHARLESTON RACES AND SUPPERS 
 
 hours, coming home as early as two o'clock. Yesterday evening I 
 was at a Soiree musicale, chez M. Gainbault, marcha?id Fraiifais, who 
 has lived in Charleston several years, between forty and fifty ladies 
 and gentlemen being present, among them the two Miss Howlands 
 aforesaid, daughters of a Northern man in business here. The 
 evening passed mostly in conversation, occasionally interrupted by 
 music, the pianists being Mrs. Gainbault, the Howlands, and a Mrs. 
 West. As a matter of course, we topped off with a supper of 
 oysters, game, cakes, ices, confections, and wine, in bountiful sup- 
 ply. I returned at i a.m. 
 
 February 4. — Marcus, Rebecca, Augustus Taft, and I rode out of 
 Charleston about two miles to a large enclosure, within which, for 
 some reason or other, a considerable company had assembled. 
 Augustus, as member of an association bearing the patriarchal 
 name of "Jockey Club," had a red ribbon tied in a button-hole of 
 his coat ; while Marcus and I, as strangers, had a white ribbon thus 
 attached. These seemed to admit us into a high building, open at 
 one side, and familiarly termed "a stand." Augustus did not tell 
 us what he took us there for ; and so, after remaining a little more 
 than three hours to find out, we returned. But a remarkable thing 
 happened in that time. A horse, which seemed to be travelling in 
 company with others, went ahead of them all, and passed over a 
 space of four miles quicker than any other horse ever did in the 
 whole State of South Carolina. 
 
 I had dined at Dr. Gaillard's, in company with other physicians ; 
 and I spent the evening at Dr. Dickson's, where I met a physician 
 recently returned from Turkey, who informed me of the whereabouts 
 of several persons with whom I got acquainted in 1838-39, at 
 Athens, Smyrna, and Constantinople. The next day, in company 
 with Drs. Gaillard, Moulton, Holbrook, Wragg, a Mr. Lassaigne, 
 and Marcus Spring, I went to Sullivan's Island, six miles from town, 
 on which is old Fort Moultrie ; but our object was not to see the 
 Revolutionary battle-ground, only to visit Agassiz and his wonders 
 of the deep there collected, — polyps, jelly-fishes, star-fish, sea- 
 urchins, crabs, etc., — many creatures quite new and interesting to 
 me. We last saw him on the 6th, before sailing for Havana, at his 
 lecture that evening on "the same subject continued." 
 
 The evening of February 5 we spent with friends at Mr. How- 
 land's, father of the ladies twice mentioned. His two eldest daugh- 
 
1850-1856 195 
 
 ters were four years in Europe. The elder speaks German, Italian, 
 and French with much fluency. Among the company was a niece 
 of the artist, Washington Allston, a beautiful young woman, answer- 
 ing to my idea of Marie Antoinette. The evening of the 6th we 
 went at ten o'clock to a meeting popularly known as the "Jockey 
 Club Ball," a yearly meeting which always assembles here in 
 Charleston, not at the Friends' meeting-house, for that, as I told 
 you, has been destroyed, but in a large hall appropriate to such 
 gatherings. I did not dance with any one except the Miss How- 
 lands, Miss Carter, and Mrs. Beach ; and this meeting (like the St. 
 Cecilia's) was closed with a supper of several things besides bread 
 and butter. It was only a little past two when I got back to the 
 hotel. This was our last day in Charleston. I am greatly in hopes 
 that the quiet life, the regular hours, and the abstemious diet of my 
 sojourn here will materially contribute to my health. If not, it is not 
 my intention to try them again here. 
 
 Charleston was in 1852 the most cultivated and one of the 
 most prosperous of the cities in the slave-holding States ; not 
 large in population, but with long-accumulated wealth in a few 
 families of planters and merchants, and with a small class of 
 professional men who stood high in law and medicine, and had 
 that turn for control in politics which marked the long domina- 
 tion of the slaveholding States in Congress and the adminis- 
 tration of government. Calhoun, the one leading statesman of 
 the Carolinas, had lately died (1850). His great compromising 
 opponent, Clay, was still living, as was Webster ; but both died 
 in this year, 1852, after Webster had made an unsuccessful 
 campaign for the Presidency in the Whig nominating con- 
 vention. These three old statesmen had united in 1850 in a 
 vain effort to postpone the conflict over negro slavery by adopt- 
 ing the pro-slavery compromises of that year ; and, when Dr. 
 Earle visited Carolina, the fanatical advocacy of slavery by the 
 leaders of opinion at the South had reached almost its highest 
 point. They declared that " cotton was king," and that only 
 slave labor could profitably raise cotton ; and they dictated, 
 later in the spring of 1852, the nomination of General Pierce, of 
 New Hampshire, for President, as the most subservient of the 
 
196 SLAVERY IN 1 85 2 
 
 Northern Democrats to their slave-masters' domination. He 
 was elected by a great majority over General Scott, Webster 
 himself favoring Pierce's election ; and the policy of South 
 Carolina seemed likely to prevail for long years in the country, 
 bringing with it the annexation of Cuba as slave territory and 
 the extension of slavery over the new States won from Mexico 
 or built up from the western borders of Jefferson's Louisiana 
 purchase. It was in this heyday of slavery extension and 
 cotton-growing prosperity that Dr. Earle visited Carolina ; and 
 it was as friend or a scientific neutral that the pro-slavery 
 citizens of Charleston had the year before made Louis Agassiz 
 a professor in the medical college where Dr. Earle heard his 
 enchanting lectures. His establishment on Sullivan's Island 
 was in a cottage lent him by Mrs. Rutledge as a laboratory, at 
 the head of a long beach, where he could easily collect the 
 marine animals which he was using in his researches and 
 demonstrations. Dr. Holbrook, who went with Dr. Earle and 
 other physicians to visit this laboratory, as above mentioned, 
 had married into the Rutledge family, one of the most dis- 
 tinguished in Carolina ; and it was at Mrs. Holbrook's country 
 house, "The Hollow Tree," near Charleston, that Professor 
 Agassiz and his family spent much time during this year. He 
 had first begun to lecture at Charleston in 185 1, and it was 
 understood that his engagement was for four years ; but at 
 Christmas, following this visit of Dr. Earle, he was attacked 
 with a violent fever at Dr. Holbrook's house, and was com- 
 pelled to give up his engagement in the third year. 
 
 For an early Abolitionist, as Dr. Earle was, and never an ad- 
 mirer of the peculiarities of Southern society, his letters from 
 Charleston show very little study of slavery upon its own 
 ground ; but, in fact, the hold of that evil institution on the 
 country in 1852 seemed so assured that scientific men, like 
 Agassiz and Earle, might be excused for doubting if their 
 active opposition to it could avail to shorten its days. They 
 were received by slaveholders with flattering courtesy. The 
 graceful and pleasure-loving society in which they found them- 
 selves was agreeable to both ; and, though Dr. Earle's Quaker 
 scruples appear humorously in his letters, he was too much a 
 
1850-1856 197 
 
 philosopher and student of human nature not to enjoy for a few 
 days this Epicurean life of Charleston. The city itself had a 
 peculiar history. Its two rivers were named for the family of 
 the first Lord Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the ances- 
 tor of the lunacy reformer of England, Lord Ashley, and the 
 friend of Locke, who had drawn up for Carolina its first inoper- 
 ative philosophical constitution. It was besieged and captured 
 by the British during the Revolution; and the adjacent region 
 became the scene of the bitterest strife between the patriots 
 and the Tories of Carolina, in which Marion and Tarleton 
 figured on the American and the British sides. It had threat- 
 ened rebellion under the name of "nullification" and the lead 
 of Calhoun twenty years before Dr. Earle visited there ; and in 
 that crisis, which the firmness of Jackson terminated without 
 danger to the Union, Trelawny, the lawless friend of Shelley 
 and Byron, who had fought beside Odysseus in the Greek Revo- 
 lution, came over to join the Carolina insurgents. Only nine 
 years after Dr. Earle's visit Charleston fired the first gun in 
 the Civil War ; and under the unexpected result of that can- 
 nonade the whole social system of Carolina, as it existed in 
 1852, was destroyed, and political power, even in their own 
 State, passed away from the slaveholders for years. 
 
 On leaving Charleston in February, 1852, Dr. Earle and his 
 cousins sailed for Key West and Cuba on a steamer bound for 
 the Panama Isthmus, with many emigrants to California, then 
 newly gold-producing and very attractive to the roving Ameri- 
 can young men. His description of the short voyage to Havana 
 belongs in this chapter : — 
 
 We left Charleston Sunday, February 8, at 8 a.m., in the steamer 
 " Isabel," with 60 cabin passengers and 328 more in the steerage, the 
 latter bound for California, and mostly " Crackers," as the Charles- 
 ton people call them, — persons from the interior of South Carolina 
 and Georgia, of primitive habits and uncouth manners. Among 
 them are about 60 negroes, — a few of them free, but chiefly slaves 
 taken to California (though a nominally free State) under some 
 special agreement. Not i in 20 of the steerage passengers had ever 
 seen the ocean before ; and a good many soon wished they never 
 
198 THE EAGLESWOOD COMMUNITY 
 
 had seen it. At eleven on Tuesday evening we touched at Key 
 West, which is a port on an island between Florida and Cuba. I 
 went ashore, and walked through a few silent streets in the twenty 
 minutes we stayed there, — among low cottages of queer construc- 
 tion, shaded in many places by cocoanut and other palm-trees. 
 Everything around me bespoke a tropical climate, and the novelty 
 of the scene at midnight was singularly impressive. The moon was 
 just rising, and even she told us of our change of latitude. She was 
 at the third quarter ; and, instead of being turned up, as we see it 
 in New England, the line between light and darkness was horizontal. 
 The north star was much nearer the horizon than I had ever seen 
 it, even in the Levant ; and the " Dipper " dipped its long handle 
 into the sea. In other words, Ursa Major wet the extremity of her 
 tail. 
 
 On his return voyage Dr. Earle landed at Savannah, and 
 went, by way of Cliarleston and Richmond, to Philadelphia 
 early in March, 1852. 
 
 In contrast to these halcyon days among the slaveholders 
 and the slave-auctions of Carolina is a picture of the Northern 
 emancipationist circle, many of them Dr. Earle's kindred, and 
 two of them (Mrs. Weld and Sarah Grimke) natives of Charles- 
 ton, but excluded from the society of their birthplace because 
 of their faith in emancipation, not only for colored men, but for 
 white women. On his return from a few months in Washing- 
 ton, late in April, 1856, — four years after he was with the 
 Spring family at Charleston, — Dr. Earle went to their new 
 home of Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, N.J. (where Thoreau 
 visited and surveyed the lands of the estate in November of 
 the same year), and there met the same circle of Quakers and 
 radicals which Thoreau describes in a letter to his sister : * — 
 
 This is a queer place. There is one large, long stone building 
 which cost some $40,000, a few shops and offices, an old farm-house, 
 and Mr. Spring's perfectly private residence, within twenty rods of 
 the main building. The central fact here is evidently Mr. Theodore 
 
 • See " Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau," Boston, 1894, pp. 336-338. Mr. Bimey had 
 been a slaveholder in Alabama, but had freed his slaves long before, and removed to the North. His 
 wife was a Miss Fitzhugh, related to the wife of Gcrrit Smith ; and that baronial democrat of Central 
 New York often visited Eagleswood. 
 
1850-1856 199 
 
 Weld's school, recently established, around which various other 
 things revolve. One evening I went to the school-room, hall, or 
 what not, to see the children and their teachers and patrons dance. 
 Mr. Weld, a kind-looking man with a long white beard, danced with 
 them; and so did Mr. Spring and others. Sunday morning I at- 
 tended a sort of Quaker meeting at the same place. Imagine them 
 sitting close to the wall, all around a hall, with old Quaker-looking 
 men and women here and there : Mrs. Weld and her sister, two 
 elderly gray-headed ladies, the former in extreme bloomer costume, 
 which was what you may call remarkable ; Mr. Arnold Buffum, with 
 broad face and a great white beard, looking hke a pier-head made of 
 the cork-tree with the bark on, as if he could buffet a considerable 
 wave ; James G. Birney, formerly candidate for the Presidency, with 
 another particularly white head and beard, etc. . . . Mrs. Kirkland 
 has just bought a lot here. . . . Mr. Alcott has just come down here 
 for the third Sunday. 
 
 And now for Dr. Earle's experiences in the preceding May. 
 He had tarried in Philadelphia on his way North, hearing 
 Thackeray lecture there to a small audience on Swift, and 
 listening to sharp debates in the Yearly Meeting of the Phila- 
 delphia Quakers, long divided on theological questions. Finally, 
 we have this : — 
 
 Wednesday, April t^o, 1856. — I packed my luggage, and bade adieu 
 to Philadelphia, crossing the Delaware River to Camden, and coming 
 over the railroad from Camden to Amboy, where I found a boatman 
 who brought me with oars a mile and a half up the Raritan River to 
 Eagleswood, formerly a "phalanstery" called the "Raritan Bay 
 Union." So here I am at Marcus Spring's. Rebecca (Mrs. Spring) 
 is confined to her room from the effect of a fall, though sitting up 
 most of the day. Mrs. Pauline Wright Davis, of Providence, and 
 Mrs. Oliver Johnson are here on a visit. The "helps " in her house- 
 hold are a Frenchman, a French woman, a German girl, — well edu- 
 cated, — and an Irish woman, the object being to teach the children 
 to speak German and French (but not Irish). Uncle Arnold and 
 Aunt Rebecca (Buffum) are here, and well. 
 
 May I. — All the old folks and young folks of Eagleswood, of 
 whom there are in all about fifty, had made great preparations for 
 
200 LIFE AT EAGLESWOOD 
 
 celebrating May Day in the old English style here. There was to 
 have been a picnic in the woods, and a Queen of the May to be 
 crowned there. But the winds blew and the rain fell in torrents, 
 and the young folks were sadly disappointed. Partial consolation 
 was found in the evening festival, — a fancy-dress ball, at which 
 about thirty danced, including myself. Time brings the unexpected ; 
 for example, Mrs. Davis and me dancing together, with Sarah 
 Grimke, Angelina (Grimke) Weld, and James G. Birney as spectators. 
 I omitted to say that on the evening of my arrival here I attended 
 the weekly meeting of the Eagleswood Lyceum, at which papers 
 were read by Mr. Birney and Charles Weld, son of Theodore. 
 
 -^<y 3- — I went to New York to-day, and returned to Eagleswood 
 in the evening, Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, the author, and her daughter 
 accompanying us for a visit. 
 
 May 4. — On this very pleasant Sunday we had a meeting, at which 
 a hymn was read, a chapter in the Bible read, and a sermon delivered. 
 Afterwards we rambled all over the large premises of romantic 
 Eagleswood, the property mainly of Marcus Spring, who was one of 
 the owners when it was a community. 
 
 It was at Eagleswood, in the October and November of 1859, 
 that Mrs. Spring received as her guest the wife of John Brown, 
 of Kansas and Virginia, on her way to and from the prison of 
 her husband at Charlestown, W. Va. Among the Northern 
 women who gave sympathy, money, and admiration to that 
 heroic family, none was more active or helpful than this cousin 
 of Dr. Earle, with whom he had witnessed the flourishing state 
 of the slaveholders of Carolina and of Cuba. 
 
 A few months before the tragedy of Harper's Ferry and 
 Charlestown, Dr. Earle had again spent a few days at Eagles- 
 wood with his cousins, of which visit he thus speaks : — 
 
 I stayed in Eagleswood from the 13th to the 17th of January, 
 1859, and passed nearly half my time there, ,in Theodore Weld's 
 school, which I think, on the whole, the best school I ever saw. 
 It was a gratification, among others, to find a place where the letter 
 jR is recognized, practically, as an element of our language. His 
 general system may be understood from an incident of the last day 
 I was in his school. An assistant having charge of the common 
 
1850-1859 20I 
 
 school-room, Mr. Weld came in with his arms full of hammers, pin- 
 cers, shears, steelyards, etc., laid them, including a toy wheelbarrow, 
 on the table, and said to his class in Natural Philosophy : " Here 
 are various implements constructed upon the principle of the several 
 forms of the lever. They will be here two days, in which time I want 
 you all to examine them, and then be prepared, each of you, to 
 give a lecture on them, demonstrating the principle by which they 
 each act. And please remember that I wish each of you, in examin- 
 ing them, to depend on his own powers of observation, and not ask 
 explanations from others." That is the way to make good scholars. 
 In one class a pupil only nine years old, read a long original analy- 
 sis of a play of Shakespeare's, giving his opinion of the several 
 characters. In the reading classes, if a pupil miscalled a word, the 
 others said, "wrong," and the reader tried again. If he failed the 
 second or the third time, his error was not pointed out ; but he sat 
 down, and the next pupil read the sentence. Thus in every branch 
 the pupil is taught to rely upon himself, and does not fall into the 
 carelessness which always marks those whose teachers are constantly 
 assisting them. No better proof of the excellence of this system is 
 needed than the brilliant success of this Eagleswood school of 
 seventy pupils, boys and girls, educated together. 
 
 When I arrived, the river was frozen over. The next day Mr. 
 Weld and his assistant teachers, male and female, and nearly all 
 the children, after school hours, went to slide and skate on the ice. 
 Even Mrs. Weld — sober, staid, intellectual Angelina Grimke that 
 was — joined in the pastime. Alack and alas! what is the world 
 coming to ? 
 
 Signor Mario, an Italian exile from Venice, with his English wife 
 (Jessie White formerly), who was seized and imprisoned in Genoa 
 two or three years ago on suspicion * that she was concerned with 
 Mazzini in his efforts to revolutionize Italy, passed a day at 
 Marcus Spring's while I was there, and addressed the pupils and 
 others upon the condition of Italy. At the close of the lecture a 
 contribution was taken up to assist a school for young Italians in 
 London. The donations amounted to $112. 
 
 * This lady still lives in Italy, and is one of the correspondents of the New York Nation. She 
 has written much, — among other things, a Life of Garibaldi, whom she knew well. It was true that 
 she was in the councils of Marzini, who in 1859 was still under ban in Italy, but who is now honored, 
 with Garibaldi, as one of the noblest of his country's patriots. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CUBA IN THE DAYS OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 
 
 In these years of revolution and war in Cuba, following the 
 emancipation of slavery in North and South America, the old 
 order of things, when our slave-holding politicians hungered for 
 annexing the rich island to add sugar planting to cotton-grow- 
 ing as two firm pillars of the system, has so completely passed 
 away that Dr. Earle's description of his travels in Cuba reads 
 like ancient history. He was in the gay mood of a tourist, as 
 he had been many years before while traversing Southern 
 Europe. He was now in his first tropical experiences ; and his 
 adventures, if not startling, as those of Americans in Cuba 
 have lately been, were full of novelty and interest. His diary 
 thus goes on : — 
 
 Hava7ia, Feb. 14, 1852. — On Wednesday last, February 11, at 
 8 A.M., the high lands of Cuba appeared from the deck of the 
 " Isabel," like a dim cloud on the southern horizon. Green fields 
 soon became visible, with the groves of palms and other trees, and 
 next the stately fortress of the Moro and part of the city of Havana. 
 At ten we passed the castle, entered the harbor, — one of the largest 
 and most secure from storms in the world, — and anchored near the 
 wharves. In the two hours required for obtaining permission to 
 land, we enjoyed from the deck the novel, interesting scene around 
 us, — ships of many nations, the peculiar city houses, the fortresses, 
 the distant country seats, and the groves of tropical trees. In the 
 boats that came around us the people dressed in white linen, with 
 Leghorn or Panama sombreros, two-thirds of them with cigars in their 
 mouths, and the other third just going to smoke. Finally, we paid 
 $2 each for a printed permit to land, came ashore in boats, and were 
 whirled off in volantes to Mrs. Almy's hotel. 
 
 In all that I have seen of Europe there was nothing in nature 
 so unlike New England scenery as this of Cuba, and nothing so 
 different in manners and customs, this side of Greece, unless Venice 
 
1852 203 
 
 be excepted. The original city of Havana is a fortress, surrounded 
 by a high wall, and now contains perhaps 100,000 people. The 
 streets are straight, few of them paved, and hardly more than 
 eighteen feet wide, — some only sixteen, — mostly without sidewalks. 
 Where there are any, they are but fifteen inches or two feet 
 wide. The houses (all built of stone, covered with " rough cast ") 
 are often two or three stories high, each story from fourteen to 
 twenty feet ; but half are only one story, with flat roofs used 
 as walks or for flowers or for drying clothes. The floors are of 
 smooth, hard mortar, occasionally of marble ; carpets rare, except 
 small pieces of straw matting. The windows are most peculiar, 
 very large (ten or twelve feet high by five or six wide), descending 
 to the floor, and guarded outside with iron bars an inch thick. Inside 
 they are furnished with blinds or close shutters. This is the whole 
 window. I have traversed many streets, and not seen a dozen win- 
 dows with sash or glass, the climate not requiring it. Every bed is 
 high-posted, and with a gauze curtain quite enclosing it, to keep out 
 mosquitoes. Neglecting to draw mine the first night, I found six- 
 teen red spots on my hands in the morning, not to mention my face. 
 
 The last three weeks are said t-o have been as cold as the " old- 
 est inhabitant" can remember, yet the people dress as thinly as 
 our New Englanders do in summer. And, although barely past mid- 
 winter with us, summer vegetables are here plenty. At dinner we 
 have lettuce, string beans, green peas and green corn, two kinds of 
 sweet potatoes (one perfectly white), yams, the plantain fruit, 
 bananas, oranges, and pineapples, the last much better than those 
 exported, — softer, and retaining their peculiar flavor without that 
 disagreeable acidity that often makes our tongues sore. But ex- 
 penses are no joke here. We pay $3 a day each for board, and $1 
 an hour for a carriage when we drive out. The volante is generally 
 used, — a queer concern with enormous wheels, and the horse a long 
 way in front of the carriage, while the "body "is so far in front of 
 the two wheels that the shaft-horse bears much of the weight of the 
 passengers as well as the rider who mounts him, wearing seven- 
 league boots to keep ofif the mud, and tremendous spurs. The 
 horse's tail is long, braided, and tied to the back of the saddle. An 
 awning keeps off the sun from you. The ladies sit without bonnets, 
 but many with thin black veils thrown over their heads. 
 
 February 15. — It is First Day, but the change in Havana from 
 
204 CUBAN LABORS AND AMUSEMENTS 
 
 the ordinary week-day is barely sufficient to be noticed by a 
 stranger. I went out about seven this morning, and found that the 
 shops were not generally opened so early as yesterday. The market, 
 however, was more than usually crowded. As in most foreign coun- 
 tries, it is here a square building, enclosing a large court, — perhaps 
 an acre, — and to-day thronged, building and court, by sellers and 
 buyers. All kinds of vegetables that we have from April to October 
 were there, — with many that we never have, — all fresh from the 
 ground, the stem, the vine, or the tree. I went into several 
 churches, the great Cathedral among them. The number of persons 
 going to the churches was greater than on week-days, each family 
 followed by a richly dressed negro, carrying a piece of carpet for 
 them to kneel on. The senoras and senoritas were mostly on foot, 
 in white or parti-colored dresses, — some ladies bareheaded, others 
 with a black veil so thin as to impede the view very little, either of 
 themselves or of those who look at them. In some of the churches 
 there is a great deal of show ; but it is tinsel and mortar rather than 
 the gold, silver, and rich marbles I used to see in Italian churches. 
 Beneath the Cathedral, they say, the bones of Columbus rest ; * and 
 within it is the only monument in Cuba to his memory, a marble 
 slab inserted in the wall, near the high altar, with an alto-rilievo bust 
 of the great navigator, and an inscription. As I entered, a priest 
 was performing at a side altar ; and there was a large audience. Half 
 a dozen negroes were at work round the grand altar, supplying the 
 many candelabra with wax tapers, six feet high, and making other 
 preparations for high mass. I could not get within thirty feet of the 
 monument without treading on the ground devoted to the priests and 
 their servants ; but, following a rule which I have found very useful 
 to a traveller, "Go till you are stopped," I put on a bold face, 
 walked straight up to the monument, took out note-book and pencil, 
 and copied this inscription, in Spanish, — 
 
 O Remains and Image of the Great Columbus! 
 
 A thousand centuries shall ye be preserved in this Urn, 
 
 And in the memory of our Nation. 
 
 • Although there is yet some doubt on the subject, it is probable that the bones of Columbus do 
 rest, after almost as many journeys as his living body made, in this Cathedral of Havana. He died at 
 Valladolid in Spain, May 20, 1506, was first buried there, but in ijoq was removed to Seville. About 
 1 54 1 his remains were sent to Hispaniola, to lie in the grand new Cathedral of Santo Domingo, as 
 they did, in accordance with his own wish, for two centuries and a half. I5ut in 1795 the conquering 
 French republicans got possession of the Spanish end of Hispaniola; and the Spaniards, acting in 
 concert with the then Duke of Veragua, a descendant of Columbus, supposed they had removed the 
 
1852 205 
 
 At ten o'clock we took a barouche from a stable kept by a 
 Yankee, and drove into the country. Farm labors were going on, 
 as on week-days. Three miles out of Havana we halted at the 
 Bishop's Garden, chiefly interesting for its many palms, mango-trees, 
 and bamboos. The last grow like bulrushes, but are jointed, are 
 from an inch to three inches in diameter near the ground, and from 
 twenty to forty feet high. When swayed by the wind, they strike 
 against each other with a clicking like castanets in the hands of a 
 Spanish dancer. Among the visitors we saw a family of Creoles (na- 
 tive Cubans) sitting under a cluster of tall bamboos. They bid us 
 good morning, and we stopped to admire a beautiful Italian grey- 
 hound belonging to them. The mother pointed to Jenny S., and said 
 she was "a Spanish girl." One of the young ladies asked if she was 
 my daughter. I told her no, that Marcus was her father. Then, 
 putting on a very lackadaisical look, I added that I had no wife. 
 At first she did not understand my bad Spanish ; but, in a moment, 
 assisted by one of the others, she caught the idea, and, with tropical 
 vivacity, clasped her hands, laughed, and exclaimed, " Oh, Senor no 
 tenga una sposa," and then blushed deeply as a brunette can blush 
 from the top of her forehead to the top of her dress, — no little dis- 
 tance, to tell the truth. A mile farther from the town is the larger 
 garden of the Conte Palatino, approached through a long avenue of 
 royal palms, and with a much larger variety of tropical productions 
 than in the Bishop's Garden, and kept in better order. It offers a 
 fine view over the neighboring country. A negro cut for us a bou- 
 quet of roses, dahlias, the hibiscus, and flowers with names to me 
 unknown. As we drove back to Havana, the road, on both sides, 
 was bordered with roses and oleanders, all in blossom. 
 
 At 4 P.M. we again took the barouche, and drove first to the out- 
 skirts of the fortified part of the town. Here, in a street running 
 next to the city wall, with houses on the opposite side, were many 
 negroes, — men, women, and children, — assembled, according to 
 their custom on this day of the week, for a half-holiday. In a short 
 distance were a dozen rooms, opening by large doors and windows 
 to the street, and used as dance-halls by these people. In all there 
 was music of some sort, generally that of a rude drum, and a still 
 
 remains from Santo Domingo to Havana. But the bishop of that Cathedral has lately maintained 
 that the bones then taken away were those of Diego, the son, not of Christopher, the sire. The Span- 
 ish authorities are sure that the bishop of Santo Domingo is mistaken, as presumably he is ; but who 
 shall decide when bishops disagree? 
 
2 06 SUNDAYS IN HAVANA 
 
 ruder instrument (seen by me for the first time here) formed of steel 
 springs, vibrating as you press them down at the end, letting the 
 fingers slip off. The dancing was as rude as such music, — no har- 
 mony in the one, no grace in the other, — such as one might expect 
 in Central Africa, from which the slave-trade still brings many 
 negroes. They engaged enthusiastically in the sport, and were up- 
 roariously happy. We next went to the Paseo, the fashionable 
 promenade and driving-course, and now at its most fashionable hour 
 of the week. Suppose from three to five thousand men, in their 
 " Sabba'-day clothes," ranged along the sidewalks of Main 
 Street, in Worcester, from the City Hall to the Court House (only 
 this Cuban street was but half as wide), then take as many chaises, 
 (mostly) half of them with the tops thrown back, as will form a close 
 procession on both sides of the street, all the way. Dress all the 
 pretty ladies in the carriages, and most of the homely ones, as for an 
 evening party, — with a few gentlemen interspersed, — without head- 
 dress or shawl, then set the carriages in motion at a walk. Let 
 everybody look at everybody else, and make looking, with the nat- 
 ural comment, their sole business for two hours. Meantime the 
 people on the sidewalks must stand still and stare, getting as close 
 to the carriages as they can or as the police will let them, — say, 
 within four feet. That is the way they do things on the Paseo, Sun- 
 days. We joined this procession as we might in the Bois de Bou- 
 logne of Paris, and enjoyed it much, until it grew so dark that 
 " nobody couldn't see nobody " with satisfactory distinctness. Then 
 ever}'body dispersed. Of course, the theatre was open in the even- 
 ning, — the world-renowned Teatro de Tacon, larger than any other 
 modern theatre in the world, except La Scala in Milan and one in 
 Naples. This evening the house was full, the captain-general of 
 Cuba, De la Concha, with two of his daughters, being present. I 
 think this will do for one Sunday. 
 
 Yesterday (14th) I had walked for some hours in the country, 
 going into the fields, the groves, and among the negro houses. It 
 was all delightful, except the stepping on a big prickly pear, and get- 
 ing three large thorns stuck through my thin shoe into my foot. A 
 negro helped me to get them out, and was wonderfully pleased with 
 the rubber springs of my Congress boot. I found the cocoanut 
 palms very numerous, giving an African aspect to the country land- 
 scape. The fruit, growing in clusters at the top of the tree, just 
 
1852 207 
 
 beneath the leaves, was very abundant. On one tree I counted one 
 hundred nuts, the lowest full grown, the highest as large as a hen's 
 egg. Indian corn was growing in large fields for fodder, sown like 
 grain, and cut when in tassel. Four crops a year are raised in the 
 same field. It is brought into the city on horses and mules, the 
 creatures so enveloped in corn-stalks that only the heads and legs are 
 visible. Other things brought into the city or carried from it are 
 transported in the same way, one man often taking charge of sev- 
 eral animals. He leads the forward mule, and the rest come behind, 
 Indian file, each tied to the tail of the other. Oxen are also yoked 
 in an odd way, the yoke bound to their horns and to a cushion on 
 their foreheads, without a bow, so that they draw by pushing with 
 the horns and head, the head being almost as fixed as if in a piUor}-. 
 Each ox has a rope in his nostril, while the driver in his ox-cart 
 guides them by reins attached to the nostril-ropes. He carries a 
 stick about the size and length of a rake-handle, with a sharp nail 
 at one end. This is his goad. The ploughing is done much as in 
 Greece. A plough with but one handle and a beam ten feet long, 
 entering a ring of the yoke, has a long, narrow ploughshare of wood, 
 tipped with an iron point. 
 
 February 18. — We came from Havana to-day by railroad to Guines 
 (two syllables), a town almost fifty miles from Havana, inland, but 
 nearer the southern than the northern coast, with some 2,500 people, 
 an old stone church in its centre, surrounded by stone houses of one 
 story, covered with brick tiling. The streets are wretchedly bad, 
 rocky, uneven, and without drains ; but no such need exists for good 
 streets as with us, for the transportation here, as in Havana, is on 
 the backs of horses and mules. As we came, the country was almost 
 an uninterrupted level, a ridge of high hills, around which the rail- 
 road curves to avoid grade, lying at a distance on our left. We 
 came through forests of palms and other trees, often filled with an 
 undergrowth of shrubs and clustering vines, in tropical profusion, 
 and so dense that it would be almost impossible to get through them 
 without a road. These alternated with fields of plantain and 
 bananas, some of tobacco and pineapple, a few orange trees, crops 
 of potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables, some waste land, 
 lots of wild flowers new to me, passing many haciendas, or farm- 
 houses, invariably low, and with roofs thatched with palm-leaf. As 
 showing the climate, I may say that we saw Indian com in all stages 
 
2o8 SUGAR GROWING IN CUBA 
 
 of its growth, from four inches high to the stalk of ripe ears. If a 
 Yankee farmer could come here, and preserve his habits of industry 
 and thrift, he might soon grow rich. His farm would yield from two 
 to four times as much as in Leicester, and most of it would need no 
 manure. Barns are almost unknown. No provision is needed for 
 cattle in winter. Clothing would cost little ; for cotton may be worn 
 the year through, except an overcoat for cool mornings and nights. 
 The mercury this winter has been as low as 50° or even 48° Fah- 
 renheit, a degree of cold almost unprecedented. The average winter 
 temperature at Havana is 70°, the coldest about 60°. Carpets 
 would be a nuisance, unless of straw or oilcloth ; sackcloth, with 
 a folded blanket on it, and covered with a sheet, makes the bed ; 
 and nine-tenths of the nights the sleeper needs nothing but a sheet 
 over him. No expense for fuel except to cook with. No chimneys or 
 fireplaces are needed save in the kitchen. Thus, while a farmer's 
 income is increased here, his expenses are much diminished ; yet the 
 Cuban farmers have not half the conveniences of life that the New 
 England farmer has, and seem to be miserably poorr So I suppose, 
 if Yankees should come here, they would fall into the shiftless habits 
 of the people, and soon become as poor as they are. 
 
 In the afternoon we took a volante, and drove out two or three 
 miles to the famous Amistad sugar plantation. We hired the horse 
 of an old Frenchman, who had been one of Napoleon's zneille garde, 
 and is covered with wounds received in all parts of Europe, from 
 Spain to Moscow. He preserves his old arms as glorious me- 
 mentoes.* As we drove, the road for a long distance was through 
 great cane-fields on either side, farther than we could see, over- 
 topped in places by most beautiful groves of the royal palm. As we 
 approached the planter's house, we saw fifty negroes, more women 
 than men, cutting the cane with machetes, while a long train of carts 
 carried it to the sugar-mill. The knife used is like our bill-hook, 
 except that it is straight and is used with much dexterity. The 
 
 * In \'isiting Santo Domingo in 1871, with Dr. Howe and Frederick Douglass, Dr. A. D. White, 
 since ambassador to Germany and Russia, found there a still earlier French survivor of the Rev- 
 olutionary and Napoleonic period, an aged " Theophilanthropist," who dated from the days of the 
 Directory, and could not endure to live under the Corsican despot. The West Indies have long been 
 the nursery or the retreat of French persons of odd types. It was at Martinique that Josephine 
 Bonaparte was bom and first married. The Ceiba mentioned below as simg by Dr. Earle's friend 
 Whittier, the controversial Quaker poet, was introduced by him in his poem, written shortly before, — 
 As the serpent-like bejuco winds its spiral, fold on fold, 
 Round the tall and stately Ceiba, till it withers in its hold. 
 So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's manhood twines, etc. 
 
1852 209 
 
 stalk of the cane is cut close to the ground at one blow, and its top 
 lopped off by another. A second negro now takes it, stripping off 
 the leaves and throwing it on a pile. A third takes it to the cart, 
 while a fourth loads it, — all slaves, I suppose. A herd of oxen follow 
 the cane-cutters, eating the stripped leaves ; but many remain on the 
 ground as manure for the new crop, which soon springs from the 
 roots of the cane. When cut, the stalk is one or two inches thick, 
 and from two to four feet long, rarely, five. Its whole interior is 
 saturated with juice, like a sponge with water. This is sweet as 
 syrup, very luscious for a time, but at length becomes nauseous. 
 The negroes like it, and often help themselves to it as they work. 
 
 The Amistad cane-mill is driven by water. It consists of three 
 iron cylinders, eight feet long by two thick, between which the cane 
 passes only once, the juice running almost in torrents between the 
 lower cylinders into a tank, from which it is forced into other tanks, 
 heated and clarified with lime. It then runs through charcoal filters, 
 is boiled to a certain density, filtered again, and then boiled till 
 sugar forms. The molasses is drained out by whirling it swiftly in 
 metallic tubs, perforated like the " centrifugal clothes-wringer," — a 
 recent improvement, which does in ten minutes what used to be the 
 work of ten days. Formerly it took nearly three weeks to convert 
 the cane into sugar for the market. This is done here in one day 
 now, and could be done in seven hours. The old story of Timothy 
 Dexter sending out warming-pans from Newburyport for the Cuban 
 winters, which the delighted planters used for sugar-pans, will no 
 longer apply. Mr. Dodd, of Newark, N.J., has just completed a 
 " pan " (as they call a boiler), which will save much labor, facilitate 
 sugar-making still more, and produce a much whiter, purer, and 
 more perfectly crystallized sugar. This pan is in use here at 
 Amistad's, and is the only sample yet made, producing lately seven 
 tons of sugar in one day. The day of warming-pans is well over, 
 and future Dexters will not make fortunes by similar blunders. 
 
 February 20, Cardenas. — A journey of sixty miles by rail, through 
 a country more fertile than any yet seen, brought us from Guines to 
 Cardenas. On this route we first saw coffee plantations and 
 frequent orange orchards. In the forests the gigantic Ceiba, cele- 
 brated by Friend Whittier, was abundant ; and some species of the 
 palm were noted that we had not seen before. 
 
 Cardenas is a seaport on the northern coast, perhaps seventy 
 
2IO CARNIVAL IN CARDENAS 
 
 miles east of Havana. A few years ago it was a small settlement, 
 but now has a population of five or six thousand. Its growth has 
 been rapid, and it may become a rival of Havana in time. The first 
 expedition of Narciso Lopez landed here last year. The walls of the 
 government house, burnt by him or his followers, still stand on the 
 plaza; and there are bullet-marks on our hotel, kept by Mrs. Wood- 
 bury, a Portuguese lady from Buenos Ayres, whose husband was a 
 cousin of Justice Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire. In his 
 second expedition, sailing from New Orleans in August last year, 
 and landing at Bahia Honda, Colonel Crittenden, an American, with 
 fifty of his captured men, was shot in Havana, near which he was 
 captured, and Lopez himself was garroted. 
 
 We have been to-day nearly four miles out of town, to the house 
 of Mr. Phinney, from Massachusetts, at which Miss Bremer, the 
 Swedish novelist, passed two weeks, when she was in Cuba recently, 
 and where she sat up after midnight to see the Southern Cross, a 
 constellation invisible in our latitudes. His daughter. Miss Susan 
 Phinney, educated in New England, told us she prefers a residence 
 there, principally on account of the restrictions imposed on women 
 by Spanish customs. She and a young lady, a visitor, entertained 
 us in a parlor whose temperature was exquisitely comfortable and 
 refreshing. We then walked in the garden, examined the coffee- 
 fields and the process of hulling, cleansing, and putting up coffee for 
 the market, and after two hours took to our volante again. Our 
 half-drunken negro calesero (coachman), with his three braided-tailed, 
 rib-showing-ready-for-the-crows-looking horses (as a German might 
 say), harnessed abreast, the middle one in the shafts, and the others 
 in long rope traces on each side, mounted the left-hand one, whipped 
 them all, and drove us off. We returned to Mrs. Woodbury's over a 
 road of red dust as fine as ashes, and as adhesive to the skin as 
 wax, through groves of palms and fields of cane. 
 
 February 22, Cardenas. — Las fiestas reales, the royal festivities, 
 ordered to be celebrated for three days, in honor of the birth of 
 the Princess of Asturias, daughter of the Queen of Spain, begin 
 to-day. The doors of many houses are bordered with palm-leaves ; 
 and arches of the same, wound about poles of bamboo, span the 
 streets in places. Early this morning there was mass at the church 
 for the benefit of the soldiers, at nine a grand " Te Deum" in honor of 
 the princess. The governor of Cardenas and his military officers. 
 
1852 211 
 
 with perhaps a hundred other men and two hundred women, were 
 present, the women occupying nearly all the centre of the church, — 
 a very pretty sight. The stone floor was covered with rugs of all 
 colors, brought from private houses. On these were the two hundred 
 women, some kneeling, many sitting Turkish fashion, and a very few 
 in light chairs, brought by negro servants. The old, middle-aged, 
 and young, — rich and poor, white, mulatto, and negro, — were 
 mingled together for the time in a common equality ; for they were 
 in a house where — theoretically and so far practically — such dis- 
 tinctions are not recognized. None wore hats or bonnets. All had 
 the transparent black veil, sometimes thrown back from the face. 
 The greater part were wholly in black, some in white, a few in 
 colors. 
 
 For an account of what followed this religious ceremony I am in- 
 debted to my barber, who was present. " About noon, accompanied 
 by a gentleman of my acquaintance, I went to see the favorite sport 
 of the Cubans, a cock-fight, without which scarcely a Sabbath 
 passes, and which the law permits only on Sundays and religious 
 feast days. The price of admission was ' two strong reals,' what you 
 Yankees call a ' quarter.' We found the sport begun, in an amphi- 
 theatre, like that of a circus, occupied by four hundred men (boys 
 are not admitted), most of them well dressed, and many belonging 
 to the e/i'fe of Cardenas. One fight was nearly over, but another 
 soon began. Two cocks, one black, the other variegated, were 
 brought in, each having the feathers cut from his back and breast, 
 and armed with natural spurs an inch or more long. The black 
 cock is a renowned bird, never having been whipped, and now 
 pitted by his owner, who brought him in, against any cock on the 
 island. A rich citizen had sent to a distant town for the mottled 
 cock which was to fight this champion, and betting now began. At 
 times one hundred men were on their feet, crying out their bets, 
 making a complete bedlam. Then the fight began, and never had I 
 seen the passions so strongly depicted on the human countenance as 
 there. For a while the combat was equal. Then the variegated bird 
 seemed to have the advantage. His owner rose, and bawled out that 
 he would bet a hundred 'ounces,' or doubloons ($1,700), of gold 
 on his bird. Bedlam then broke loose worse than ever, but no one 
 took his offer. Bets, however, were two to one on his bird. After a 
 while the tide turned, and victory favored his antagonist. Black 
 
212 THE BULL-FIGHT 
 
 mustered all his strength, giving his opponent heavy blows till he 
 slunk away to the side of the pit, hung his head, and would fight no 
 longer. Thus Black was the winner." 
 
 Having finished his account, my barber leaned back in his rock- 
 ing-chair, stroked his beard, and added, "This was the first cock- 
 fight I ever attended, and I shall never go to another." I approved 
 his determination, and there the matter ended.* 
 
 For a description of some of the proceedings at Cardenas, after 
 dinner, I am indebted to an American physician now living in this 
 city. He says : " About 5 p.m. I went up the principal street. 
 The sidewalks were thronged, and there were many ladies in open 
 volantes. As I looked up the street, hundreds of large, gay-colored 
 Spanish flags met the eye,^ — almost one at every house. House- 
 fronts were adorned with yellow and red drapery, and with pictur- 
 esque devices for the coming illumination. Groups of persons, 
 masked, with faces and forms so concealed by grotesque gar- 
 ments that their familiar friends would not know them, were 
 amusing each other in various ways. Near this street was a great 
 open space (plaza), towards which the stream of people seemed to 
 flow. Some two thousand had already assembled there. Near the 
 centre of the plaza was a bull, his horns tied to a long rope, which 
 was held fast at the other side of the square by a dozen men ; and 
 the crowd was endeavoring, by blows, kicks, and red cloths, to 
 enrage him. Sometimes they succeeded ; and he would charge upon 
 them, but was so tethered that he did little harm, knocking one man 
 down, butting another, etc. This sport was kept up until the bull 
 was exhausted and fell. Then he received many kicks and stamps on 
 his head and body, all this occasioning much hilarity and shouting 
 among the spectators. In another part of the plaza stood a greased 
 pole, thirty-five feet high, with a doubloon placed at its top, the prize 
 of whoever could climb and take it. No one ventured till towards 
 sunset, when some Catalan sailors came up from the harbor and 
 tried for the prize. After nearly an hour, with many climbings and 
 
 • It may be observed here that Dr. Earle was his own barber, that he was the " American physi- 
 cian now living," and also the mysterious " man who was in Europe when I was." This form of jest- 
 ing was a habit with him in his gayer moods, and was specially strong in this tour, as Mrs. Spring, 
 yet living, at the age of eighty-eight, has written me. One day, she says, Dr. Earle was at the 
 window, looking out, when he suddenly exclaimed, " Cousin Rebecca, here comes a friend in need ! " 
 She hastened to the window, only to see a poor club-footed, "in-kneed" man walking towards the 
 door. Punning, indeed, in its many forms, was carried by him to an excess. It was one kind of the 
 grammatical exercise in which he long delighted. 
 
1852 213 
 
 slidings down, amid great laughter of the multitude, they succeeded, 
 by putting themselves five high upon each other's shoulders, each 
 clinging to the pole." 
 
 A man who was in Europe when I was has enabled me to give a 
 partial description of the evening entertainment. I could myself see 
 from the hotel the illumination of the barracks and the church, and 
 the lanterns, one or more, before each house in sight. But the man 
 says : " The whole of the principal street and many others were brill- 
 iantly lighted by thousands of lamps. There were many inscriptions, 
 — 'A la Reyna Isabella' and 'A la Princesa de Asturia.' Nearly 
 everybody, to judge by the crowds, was in the streets. A great 
 variety of maskers was seen, and all appeared to be enjoying them- 
 selves greatly. A masked ball at the theatre was attended by hun- 
 dreds of persons, one-third of them in masks and fancy dress. One 
 of the best characters was an aged gentleman 'of the old school,' in 
 cocked hat and small-clothes, with big-buckled shoes. He never 
 forgot his part, but carried it with the skill of an actor." So ended 
 another Sabbath, and the record of it. 
 
 February 23, Matanzas. — This Monday morning we left Cardenas 
 at sunrise, a dense fog enveloping us till eight o'clock, when the sun 
 shone forth as clear, bright, and hot as on a first-rate Leicester hay- 
 day. We went back thirty miles towards Guines ; and for the rest of 
 our way to this town there was little worthy of mention, except some 
 coffee plantations with the shrub in full bloom. The plants were 
 four or five feet high, and as white to-day as a field of our buck- 
 wheat in blossom. At Matanzas we took rooms at the hotel of 
 Madame Mortie, a French woman, on the wharf at the head of a mag- 
 nificent bay. We front the east, and look out on the waters covered 
 with vessels, the hills that bound the bay, and the many pelicans 
 sailing now in air, now on the water, and ever and anon diving from 
 the wing, with the speed of an arrow, upon their fishy prey. Oh, it 
 is a beautiful country for a lazy man (with money enough) to spend 
 the winter in ! Glorious sunsets, balmy breezes, delicious tempera- 
 ture, flowery fields, nature's luxuriance, luxurious indolence, dolce far 
 niente, otium sine dignitate, — make an olla podrida of these and other 
 expressions of laziness, beauty, and romance ; and the rich man has 
 it all in Cuba. 
 
 North-west of Matanzas is a series of hills, to the top of which I 
 went in the afternoon, and thence looked down on one side upon the 
 
214 MATANZAS IN THE CARNIVAL 
 
 city and bay stretched out before us, like the lower lands of Paxton 
 and Leicester viewed from Asnebumskit ; * while on the other side, 
 beneath a precipice several hundred feet high, lay Yumuri, the most 
 lovely valley in Cuba. Our chief inducement to visit Matanzas was 
 to see this vale, which quite equals the expectation we had of it. 
 I remember nothing so fine, unless it were Edale in English Derby- 
 shire, where I was in 1837. Yumuri is four or five miles long and 
 one or two miles wide, nearly level, but encircled, except in a gap 
 just wide enough for a stream to flow out, by a ridge of hills varying 
 from two hundred to five hundred feet high. Highly cultivated, it 
 was planted with the peculiar products of Cuba. 
 
 The royal festival was going on here as at Cardenas ; and, as 
 might be seen from the date, these fiestas were appointed for the 
 three days of carnival preceding Lent, in order to make the show 
 and the general hilarity greater. In the afternoon we saw a sham 
 fight, in which six or eight hundred Spanish troops took part. In 
 the evening the illumination was general and very brilliant ; and 
 everybody who was not at a ball, a music-party, or some other in- 
 door festivity, was outdoors, looking on. All classes of society 
 mingled together in very orderly disorder. More than five hundred 
 women were seated on the benches of the square ; and the broad 
 promenade, on one side bounded by those benches, contained every 
 moment, between eight and ten o'clock, twenty-five hundred or 
 three thousand people. Here was an excellent opportunity to see 
 the beauty of Matanzas, where, it is said, there is more feminine 
 beauty than in Havana. Many were masked, but probably not the 
 most beautiful ; for it is a remarkable fact in natural history that 
 very handsome women are the least disposed to wear masks. Those 
 masked were mostly dressed in white, with no head-covering. They 
 carried costly fans, which they so manage that they seem as much a 
 part of themselves as the wings are of a bird. Maskers, both men 
 and women, are privileged persons. They do what they please, 
 speak to whom they choose, and say what comes into their heads, 
 
 * This uncouth Indian name, as often mentioned, designates a fine hill near Leicester, which Dr. 
 Earle frequently used for purposes of comparison or description, wlien writing of foreign scenes, as he 
 did, for instance, in explaining the face of the country between Athens and Marathon, when he rode 
 through it, escaping the brigands, in 1838. He seems to have left no detailed description of the lovely 
 Derbyshire vale which he saw in his first visit to England. Marathon made a profound impression on 
 him, as on most who see that famous battle-plain; and there is a good plan of it, and of Dr. Earle's 
 route over it, preser\'ed in his collection of autographs, but evidently drawn by himself soon after he 
 spent the niglit at Souli, overlooking the plain from the side opposite Athens. 
 
1852 215 
 
 all speaking in a peculiar falsetto rather unpleasant to hear, but 
 serving as an effectual disguise of the natural voice. They tarry at 
 the windows of even the best houses, chatting with the young ladies. 
 Sometimes they go in and sit down ; and in one house we saw a 
 genteel circle listening to their piano well played by a long-hooded 
 white domino, looking as if the person inside were shrouded for the 
 coffin. 
 
 February 24. — This is the last day of carnival and iho. fiestas. 
 Parties of masked men, with some women, have been through the 
 streets of Matanzas this afternoon ; and one party of them performed 
 an imitation bull-fight with some wit and spirit, and without the 
 cowardly cruelty of the bull-baiting at Cardenas. Two youths had 
 artificial horse-bodies so attached to them that, with short artificial 
 legs, they looked much like boys on horseback. These were picadors. 
 Two others had similar bull-bodies, and several harlequins acted as 
 matadors. Very impressive was the singular contest waged between 
 these doughty antagonists, with many comico-tragical incidents, end- 
 ing in the destruction of one bull by knocking his brains out, which, 
 however, did not prevent his fighting on as before. 
 
 Towards night a crowd assembled on a long wharf in front of our 
 hotel to witness a game of climbing an upright pole, on which was a 
 piece of gold to reward the successful climber. The game was to 
 walk out on a horizontal pole over the water, and thence climb a 
 diagonal rope to the top of the upright pole without tumbling into 
 the water, on which were hundreds of boats filled with people. 
 Those who climbed got more ducks than gold. Many fell into the 
 water, amid tumultuous shouts and laughter ; and no one got the 
 prize. Elsewhere on the wharf was a trial of jumping for ducks, — 
 this time real ones, tied to a rope with their heads hanging down, 
 and both head and neck well greased, so that, unless grasped very 
 firmly, the hand would slip. Some jumped, and could not reach the 
 bird. Others would strike his bill, causing the duck to draw back 
 the head. Finally, a man grasped the head of one ; but his hold 
 slipped, and he came down with nothing but a handful of grease. 
 Finally, after many trials and some artifice, a big-boned man, six 
 feet two in height, holds the duck's head fast, killing the bird, jerks 
 himself up and down to break the string, and comes down at last 
 with his next day's dinner in his hands, amid the shouting of the 
 crowd. Verily, man " is a rational animal, the only creature endowed 
 with reason." 
 
2l6 LIFE IN CUBA 
 
 February 29. — We left Matanzas on the 26th, returning to Havana, 
 where an irregularity in my passport, caused by the major-domo of 
 Mrs. Almy's hotel, put me to some inconvenience as well as anxiety. 
 But it enabled me to have an interview with Don Jose de la Concha, 
 governor or captain-general of the island, and to see the inside of 
 his palace, which would otherwise have been denied me. There 
 appeared to be a very general apprehension of further invasion of 
 Cuba from the United States, where, I was told, a force of seventeen 
 hundred men was already collected on the coast of Alabama, 
 expecting to sail for Cuba in April. Those Cubans opposed to 
 annexation look forward with much anxiety to our Presidential elec- 
 tion this year, hoping that Daniel Webster may be chosen, but fear- 
 ing it may be General Cass or General Houston.* The South is 
 determined to have Cuba, Spain equally determined we shall not 
 have it, to say nothing of England and France. 
 
 We sailed from Havana for Savannah by way of Key West on this 
 day, my passport having been satisfactorily arranged. Looking 
 back, a few reflections occur to me. I came to the conclusion that 
 life and property are more secure in Havana than in any of our 
 American cities. The night police is very efficient, though peculiarly 
 armed. Each man carries a long spear, a sword, a pistol, and a 
 whistle, whose shrill sounds are heard at short intervals through 
 the night. Perhaps the watchmen blow them to show they are not 
 asleep. The government police are just now particularly watch- 
 ful in regard to foreigners, especially Americans, since the Lopez 
 raids. An American needs to be cautious, if he does not wish to be 
 made to " walk Spanish." But the Cubans might teach us some- 
 thing of politeness. All the wheels and cogs and cranks and cams, 
 and all other parts of the machinery of human intercourse, go there 
 as smoothly as if they were constantly oiled. The graceful bow or 
 wave of the hand, the milk gracias (thousand thanks), and many 
 another thing as trifling, make a temporary residence among such 
 people far more agreeable than it would be if they had the cold 
 manners of some other nations. But there is a ludicrous side to it. 
 Now, if two Worcester County men should meet in the main street of 
 their county capital, one with a lighted cigar, and the other with an 
 
 * As we know now, there was never any chance for the election of Webster, who was then Secre- 
 tary of State, and managed the Cuban filibusters very well. General Scott was nominated by Web- 
 ster's party, but defeated by General Pierce, of New Hampshire. Webster died before the year 
 closed. 
 
i8s2 217 
 
 unlighted one (always provided the law did not forbid smoking in 
 Worcester streets), and if one should ask the other for a '• light,'' 
 and get one, and if, in doing all this, those two men should go 
 through the evolutions of two Cubans doing the like in Havana, I 
 shouldn't be surprised if the nearest constable were called to take 
 them off as soon as possible to the Worcester Limatic Hospital. 
 
 Publicit}^ is the rule of life in Cuba. Many of the artisans work 
 in shops flush with the street, so that, as you pass along the side- 
 walk, there are places where you can touch a half-dozen shoemakers 
 or as many tailors with your cane. The women go shopping in 
 their volantes, and, instead of getting out, make the clerks bring the 
 goods to be examined to the carriage. — no great inconvenience, to 
 be sure ; for, what with the narrow sidewalk and the shallow shop. 
 the counter is not often more than eight or ten feet from the zolanu. 
 Although Spanish customs condemn women to a life of comparative 
 seclusion (only allowing them to walk in the street at special times, 
 and then accompanied either by brothers, husbands, or parents), 
 yet nowhere else that I have travelled is their domestic life so much 
 exposed to the public as in Cuba. Their parlors are always next the 
 street and the windows are so large and so readily looked in at 
 (not being glazed) that every article of furniture and every person in 
 the room is as plainly seen from the sidewalk as from the inside. 
 The window shutters are mostly kept closed in the forenoon: but 
 by 2 or 3 P.M., when the young ladies are all nicely dressed, and 
 ready to see and be seen, they are opened. The ladies, if not more 
 than two, sit or stand so near the windows that as you pass them 
 on the narrow sidewalk, you would brush against their cloches, were 
 it not for the iron mndow bars. The chairs, mostly arm-chairs, are 
 set in parallel rows each side of the window or windows. In the 
 parlors of the poorer people there is often but one window; and in 
 nine-tenths of them you will see sis chairs thus placed, three on each 
 side. When there are visitors, the people of the house sit in those 
 nearest the wall, and their guests in the others. No matter how 
 large the social party, they are all seated in this way. Each guest 
 can thus look out of the window, and can be seen by all who pass 
 along the street Often, of an afternoon. I have seen the ladies of a 
 family seated by one window, and their negro servants lounging at 
 the other. 
 
 .\mong thousands of women whom I saw in these parlors. I do 
 
2l8 CUBA IN 1852 
 
 not recall an instance in which one of them was either working or 
 reading. They sit in idleness to gaze and be gazed at. A Cuban 
 lady is about as useless as can be imagined. All work is derogatory, 
 fit only for slaves, and hence is rejected. Eating, drinking, sleeping, 
 dressing, and driving out are their methods of killing time. But 
 some Yankees know how to make them pay for their idleness. 
 An American mantua-maker, who did some work for Mrs. Spring, 
 said that her net profits on the dresses made at her shop for a single 
 party were $600. 
 
 March 2. — We reached Key West on the "Isabel" at 5 p.m. on 
 the 29th, and remained four hours looking about the town, as well as 
 over it, from the top of structures erected as lookouts for wrecked 
 vessels. Our whole voyage from First Day morning to Third Day 
 evening was the very perfection of sea travel ; the temperature that 
 of a New England July, modified by the sea-breezes ; the sky almost 
 without a cloud ; the water calm as a mill-pond ; the moon, almost 
 at its first quarter, giving sufficient light for evenings ; and last, 
 though not least, an agreeable company of passengers. With all 
 these, who could not make a pleasant voyage ? I landed at 
 Savannah, leaving my cousins, whom I rejoined at Charleston. 
 
 March 8, Philadelphia. — We spent one day in Charleston, and 
 then came on to Richmond. There on the 6th (First Day evening) 
 I took the cars for Washington, leaving Marcus and Rebecca at 
 Richmond, and arrived here at noon. So end my notes on Cuba. 
 
 At the time of Dr. Earle's sojourn in Cuba, its 45,000 square 
 miles contained about 1,200,000 inhabitants, of whom more 
 than 300,000 were slaves. The slave-trade was in vigorous 
 activity, in spite of treaties and armed squadrons ; and nearly 
 5,000 slaves in a year were brought over from Africa. Its finan- 
 cial prosperity was great. It had doubled its population in 
 thirty years, sugar was in demand, wealth was increasing, and 
 there was no great wish for independence or for annexation to 
 the United States, whose slaveholding rulers then desired to 
 extend our national area of slavery by purchasing or conquer- 
 ing it. President Polk had offered Spain $100,000,000 for 
 Cuba in 1848. In 1854 Mr. Buchanan, afterwards President, 
 joined Mason, of Virginia, and Soule, of Louisiana, in the 
 
1852 219 
 
 notorious Ostend manifesto, in which they declared that Cuba 
 ought to belong to the United States, and that, should Spain 
 be so wicked as to free the Cuban slaves, our country ought to 
 take the island by force. Ten years later President Lincoln 
 freed the American slaves, and this led to legal though partial 
 emancipation in Cuba in 1870. Since then the island has 
 been in insurrection half the time, and has now been largely 
 depopulated and financially ruined by the attempts of Spain to 
 put down the rebellion. There could scarcely be a greater 
 contrast between the idle and gay Cuba of 1852 and the 
 tormented and decimated Cuba of 1898. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON. 
 
 From Cuba Dr. Earle returned to Leicester, where he had 
 the care of an invalid brother, and where his housekeeper was 
 his sister Lucy, for whom in her disappointed life he tenderly 
 cared; but later in 1852, he established himself in New York 
 for a time. There he was consulted in cases of insanity, and 
 often gave expert evidence in the courts. His acquaintance with 
 the City Lunatic Asylum and his official connection as visitor 
 gave him a continuing interest in its fortunes, especially after its 
 old "mad-house" (which he compared for unfitness with the 
 Timar-hane of Stamboul and the Munich place of torture) had 
 been replaced, under Dr. Moses Ranney, by a better building. 
 In 1856, while collecting facts for his statistical work in the 
 Philadelphia Quarterly, he got from Dr. Ranney figures show- 
 ing how extreme had been the mortality at Blackwell's Island 
 in the worst years, — a fact which he often mentioned afterwards, 
 and particularly when in 1876 I was carrying on an inquiry 
 into the neglect and death-rate of the insane poor in the 
 Tewksbury State Almshouse, an affair in which he took great 
 interest.* 
 
 • An abstract of these statistics used by Dr. Earle will be useful for contrast with the later figures 
 of the much enlarged and dispersed insane asylums of New York City, now classed together as the 
 Manhattan State Hospital, but lacking much of the hospital character from constant overcrowding. 
 Dr. Ranney, who took charge in 1847, thus reports the years: — 
 
 IVhole No. 
 Years. Patients. Admitted. Recovered. Died. Remaining. 
 
 1847 779 396 146 '53 364 
 
 1848 855 491 163 1 16 437 
 
 1849 896 459 170 212 401 
 
 1850 792 39' «54 77 464 
 
 1851 905 441 '97 80 5'7 
 
 1852 1,012 495 234 '3° 527 
 
 1853 i,o'4 4S7 2SS "S 542 
 
 1854 1,028 486 180 190 555 
 
 '855 926 37' "94 'oo 573 
 
 1856 939 366 174 ^ 597 
 
 10 years, average and totals . 915 4.383 ',867 1,239 481 
 
 Thus it seems that in ten years, with 4,766 cases (383 remaining from 1846), the average recoveries 
 were 187, and the average of deaths 124, — a yearly excess of recoveries of 63 ; and even in the cholera 
 years, 1849 and 1854, the deaths were but 52 more than the recoveries ; while of late years the deaths 
 
1852-1861 221 
 
 Dr. Earle's services as a medical expert in disputed cases of 
 homicide, bequest, etc., were many and important, from 1852 
 onwards. In the trial of John M, Thurston for murder at 
 Ithaca, N.Y., in 1853, he testified to the fact of insanity; and 
 the defendant was finally acquitted on this ground. Thirty- 
 five years later another trial for murder occurred in the same 
 county, that of Richard Barber, — a very peculiar case, in 
 which Dr. Earle took much interest, though he had then (in 
 1888) practically ceased to give evidence.* While he was 
 thus called upon, he testified in New York, New Jersey, 
 Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and was one of the many 
 experts who gave their opinion at the trial of Guiteau for 
 the assassination of President Garfield in 188 1. In the case of 
 Willard Clark, tried at New Haven in 1855 for the murder of 
 R. W. Wight, the three experts who testified to his insanity 
 were Dr. Earle and his two contemporaries, a little older than 
 himself, Dr. Isaac Ray, then of Providence, and Dr. J. S. 
 Butler, of Hartford. The verdict of acquittal, based on this 
 testimony, was directly opposed to prevailing public opinion 
 in New Haven; but its justice was proved by the event. 
 Several years later his insanity was again tested in the Con- 
 necticut court. He was remanded to the Wethersfield prison, 
 and thence sent to the Middletown Insane Hospital, where he 
 died. 
 
 As illustrating the character of another expert, Dr. Brigham, 
 of Utica, the following incident is related by Dr. Stephen 
 Smith, of New York : — 
 
 I happened to be present, as a lad, at the trial of Freeman, a 
 negro homicide, and sat among the audience in a sort of amphi- 
 theatre, with the court and bar below, when an extraordinary event 
 occurred. John Van Buren, son of the President, was the attorney- 
 general, and was prosecuting the case against Freeman, whom Gov- 
 ernor Seward was defending on a plea of insanity. A chief witness 
 
 largely exceed recoveries. In seven years, 1S90-97, the whole number averaging 7,362, and the 
 admissions 1,600, the recoveries reported were but 1,269, while the deaths were 4,310, — more than 
 threefold. This confirms Dr. Earle's preference for small asylums. 
 
 * Barber was a young Englishman from the little parish of Billingboro, in Lincolnshire, who came 
 of an epileptic family, and, in the unconsciousness of the epileptic furor, killed one of his best friends, 
 an aged English woman, at Trumansburg, near Cornell University. 
 
22 2 DR. BRIGHAM AND JOHN VAN BUREN 
 
 for the defence was Dr. Brigham, of the Utica Asylum, then at the 
 height of his reputation as an expert in lunacy. He had seen and 
 examined Freeman, and testified that he was insane ; and Van 
 Buren was seeking to break down his evidence by cross-examination, 
 " How did you decide that he was insane, doctor ? Was it by look- 
 ing at his face } " '' That was one thing," said Dr. Brigham. 
 " Did you think him insane by looking at his nose ? " *' No." " At 
 his mouth.?" "Not entirely." "At his eyes?" "The eye is a 
 very expressive feature, indicative of the mind ; but I did not judge 
 altogether by that. I took all the features into consideration." 
 " Do you mean to tell this jury that you can decide whether a man 
 is crazy by looking at him ? " "I have sometimes done so." 
 "Will you, then, look through this large audience, and pick out 
 some one as insane, from the looks of his face ? " " That would 
 be difficult." " From your testimony it would not be difficult for 
 you, and I insist that you shall make the test." " Very well," said 
 Dr. Brigham, quite composed, erect, and impressive ; and he began 
 to point his hand towards the benches, moving it as he passed from 
 one section to another, and searching all our faces with his keen 
 eye. My own heart beat fast as he came near me with his search, 
 for fear he should pronounce me crazy ; but he passed my section 
 by, and had gone past the middle of the benches, when he suddenly 
 stopped, raised his long arm, pointed his long finger at a man in 
 one of the upper seats, and said very gravely, "That man is in- 
 sane." Instantly the man sprang from his seat, angry and swearing, 
 and rushed down towards the bench and bar, crying : " You lie ! I 
 am not crazy," with other manifestations of mania. The judge rose 
 from the bench; Mr. Van Buren jumped on a chair; Dr. Brigham 
 stood still, fixing his eye on the madman. The sheriffs rushed in, 
 seized the shouting maniac, and the court adjourned in great agita- 
 tion. The cross-examination of Dr. Brigham broke down, and Mr. 
 Seward won his case. But Van Buren insinuated next day that 
 Governor Seward had placed a madman in the audience for the 
 purpose of having such a scene. 
 
 While Dr. Earle was in Carolina and Cuba, his friend and 
 successor at the Bloomingdale Asylum became deeply inter- 
 ested in the establishment of a hospital for the insane at the 
 seat of government; and in August, 1852, Congress made the 
 
1852-1861 223 
 
 first appropriation for a Government Hospital for the Insane in 
 Washington. A few months later Dr. Nichols was appointed 
 superintendent there, and early in 1855 a section of the build- 
 ings was opened under his charge. He naturally invited Dr. 
 Earle to visit him, and profited by his experience. The first 
 visit was late in February, 1856, during the administration of 
 President Pierce, of New Hampshire, and when General Banks, 
 of Massachusetts, was speaker of the House of Representa- 
 tives, in a very agitated session of Congress. Dr. Earle, who 
 had seen every President since Monroe, and had often visited 
 the White House, took the first opportunity to pay his re- 
 spects to the New Hampshire President. His diary says 
 {Feb. 21, 1856): — 
 
 I came to Washington from Philadelphia, where I had visited my 
 sister and other kindred, and met many old friends. Was met at the 
 station by Dr. Nichols, who took me to this hospital, two and a half 
 miles from the Capitol, and gave me a very comfortable room, over- 
 looking almost the. whole of the city, — the Capitol, White House, 
 Washington Monument, etc. He has less than 100 patients, a farm 
 of 195 acres on the Potomac, south of the Capitol, on which last 
 year grew 1,000 bushels of peaches. The river is still covered with 
 ice. Among the animals kept are two Arabian horses, descended 
 from the Arabian sent to President Van Buren, about the time of my 
 return from Europe, a big and jolly Rocky Mountain bear, two 
 monkeys, a deer, a wildcat, a fox, a raccoon, and two parrots. 
 
 February 22, Washington's Birthday. — This evening I went with 
 Dr. Nichols to a reception at the White House. Shook hands with 
 the President, bowed very low to Mrs. President, talked with Lieu- 
 tenant Maury and a Congressman from Maine, looked up to General 
 Houston, senator from Texas, six feet two in height, saw Speaker 
 Banks, and should have been introduced to him, had he not been 
 at the time gallanting a young lady round the East Room in the 
 promenade. We were crowded by five hundred people, and gazed 
 at many silks, satins, laces, flounces, low necks, and bare shoulder- 
 blades. 
 
 Saturday, February 23. — Drove to Washington with Dr. Nichols, 
 to call on several Congressmen on business of the hospital ; but, the 
 
224 WASHINGTON IN 1856 
 
 day being fine, none were at home. We found the Secretary of the 
 Navy, Mr. J. C. Dobbin,* of North Carolina, in his office, — a small, 
 meagre, delicate-looking man, with a large head and a small, soft 
 hand and a voice hoarse and feeble, — the effect of bronchitis. At 
 the National Observatory we examined all the instruments, and had 
 a long, interesting talk with Lieutenant Maury, the director, famous 
 throughout the world for his discoveries in regard to the wind and 
 the currents of the ocean, their laws, direction, etc. These discov- 
 eries are estimated to have saved $10,000,000 a year to the mer- 
 chants and ship-owners of Great Britain alone. He gave me a 
 chart he had just finished, of the winds and weather of the whole 
 Atlantic, made from an analysis of observations covering 165,000 
 daj's, in all parts of that ocean. It seems that the atmosphere is 
 more unstable in the Northern than in the Southern Atlantic, — we 
 having more calms, more gales, more fogs, more rains, and more 
 thunder than they do farther south. In the latitude of Massachu- 
 setts, by this chart, there will be in January 4 calm days, 27 gales, 
 13 rainy days, 2 foggy ones, and i thunder-storm; in February 6 
 calm days, in March only 3 ; but there will be 16 rainy days and 6 
 foggy ones, with only 16 gales. At the War Office I was introduced 
 to Dr. Wood, an army surgeon, nephew of the late President Taylor, 
 and resembling him enough to have been his son. We visited the 
 Washington Monument, which has reached a height of 170 feet. It 
 is to be 518 feet, just a leet/e higher than any other artificial struct- 
 ure in the world, except the Great Pyramid. But I am incUned to 
 think it will not be completed in my day. The " Know-nothings " 
 got the management of it about a year ago, and were to finish it 
 immediately ; but hitherto they have not laid a stone. 
 
 " Know-nothing " was the name colloquially given to the 
 short-lived "American" party, organized in 1854, in secret, 
 oath-bound societies, the members of which, when questioned, 
 " knew nothing " about it. By this party a great many Con- 
 gressmen had been elected, among them Mr. Banks, the 
 Speaker, who was at this very time a prominent candidate of 
 that party for President in the election of November, 1856. 
 He was nominated, but declined in favor of Fremont, the 
 Republican, who was defeated by James Buchanan, of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 * A good friend of Miss Dix ; see her Life. 
 
1852-1861 225 
 
 Sunday, February 24. — Accompanied Dr. Nichols to the small 
 Unitarian church, and there heard a most excellent sermon from 
 Moncure Daniel Conway, a young Virginian, lately in the Divinity 
 School at Harvard College, of apparently great intellect and origi- 
 nality. The sermon aimed to maintain the rights of the individual, 
 his supremacy within those rights, over all associations, — a pro- 
 gressive sermon, it would usually be called. He claimed that every 
 man should lay aside all precedents, discard the ideas and conven- 
 tionalities of his predecessors, rid himself of his own prejudices, and 
 boldly think for himself, arraigning nations and their institutions 
 before the tribunal of his own soul, and judge of them by the stand- 
 ard of conscience and the " light within." * Among the audience 
 were John P. Hale, senator from New Hampshire, and Mr. Seaton, 
 partner of the English publisher, Joseph Gales, of the well-known 
 firm of Gales & Seaton, of the Natiojial Bitelligencer. Mr. Webb, 
 a young lawyer, related to James Watson Webb of the New York 
 Courier and Enquirer, drove home with us, and dined at the hospi- 
 tal, where we passed a very sociable afternoon. 
 
 February 25. — After a call on a former pupil of mine at Provi- 
 dence, Dr. Daniel Breed, who was afterwards a pupil of Liebig in 
 Germany, and is now an examiner in the Patent OfRce, I went to the 
 Senate Chamber, where a speech was expected from Senator Jones 
 of Tennessee. The galleries were crowded, so that I could only 
 reach the outside of the doorway ; but, waiting patiently, I got in at 
 last, among a crowd as dense as the Leicester sheep used to be in 
 our stable at shearing-time, and I looked down on the assembled 
 wisdom of the nation. I recognized Houston of Texas, Cass of 
 Michigan (my Paris acquaintance of 1838), Seward of New York, 
 Hale of New Hampshire, Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson of 
 Massachusetts ; but no one pointed out to me the other senators. 
 Jones was speaking on the admission of Kansas, without slavery, in 
 
 * As a follower of Fox and Penn, this was acceptable doctrine to Dr. Earle in its religious aspect ; 
 but he was hardly ready to go so far in political and social radicalism as this young Virginian, the friend of 
 Emerson and Theodore Parker, and afterwards of Carlyle and Browning, during his long residence in 
 London as the successor of William J. Fox at the South Place Chapel. He did not remain long in 
 Washington, then had a church at Cincinnati, which di\aded in 1862, and Mr. Conway came to 
 Concord, INIass., whence early in 1S63 he went to England. He now lives in New York. Mr. 
 Hale and the other senators named below were friends of Mr. Conway (most of them), and often 
 heard him preach. Mr. Hale had been in the Senate nearly ten years, where he was the first dis- 
 tinctly anti-slavery senator, but was re-enforced in 1849 and subsequent years by Chase of Ohio, 
 Seward, Sumner, and Wilson, and many others. His son-in-law, Mr. Chandler, is now a senator 
 from New Hampshire. 
 
226 POLITICAL DISSENSIONS 
 
 answer to a speech by Wilson a few days ago. He took the Southern 
 view of the question with energy and eloquence for about three 
 hours. Some remark of his called up Hale, who spoke as ener- 
 getically and eloquently for twenty minutes, and at adjournment 
 gave notice that he would answer Mr. Jones at length on Thursday. 
 Strong language was used on both sides, and there were sallies of 
 wit by both senators. Had a foreigner, unversed in our politics, 
 listened, he would have carried away a fear that everybody in this 
 country is going to kill every other body in course of a few days. 
 I walked back to the hospital, to find refuge with the insane — who 
 don't talk so. 
 
 February 26. — In the afternoon of this Tuesday (the day when 
 the wives of the cabinet officers receive calls each week) I called 
 with Dr. Nichols at Mr. McClelland's, the Secretary of the Interior, 
 under whose jurisdiction is the hospital, and from whom Dr. Nichols 
 receives his appointment. We were received by Mrs. McClelland, 
 her very handsome niece, and a young lady from Baltimore. I had 
 seen the young ladies before, at the hospital, whither they came with 
 the Secretary the day I reached Washington. Mrs. McClelland is 
 from WilHamstown, Mass., but has long lived in Michigan, where 
 her husband has been governor. We took tea at Dr. Breed's, the 
 only guest besides ourselves being a handsome, bright-eyed, intel- 
 lectual-looking Miss Coues from Portsmouth, N.H., whose father, 
 Samuel E. Coues, author of a queer book about the planetary system, 
 is employed in the Patent Office.* To-day the ice in the Potomac 
 is still unbroken, though much softened ; but the snow has mostly 
 gone, and Pennsylvania Avenue is slightly dusty. 
 
 February 28. — I went to the Senate Chamber, crowded almost to 
 suffocation in the galleries, and listened to a speech of nearly two 
 hours, on the Kansas question, by John P. Hale, of a higher degree 
 of eloquence than I had believed him capable. He was followed, on 
 the other side, by Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia, one of the 
 most able and eloquent members of the Senate, whatever may be 
 thought of him by those who dislike his view of slavery. I had 
 previously met the architect of the Capitol extension, and examined 
 his plans. If completed as now designed, we shall have one Ameri- 
 can building (the first) to compare with the palaces and public 
 buildings of Europe. 
 
 " Father of the present Professor Coues. 
 
1852-1861 227 
 
 Thus the diary continues, with calls in the city, speeches in 
 the Senate and House on some phase of the Kansas question, 
 visits of Congressmen and others to the hospital, dinner parties, 
 receptions at the White House and elsewhere, and remarks on 
 the weather and passing events. It was a winter ot unusual 
 severity, snow and frost continuing until late March, and 
 the ice in the great Potomac lingering a month longer than 
 common. He hears Douglas, of Illinois, "the little giant," 
 speak on the Kansas issue which Douglas himself brought upon 
 the country, and which nothing but the Civil War could finally 
 settle. He goes to the sermons of Mr. Conway, and meets him 
 at a hospital dinner, with this comment in the diary : — 
 
 Sunday, March 23. — We drove to hear Mr. Conway's sermon 
 to-day ; and he came home with us, dined, and passed the afternoon. 
 He is as interesting in conversation as in the pulpit, a man of 
 superior intellect and of moral qualities of a very high order ; yet 
 his religion is that of the extreme Unitarians, or nearly so. He says 
 he believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, but not in his Deity. 
 Neither does he believe in the miracles. Among his reasons for this 
 disbelief he alleges that not one of the books of the New Testament 
 was written until fifty years or more after the birth of Christ, and 
 long after his death, — time enough, he thinks, for a story to grow 
 considerably, if stories grew then as rapidly as now. He questions 
 that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors of the four 
 Gospels. Indeed, the book of Matthew, he says, bears internal 
 evidence of having been written by four different men, containing 
 four styles of composition, each as different from either of the others 
 as the style of Webster differs from that of Henry A. Wise, of 
 Virginia. This heterodoxy of his does not divide his church so 
 much as his anti-slavery sermons, which please Horace Greeley and 
 Senator Hale, both of whom I have seen there. But nine families 
 have withdrawn because of one anti-slavery sermon. 
 
 At this time Dr. Earle's theological opinions were hardly so 
 positive as Mr, Conway's, on one side, or those of the Gurney- 
 ite branch of the Quakers, on the other. He had not joined in 
 the Hicksite schism, mentioned in a former chapter, though his 
 opinions must have inclined that way. Soon after leaving the 
 
228 SECTS AMONG THE QUAKERS 
 
 hospital, where he had this conversation with Mr. Conway, he 
 was present in Philadelphia at Yearly Meeting, and in his diary 
 thus expresses himself on the points of difference in the Society 
 of Friends : — 
 
 It appears to me that the " Wilburites " in this Yearly Meeting are 
 just about the same in opinion that Moses Brown, of Providence, 
 Elisha Thornton, and David Buffum, Sr., were forty years ago, and 
 what the "Body of Friends" were in 1826. The Hicksites have 
 gone off towards Unitarianism : the Gurneyites (followers of Joseph 
 John Gurney, of England) have gone and are going off towards all 
 forms of what is called Orthodoxy, — Episcopalianism, Trinitarianism, 
 Presbyterianism. But the Wilburites wage the war rather too bit- 
 terly. They are too intolerant and denunciatory to comport with my 
 idea of Christianity. They are at one extreme in this meeting, the 
 Gurneyites at the other. And there are middlemen who will urge a 
 temporizing course. If there be a split, it will be from the secession 
 of the Gurneyites, who, being by far the weaker party in Phila- 
 delphia, will have to leave the books in the hands of the Wilburites. 
 In 1844, before I left Philadelphia to go to Bloomingdale, I gave my 
 opinion that the society had better separate then, — the sooner, the 
 better, — and thus save a vast amount of scandal, ill-feeling, and 
 backbiting. It was my belief then that no religious schism which 
 had advanced so far as this had in 1844 was ever settled; and time 
 has shown that I was right, for once. But I hardly think there will 
 be a separation this year. The Gurney party perhaps think they are 
 too weak to venture on so important a step. 
 
 This does not indicate a very enthusiastic partisan of any 
 theological opinion. Indeed, he was ever more concerned for 
 the spirit of Christianity than for dogma of any kind. 
 
 It was much the same in the political schism then going on 
 between the North and the South on the slavery question. Dr. 
 Earle, though his heart and conscience were on the anti-slavery 
 side, could not support extreme views. In Washington he went 
 to hear the debates of Congress on both sides of the Kansas 
 issue. Thus on March 20 he pressed into the crowded Senate 
 gallery to hear Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill, and afterwards the great opponent of Abraham 
 
1852-1861 229 
 
 Lincoln in contests for the Senate and the Presidency. He 
 says : — 
 
 Douglas spoke to a very silent audience for two hours and more. 
 Some allusion to remarks made by his colleague from Illinois, Lyman 
 Trumbull, called up Trumbull, who proved himself fully able to meet 
 his antagonist at all points. Trumbull is a new senator, and has 
 made but one speech before this day, but already has put himself in 
 the front rank among senators as an able, eloquent debater. As for 
 Douglas, all knew long ago that he is a very able man. This, wdth 
 his short stature, gave him years since the name of the "little giant." 
 He is a widower ; and, w^hile he was speaking. Senator Hale, seeing 
 that many ladies could get no seats in their gallery, proposed — since 
 much interest was felt in the speech, and peculiarly among the 
 ladies — that they should be admitted to seats on the floor of the 
 Senate. This required unanimous consent ; and Weller, of Cali- 
 fornia, objected. So the ladies were obliged to stay out. 
 
 March 30, Mr. Conway's pulpit was occupied by the eloquent 
 Thomas Starr King, then of Boston, but afterwards of San 
 Francisco, where he did good service on the Union side in the 
 Civil War. The church was unusually full ; and among those 
 present were Senator Sumner, Speaker Banks, Anson Burlin- 
 game, and Senator Hale. Less than two months after this 
 Sumner was brutally attacked in the Senate Chamber by Brooks, 
 of South Carolina ; and civil war on a small scale broke out in 
 Kansas, — the prelude to the great Civil War of 1861. 
 
 Early in 1857 Dr. Earle was again in Washington, and fre- 
 quent in his attendance on Congress and the Supreme Court, 
 Jan. 21, 1857, he writes : — 
 
 I sat for a few minutes in the Supreme Court, Judge Taney and 
 seven of his associate justices (all but one) being on the bench. 
 They are as fine-looking men as you can find anywhere. It seemed 
 to me that Justice B. R. Curtis, of Boston, has the most strongly 
 intellectual aspect, and Justice John McLean, of Cincinnati, the 
 most striking external appearance of high moral faculties. George T. 
 Curtis, of Boston, was arguing a case relating to the insurance of 
 
230 WASHINGTON IN 1857 
 
 Donald McKay's big ship, the " Great Republic," burned in New 
 York four years ago.* 
 
 It was commonly said in Washington and Philadelphia in 
 this winter of 1856-57 that, if Judge McLean had been nomi- 
 nated by the Republicans for the Presidency instead of Colonel 
 Fremont, Mr. Buchanan would have been defeated. But he 
 was chosen, and was now on his way to Washington to succeed 
 General Pierce in the White House. In other respects the 
 political and personal situation was changed. Charles Sumner, 
 not yet recovered from the attack of Brooks, was preparing to 
 sail for Europe; and Brooks himself, whom Dr. Earle saw and 
 described in the Senate Chamber, January 23, as "lounging 
 upon one of the seats not far from Sumner's vacant chair, his 
 hair black and profuse, his complexion ruddy, wearing a goatee, 
 but neither mustache nor whiskers, and almost always with a 
 black glove on his left hand," was dead on the 27th and buried 
 on the 29th. Senator Douglas was married, and Dr. Earle met 
 him and his handsome wife at a dancing party in the house of 
 Secretary McClelland. He portrays her as "four inches taller 
 than her husband, — almost as tall as he is, including his hat, — 
 with dark hair and eyebrows, and in the form of her head and 
 features almost precisely like cousin Mary S., but taller and 
 heavier." Of the Senate in 1857 he says : — 
 
 As contrasted with the Senate of last winter, it is as broadly dif- 
 ferent as a battlefield is from a Quaker meeting. Then it seemed 
 soaked in gall and wormwood : this winter it is smeared with honey. 
 If my eyes did not play me false, I actually saw Douglas leave his 
 seat, and come almost the whole length of the chamber to shake 
 hands and chat with Seward ; while Hale was cosily talking with 
 Evans, of South Carolina, and Butler (uncle of Brooks) laughing and 
 joking with Foote, of Vermont. Mason, of Virginia, acting president 
 of the Senate, left the chair, and called upon Foote to fill it in his 
 absence. 
 
 There was much tea-drinking and dining and evening festivity 
 this winter, in which Dr. Earle took a kindly share ; his friend, 
 
 •The court had not yet pronounced its notorious Dred Scott decision of 1857, intended to be tlie 
 bulwark of negro slavery. 
 
I852-I86I 231 
 
 Dr. Nichols, being in love, and often seeking the society of the 
 young ladies. Of one Washington house he says : — 
 
 Mrs. M.'s eldest son is a great friend of Dr. Nichols. This 
 sufficiently accounts for our visits there. Were it not unphilosophi- 
 cal to look for more causes than this sufficient one, I might add that 
 his sister, aged twenty, is a handsome brunette. Other brunettes 
 are coming up after her. There are Alice and Isabella, and Nannie 
 and Salhe, and Jeanie and Lucy, — interspersed with several brothers, 
 — in a regularly descending series. Great havoc will be made one 
 of these years under the jacket pockets of Washington beaux. 
 
 Dr. Earle was ever a discriminating admirer of beauty. In 
 describing a party at General Webb's, he says : — 
 
 We arrived precisely at 10 p.m., and were very early; for people 
 kept coming till midnight. It was the most " sectional " and " par- 
 tisan " of any that I ever attended in Washington, — decidedly 
 Northern and emphatically Republican. Hardly a Southern man 
 of note was there, except Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, with his 
 magnificently dressed wife and two young ladies. Neither were there 
 many Democratic members of Congress. The Republicans in great 
 numbers, from Banks downward, were there. Among other notables 
 were Judge McLean and Mr. Stoeckel, the Russian ambassador, who 
 has recently married an American, Miss Howard, of Springfield. 
 She was present, and among the finest-looking of the company. In 
 the ball-room the solemnities were concluded with a Virginia reel 
 about 2 A.M. As the ladies with us were relatives of the host, we 
 were among the last who left ; and we reached home a little before 
 3 A.M. The next morning (January 29) was the first day since my 
 coming that I have not risen before the sun. However, I was down- 
 stairs before eight o'clock. 
 
 Dr. Earle was frequently meeting his former pupils, either of 
 the Fall River school, where he taught so early, or of the 
 Friends' School at Providence. In the preceding winter, going 
 upon the floor of the House of Representatives, whom should 
 he encounter but a " Know-nothing " member of Congress from 
 Fall River, — James Buffington, who long continued to repre- 
 
232 RECEPTIONS AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 sent that light-house and post-office district as a Republican, 
 when the American party had merged in the new Republican 
 party. 
 
 I looked at him, and he looked at me (I had not seen him since 
 1836). Then I looked a little harder, and he looked a little harder. 
 I extended my hand, and said, " I believe this is the man, but am 
 not positive." He took my hand, and said, " I should call this PUny 
 Earle." Whereupon I was convinced that he knew some things, 
 though politically a " Know-nothing." " I have grown old faster 
 than you have," said he ; " you don't look any older to me than 
 you did twenty years ago." That may well be, thought I ; and yet a 
 vast change may have come over me. 
 
 He met his friend again repeatedly in this second winter, and 
 saw him taking part in the counting of votes for Buchanan and 
 Fremont and in the other proceedings of Congress. He met 
 hi-m at the White House receptions, which were greatly 
 crowded, and which he thus describes, speaking of the last one 
 held by President Pierce before giving up the chair to James 
 Buchanan, the last pro-slavery President : — 
 
 Dr. Nichols and I went to the White House about 9 p.m., Febru- 
 ar)' 27. If some of the former soirees had been "jams," this was 
 "jamnation." We met many persons coming away, either because 
 they could not get in or because they had been in and were only too 
 glad to get out again. Every apartment in the great house was a 
 complete, if not boundless, " continuity " of human nature. After 
 getting to the upper step of the portico, it was some fifteen minutes 
 before we could enter the door, the crowd being so great. 
 
 My arduous and perilous journey through the entrance hall, the 
 corridor, the Red, Blue, and Green Rooms, into the great East Room, 
 and so back to the corridor, was mostly performed alone ; for, at the 
 door between Red and Blue, Dr. Nichols and I got separated, and 
 thenceforth, like Ulysses and Telemachus, in Fe'nelon's fable, we 
 wandered up and down apart, each subject to his own series of 
 adventures. As we escaped from the portico into the front hall, our 
 misery, which loved company, was softened by seeing just in front of 
 us Mr. Guthrie, the Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing his President 
 
1852-1861 233 
 
 under difficulties. His hat-brim was turned up defiantly, and his 
 elephantine form was yielding submissive to the human current. • At 
 the middle hall, or corridor, the crowd grew more intolerable ; for 
 there the ladies, who had entered a side room, joined the gentlemen 
 to force a way into the Blue Room, where stood President Pierce. 
 Alas for the fashionable crinolines now ! Willing or unwilling, they 
 must shrink to their least compass, reversing Milton's account of 
 those other distressed angels. 
 
 Who in their own dimensions, like themselves. 
 In close recess and secret conclave sat. 
 Frequent and full ; 
 
 for here they were reduced to their lowest terms and least common 
 multiple. As I was entering the Red Room doorway, Mr. Whitfield, 
 the pro-slaver}' M.C. from Kansas, attempted to edge himself in on 
 the right, past the door-post. I thought his crowding interfered with 
 my rights as a free citizen of Massachusetts, so I paid him in his 
 own coin, upon which, evidently intending to keep all he had and 
 get all he could, he put his hands and knees against the door-post. 
 This gave him what Archimedes said he lacked in order to move the 
 globe, a firm basis ; and, thus braced, he gave a tremendous push 
 backwards, but somewhat towards the Red Room. As good luck 
 would have it, his back was almost directly against mine, so that he 
 forced me, as by a catapult, very suddenly, but safe and sound, into 
 the Red Room, whence I advanced slowly, with the stream, to the 
 Blue Room. The doorway between the two will long be remembered 
 by me for one of those marvellous escapes which occur at intervals 
 of our life on earth. I was lucky enough to enter the doorway about 
 its middle ; and, the walls being thick, it is, in fact, a short entry. 
 Once fairly in it, I took an observation of my surroundings. Five 
 young ladies, all strangers to me, encompassed me round about, the 
 whole six of us so closely grouped that a middle-sized crinoline would 
 have encased us, as a thimble does the finger's end. And there stood 
 I in the midst of them, like — like — well, like the handle of a castor, 
 rising in the midst of pepper-box, mustard-pot, sweet-oil, and vinegar- 
 cruet. I was on the point of saying, " How are you, gals ? " when 
 we emerged, all in a lump, from the doorway. The ladies laughed, 
 shook out their crinolines, chatted, and pursued their way, as I did 
 mine, to where we were introduced to the President. I told him I 
 
2 34 PRESIDENTS INAUGURATED 
 
 thought he was to be pitied, but he was so busy talking to the five 
 girls that he did not hear me. Then I slowly passed into the Green 
 Room, and around the usual promenade course of the East Room, in 
 the centre of which is a marble table, under the chandelier. A girl, 
 ten years old, was upon the table (placed there for safety) ; and 
 General Houston, of Texas, was leaning against it. As I came away, 
 one of the last noteworthy sights indoors was the Russian ambassador 
 and his lady, clambering over a huge pile of hats, coats, and shawls 
 in the entrance hall. 
 
 The next important function described by Dr. Earle was 
 the inauguration of President Buchanan, March 4, 1857, as 
 follows : — 
 
 This day rose bright and clear over Washington, the tempera- 
 ture such that you might be comfortable without an overcoat, yet not 
 uncomfortable with one. All the world was agog when Dr. Nichols 
 and I drove into the city at 10 a.m., the road thronged with people, 
 like those which lead into Worcester on a cattle-show day. The 
 grounds at the east front of the Capitol were already occupied by 
 multitudes, and the street of the procession greatly crowded. Upper 
 windows and even roofs along the route were occupied. A large 
 platform was erected over the eastern steps of the Capitol for the 
 incoming and the outgoing President, the Supreme Court judges, 
 senators and members of Congress, and such other persons as could 
 get upon it. This placed them where a concourse of 100,000 people 
 might see them distinctly. Directly in front of this there was an- 
 other platform, some four feet high, to protect numerous pieces of 
 ornamental marble lying there until warmer weather shall permit 
 putting them in place in the new Capitol. This platform, upon 
 which I got a position, would perhaps hold 10,000 persons. My 
 place was almost directly in front of the chair intended for Mr. 
 Buchanan. At length, after long waiting, there was great hurrahing 
 by the crowd, and much noise from the bands of music, intimating 
 the coming of Mr. Buchanan, whom a covered passage protected on 
 his way from the street to the Capitol (west front). Fifteen or 
 twenty minutes later the door leading to the eastern portico was 
 opened ; and President Pierce, with Mr. Buchanan, made his ap- 
 pearance, followed by the judges of the Supreme Court in their 
 
1852-1861 235 
 
 black silk gowns. Advancing to the front of the platform, in the 
 centre, they took seats amidst applause from the surrounding " sov- 
 ereigns." Then foreign ambassadors, members of Congress, and a 
 pell-mell crowd of men, women, and children followed, all running 
 to secure the best places. Gold-laced, small-clothed, and cock- 
 hatted ministers plenipotentiary were elbowed by farmers' boys and 
 pushed aside by firemen rigged in fire dresses. Contrasting these 
 ceremonies (unceremonious) with those of great State occasions I 
 had seen in Europe, I could imagine the foreign ministers saying in 
 their hearts, " All republicanism." 
 
 When Buchanan began to read his inaugural, and the crowd's 
 attention was consequently centred on him, I felt a fumbling near 
 my coat pocket. I edged aside a little, but the fumbling soon 
 began again ; and I looked round. Directly behind me stood a 
 blear-eyed, sandy-haired young man, in snuff-colored coat, who, 
 seeing my motion, gazed point-blank into vacancy, with the most 
 innocent expression ever seen on the face of man. I looked 
 point-blank into those innocent blear eyes, and said, "If you 
 don't look out, we'll have hold of you pretty soon." With a 
 voice as innocent as his expression had been, he said, "What 
 for } " " Oh," said I, " you are rather short ; and I want to lift 
 you up so you can see." I then turned to my neighbor. Dr. Brown, 
 of Bloomingdale, and said, "Look out for your pockets." Where- 
 upon the innocent snuff-colored coat wedged its way among the 
 people, and disappeared. 
 
 After the short inaugural was read. Chief Justice Taney admin- 
 istered the oath of office to Mr. Buchanan. There was a great 
 shaking of hands on the platform. The Vice-President, Brecken- 
 ridge, who had already taken the oath of his office in the Senate, 
 came forward, and bowed to the people ; and then the great mul- 
 titude dispersed. Miss Harriet Lane, the President's niece, rode 
 away in a barouche drawn by four white horses, and Buchanan, 
 Pierce, and Breckenridge in another, drawn by two whites. There 
 were twenty times as many people about the Capitol and in Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue to-day as at the first inauguration I witnessed here, 
 — March 4, 1837, — when President Van Buren, who had been 
 Vice-President, was inaugurated. While Buchanan was escorted 
 to-day by many military companies. Van Buren then rode from the 
 White House to the Capitol alone with General Jackson and with 
 
236 PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 no escort whatever.* So we advance towards the form and cere- 
 mony of monarchies. 
 
 In the twenty years that intervened between the retirement 
 of Presidents Jackson and Pierce, no less than seven Presidents 
 had been in power at Washington, no one of them exceeding 
 four years in office, and one (General W. H. Harrison) surviv- 
 ing his accession only a month. He had been succeeded by 
 John Tyler in April, 1841 ; and in July, 1850, General Taylor 
 had been succeeded by his Vice-President, Millard Fillmore. 
 In Pierce's administration his Vice-President, W. R. King, had 
 died, so that this period of twenty years was more marked 
 than any other by the short terms of these high officers. Bu- 
 chanan was succeeded by Abraham Lincoln, who was assassi- 
 nated at the beginning of his second four years, and, twenty 
 years after Lincoln's accession. President Garfield was assassi- 
 nated, so that there were again but seven Presidents in the 
 twenty-eight years from 185710 1885, all of whom Dr. Earle saw. 
 Andrew Johnson he saw and heard for the first time in the 
 Senate in January, 1859, when Dr. Earle was again in Wash- 
 ington on a visit to Dr. Nichols at the Government Hospital, 
 which was still small (130 patients only), but gave to its direc- 
 tor and his guests access to all that was distinguished in 
 Washington society of that time. Consequently, Dr. Earle 
 was again thrown into a tide of social festivity, by no means 
 disagreeable to the recluse of Leicester, when he came forth 
 from his cottage into the active world. Since the winter of 
 1857 Dr. Nichols had married Miss Maury, the brunette with 
 so many sisters ; and in her circle of friends Dr. Earle assisted 
 at dinner parties, one of which, almost an official gathering, he 
 has described in a letter to his sister at Leicester. 
 
 Jail. 28, 1859. — I dined to-day with Mr. Parker, who lives in 
 Washington not far from Mrs. Maury's, the mother of Mrs. Nichols. 
 The dinner hour being six, I presented myself then. The door was 
 opened by a negro in white gloves. Thinks I : " I'm in for it. This 
 
 • It might be said that to be escorted by the hero of New Orleans was equal to many militia 
 companies. Railroad-building had wrought the change in the multitude present. 
 
1S52-1861 237 
 
 is a white-glove dinner." Guests in the entry were putting on white 
 gloves ; while I, not expecting this grade of dinner, had come with- 
 out my gloves. I felt a little mortification, but put a bold face on, 
 and determined to make the best of it. So I went into the parlor, 
 spoke to my host and hostess, and was introduced to all the guests 
 who had arrived, — about half the expected twenty, — all of them 
 gauntleted in white kid. But this is a free country ; and, as all these 
 people were democrats, I consoled myself with the thought that I 
 was setting them a good democratic example. The party being all 
 assembled, two broad doors opened, one from the front and one 
 from the back parlor, and behold the dining-room, running parallel 
 with the parlors, of the same length and somewhat wider. We are 
 each informed what lady he is to escort to the table ; and the proces- 
 sion is formed in this order, as near as I recollect: i. Hon. Isaac 
 Toucey, of Hartford, Secretary of the Navy, with Mrs. Jacob Thomp- 
 son, wife of the Secretary of the Interior; 2. Postmaster-general 
 Brown, of Tennessee, with Mrs. Parker, our hostess ; 3. Colonel 
 Drinkard, chief clerk in the Navy Department, with Mrs. Brown ; 4. 
 Dr. Thomas Maury, who married a daughter of Mr. Parker, with 
 Miss Pillow, daughter of General Pillow, of Tennessee ; 5. Mr. 
 Schell, brother of the New York collector, Augustus Schell, and 
 Mrs. Dr. Maury ; 6. Hon. J. Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, 
 with Mrs. Schell; 7. Mr. John Maury and Miss Saunders, step- 
 daughter of the Postmaster-general ; 8. Mr. Thompson, son of the 
 Secretary, and Miss Mary Parker ; 9. Mr. Trotter, of Philadelphia, 
 and Miss Alice Maury; 10. Dr. Earle and Miss Fanny Parker. 
 Then there were Mr. Parker, and a lady and gentleman whose 
 names I do not recall. The table was set for twenty-four, and 
 all the chairs but one occupied. Every gentleman, save one, is 
 between two ladies, and every lady, save one, between two gentle- 
 men. A vase, with a beautiful bouquet, each containing camellias, 
 etc., is in front of each lady, who will take the flowers home with 
 her. The table is twenty-four feet long and ten feet wide. Over 
 either end is a massive chandelier, with eight gas-burners. Two 
 candelabra, each with ten candles, stand on the table, between 
 them vases of flowers. Pyramids, temples, etc., made of confec- 
 tionery, are here and there on the tables. All the food is in an 
 adjoining room, and is served in sixteen or twenty courses by 
 four colored men in white gloves. At each plate is a decanter of 
 
238 WASHINGTON DURING THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 water, with a goblet. Also there are five wine-glasses, no two of 
 them alike, and two of them colored cut Bohemian glass. These 
 drinking implements not being thought quite enough, a small tum- 
 bler of Roman punch was added, after the soup, and a cup of 
 coffee as the fi7iale. We were at the table nearly three hours, and 
 it was altogether a very sociable and pleasant affair. We departed 
 at 9.30, Miss Saunders having first given me an invitation to a ball 
 at the Postmaster-general's, to-morrow evening, with six hundred 
 other guests. 
 
 Dr. Earle went to this ball, to the White House receptions, 
 where Miss Harriet Lane presided with grace, and to a recep- 
 tion at Dr. Bailey's (the anti-slavery editor who first published 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin"), where the company were all Republi- 
 cans, with their wives and daughters, and where he met 
 Senators Seward, Wilson, Hale, etc., Richard Mott, brother-in- 
 law of Lucretia Mott, and Justice McLean. In the Senate 
 they were discussing Cuba and a bill appropriating ^30,000,- 
 000 for acquiring it, while the House admitted Oregon as a 
 State. No one then looked forward seriously to disunion, 
 though it had long been threatened, and John Brown, in Kan- 
 sas, had just made the first forcible emancipation of slaves, — 
 — an example which the President followed less than four 
 years later. Senator Sumner was still in Europe, recovering 
 slowly from his injuries of 1856; and General Banks had be- 
 come Governor of Massachusetts. 
 
 The Civil War broke out in April, 1861. A year later we 
 find Dr. Earle in Washington, on business of the census, but 
 much occupied with thoughts of the sick and wounded soldiers 
 and the unsuccessful conduct of the campaigns around the 
 capital. In July, 1862, he offered his services as surgeon to 
 the Sanitary Commission, through Dr. S. G. Howe; but no 
 occasion for his joining the army in the field occurred. Writ- 
 ing from Washington to his nephew, Pliny Earle Chase, in 
 Philadelphia, April 12, 1862, he says: — 
 
 I am very busy looking through the army hospitals, listening to 
 the proceedings in Congress, finishing the special business with Mr, 
 
1852-1861 239 
 
 Kennedy, superintendent of the census, for which I came, and 
 noticing the many changes which have taken place since I was last 
 here, in 1859. The city is comparatively quiet since General 
 McClellan and his army left to go to the York River ; but officers 
 and soldiers are no rarity in Pennsylvania Avenue and the suburbs 
 on the east, as well as on the heights of Georgetown and Arlington. 
 Across the Potomac the encampments of many regiments are to be 
 seen. 
 
 The stress of war had doubled the extent of the work done 
 at the Government Hospital, which now not only received the 
 insane of the army and navy, but gave shelter and treatment to 
 the sick and wounded of both army and navy, so that in the 
 beginning of 1863 it contained nearly 600 patients instead 
 of the 130 of 1859. Pressed with all these duties, Dr. Nichols 
 (Jan. 15, 1863) gave Dr. Earle the charge of the west wing 
 of the hospital, containing 175 insane patients, all men, and 
 many of them recently from the camps and battlefields. This 
 duty detained him in Washington for some months in 1863, 
 and called him there again early in 1864. But so important 
 are his records of the army experiences and political events of 
 this period that a chapter must be devoted to them. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THINGS SEEN AND HEARD IN WAR. 
 
 It was a natural but perplexing situation which the Civil 
 War created at the national capital. Washington had been 
 politically and socially a Southern village. Slavery existed 
 there, and was maintained and cherished by Congress, and 
 by every President since Jefferson, although several of them had 
 been opposed to slavery in the abstract. The rebellion of 
 Virginia brought the forces of the pro-slavery army within easy 
 reach of the seat of government for the loyal States, which to 
 them was at the extreme verge of the territory they controlled ; 
 and this both made attacks on Washington by the rebels 
 feasible and expedient and exposed its defenders to great in- 
 convenience and risk. Moreover, a large part of the resident 
 population of Washington sympathized with the rebellion, 
 either actively, in all its aims, or virtually, as agreeing with 
 some of them, — to grant no rights to the negroes, for one. 
 The officers of the regular army, too, were mostly hostile to 
 the anti-slavery cause, — some of them bitterly so ; while 
 others looked on the slave-question as having little to do with 
 the issue of the war. On the other hand, the tide of anti- 
 slavery sentiment was constantly and rapidly rising, and find- 
 ing expression more and more in the debates of Congress. In 
 the autumn of 1862 President Lincoln threw his great influence' 
 and matchless sagacity on the side of emancipation. But the 
 army officers, and particularly McClellan and his friends, still 
 hoped for some political compromise which would save slavery, 
 and restore the old governing class of politicians to power. 
 This was the situation when Dr. Earle took up his residence 
 at the Government Hospital, and came into intimate relations 
 with General Hooker and other prominent persons at Wash- 
 ington. His diary is cautiously written, but contains some 
 facts and suggestions which have not yet got into the authentic 
 
i862-i86s 241 
 
 books of history and biography. It will therefore be cited 
 more fully than in the preceding chapters. 
 
 As has been said, Dr. Earle passed most of the winter of 
 1862-63 in the Government Hospital for the Insane, as an 
 unofficial medical assistant to his friend Dr. Nichols. He 
 found there many new patients, sent up from the army in the 
 field and the navy in active service along the Atlantic coast 
 and in the Gulf of Mexico ; but they were chiefly drawn from 
 the rank and file of the infantry, — the same class as those 
 among whom Whitman, the Long Island poet, had just then 
 begun his self-sacrificing labors in the field and the Washington 
 hospitals. Some of Dr. Earle's insane patients had before been 
 in other asylums ; and instances were not a few where the 
 patient had been discharged from the asylum for the purpose 
 of enlisting in the Union army. He writes (Jan. 27, 1863) : — 
 
 At my first visit to this hospital, seven years ago, it was but a 
 small building, with about 30 patients. It has now grown into a 
 great establishment, — all the original design having been built upon, 
 — and is occupied for three nearly distinct hospitals. One of these 
 is for the insane, who are under my care ; a second is for the sick 
 and wounded men from the army ; and the third is for the disabled 
 men of the navy,— in all three, almost 600 patients. As I walked 
 about the grounds some days ago, I came to a settee so placed 
 as to command a fine view of the river (the Eastern Branch of the 
 Potomac), of Washington and Georgetown. Its four occupants, 
 soldiers, had but four legs among them. One of the men was a very 
 talkative Frenchman, who lost his leg at Antietam last September, 
 but had before been in all the battles of the peninsula, under Gen- 
 eral McClellan. He gave his views very fully concerning his general 
 and the whole conduct of the Army of the Potomac. They were not 
 favorable to either. At the next Sunday service in the chapel I 
 counted 13 men with only 13 legs, but 25 crutches ; and the whole 
 number of one-legged men in the hospital is about 40. A manufac- 
 tory of jointed wooden legs, which the government supplies gratis to 
 such men, is established on our premises. On the 15th of January 
 Dr. Nichols gave me charge of the west wing of the chief hospital 
 building, containing 175 insane men, about 20 of whom (all from the 
 army) have been admitted in the twelve days since I took charge. It 
 
242 GENERAL McCLELLAN AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 was a most fortunate thing that the government could complete this 
 hospital before the war : otherwise there would have been no place 
 for these insane soldiers and sailors. 
 
 The army, from whose command General McClellan was finally 
 removed last November, is now quiet along the Rappahannock, 
 excepting the inquietude caused by the change of commanders. The 
 McClellan men in Washington have been looking for their favorite's 
 reinstatement ; but he never will be reappointed, unless much greater 
 changes take place. Fitz-John Porter has met with his reward. It 
 is now generally conceded that there was a regular attempt, not to 
 say conspiracy, to break down General Pope. It succeeded for the 
 time, but its most serious consequences have begun to fall in the 
 proper place. I have heard a naval officer (a McClellan man) say 
 that Porter ought to be shot, and I have also heard one of our 
 major-generals say that in England or France Porter would have 
 been hanged. There is no longer a doubt in my mind that our army 
 might have been in Richmond long ago if all the officers had really 
 tried to get there. Some officers have been incompetent ; but private 
 piques and jealousies, and a determination not to fight in earnest, 
 have been the real causes of our failure. It is known that in the 
 battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) General W. B. Franklin's 
 division contained 60,000 men, 6,000 of whom went into action under 
 General Meade, and drove the rebels nearly a mile. General Meade 
 then looked back, expecting reinforcements, but saw nothing coming, 
 and retreated. Here the battle on the left wing ended; yet 54,000 
 soldiers there did not fire a shot, and were not ordered into action. 
 A man of excellent judgment, who immediately after the battle went 
 over the ground where Meade fought, says there is no doubt, had the 
 whole division gone into action, the enemy's right flank could have 
 been turned, and the victory been ours. He also says that our army 
 will not succeed until it has submitted to more thorough discipline, 
 that in this battle one whole regiment scattered at the mere sound 
 of the first shell that came screaming over them, and " ran in all 
 directions like a flock of sheep." However, sheep don't generally 
 run in «// directions, was my reflection. 
 
 Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock, was almost wholly evacu- 
 ated by its inhabitants. Whereupon our soldiers took large liberties 
 with the houses and furniture. At least 30,000 soldiers slept there 
 one night, nearly all in the streets, and about six times as many as 
 
1862-1865 243 
 
 the usual population, men, women, and children. Their beds were 
 odd : stacking arms in the streets, they tore off doors, window 
 shutters, house-boards, and fence-boards, laid one end of each board 
 on the curbstone, the other on the pavement, and slept on them. My 
 informant, who rode through these streets at midnight, estimates that 
 one hundred houses, at least, of the poorer sort, were thus stripped 
 of their enclosing boards as high as the top of the first story, and 
 stood there, as if on stilts, upon their bared timbers. When the 
 army recrossed the river after the fight, one of the trophies borne 
 away was a great pier-glass mirror, which an enthusiastic soldier had 
 strapped on his back. An officer, an army surgeon, fell in love with 
 a richly sculptured marble mantel-piece at Fredericksburg, tore it 
 from its place, and with the aid of two soldiers brought it away. 
 
 Well, there is a man at the head of the army now [General Joseph 
 Hooker, appointed upon General Burnside's resignation, January 26] 
 who will fight whenever he has a fair opportunity, and not only so, 
 but will make his subordinates of the Army of the Potomac fight, 
 too. General Hooker breakfasted with us yesterday morning, having 
 come up from the Rappahannock in the night. He then went into 
 Washington, had an interview with the President, issued his address 
 to the army on taking command, and returned to the army at night. 
 
 No doubt General Hooker was the "man of excellent judg- 
 ment " who went over the battlefield after the retreat of 
 General Meade, and was also the informant about those mid- 
 night slumberers in Fredericksburg streets. He had been 
 impatient of the delays of McClellan and the incompetence of 
 other generals, and was known in the army and the country as 
 " Fighting Joe Hooker." Dr. Earle, Quaker as he was, ex- 
 pressed the hope that he would now " stick to his antecedents." 
 He goes on : — 
 
 February 3.— General Hooker dined with us on Saturday last, re- 
 maining at the hospital about three hours. Of course, we made the 
 most of him by asking all proper questions regarding the army, the 
 prospects, etc. He says the rebels will remain in their present 
 intrenchments until he shall attack them ; and he certainly will 
 attack them, but not till the roads are better and the army fully re- 
 organized and in better disciphne. He means to fight, and does not 
 
244 GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER 
 
 mean to have any officer under him who will not fight. He would 
 not have accepted the command unless he could put men of his own 
 choice at the head of his three divisions. He has not meddled in 
 politics hitherto, believing that the rebelUon must be put down by 
 hard blows, and that, the sooner these blows are given, the better. 
 Judging from what I now know, I am not surprised that the Potomac 
 Army has not been victorious heretofore, but shall be both surprised 
 and disappointed if it does not conquer now. I am in a strong anti- 
 McClellan and pro-Hooker atmosphere ; and this, together with a 
 slight acquaintance with Hooker, may have unfitted me to judge 
 impartially. Still, it is evident that McClellan spoiled his army, and 
 that he has not even the merit of being a good disciplinarian. His 
 opponents here say that he did not manage the retreat after the fights 
 before Richmond, but made sure of the safety of Number One, and 
 left the whole conduct of the retreat to under officers. If that be so, 
 he is shorn of his last glory. 
 
 Notwithstanding these facts about General McClellan, which 
 have turned out substantially as stated by Dr. Earle, the dis- 
 placed and dissatisfied general was nominated for President the 
 following year, against President Lincoln, by the party which 
 favored peace, with a compromise on the slavery question, but 
 was totally defeated in November, 1864. By that time General 
 Hooker had yielded the command of the army first to General 
 Meade, and then to General Grant, under whom, at Chatta- 
 nooga, he performed his most brilliant feat, — the capture of 
 Lookout Mountain. P'or this and other military services he 
 has received the first honor of an equestrian statue from the 
 State of Massachusetts, as his native State. Dr. Earle goes 
 on : — 
 
 February 7. — I was at the Capitol to-day, and heard the Senate 
 debate a bill appropriating $20,000,000 to assist Missouri in eman- 
 cipating her slaves, who did not come under the effect of the Presi- 
 dent's emancipation proclamation of January i. While I was in the 
 House of Representatives, General Burnside appeared on the floor, 
 and for awhile was the greatest Shaker in Washington, every one 
 being eager to grasp his hand. After the representatives had done 
 him this honor, the pages thronged about him with books and scraps 
 
1862-1865 245 
 
 of paper for his autograph. So great was the demand that he finally 
 had to refuse, and departed. Last week Miss Dorothy Dix told me 
 that there was very little sickness in the soldiers' hospitals, of which 
 she has a general oversight, the patients being mostly convalescent, 
 so that there was " nothing for the nurses to do." 
 
 February 22. — But I have work enough to keep me out of mis- 
 chief. This is my 39th day at the hospital ; and, since I came, 
 45 men patients, 43 from the army and 2 from the navy, have been 
 admitted, — insane patients, I mean, who all come under my care, 
 and, being all recent cases of insanity, they make me much work. 
 In all we have 190 insane patients, about 150 of them from the army. 
 Many are Germans and Irishmen, 2 or 3 Italians, i Frenchman, and 
 I Pole, the last a man with an enormous head, who speaks six 
 languages. His brain is too powerful for his body. He is very 
 insane, and will probably die. If our army is to be judged by some 
 of the specimens that come to us, its physique is not in high con- 
 dition, whatever its morals may be. Day before yesterday four men 
 were brought in a squad, looking Uke Italian brigands, and very 
 evidently belonging to the "great unwashed." To place the living 
 beings they brought with them at 4,000 would be a low estimate. 
 They were brought from the guard-house, which is an old slave-pen 
 in Alexandria. From all I hear of that old Virginia town, it has 
 become what some call a most God-forsaken place, reeking with filth 
 and all the abominations of warfare. Steamboats run hourly from 
 Washington thither. We get similar samples of soldiers from the 
 regular Washington guard-house. 
 
 Our soldier-patients are from nearly every Northern State, from 
 Maine to Kansas (which became a State two years ago, and is 
 represented in the House by another Conway, Martin, not Moncure, 
 — the latter now living at Concord). Coming, as they do, from 
 various commands and many regiments, they can give us much news 
 about war matters, in spite of their insanity. Then I make it a 
 rule to talk with every one who recovers, as many do ; and I follow 
 Captain Cuttle's rule of making a note of all that is noteworthy. 
 Last evening I wrote the war history of an Irishman as he related 
 it to me, who was pressed at New Orleans into the rebel service, 
 fought against us at Big Bethel and Williamsburg, deserted, and got 
 back to New Orleans, whence General Butler, then in command 
 there, shipped him to Boston. He afterwards enlisted in a New 
 
246 McCLELLAN AND HOOKER MISS DIX 
 
 York regiment. Two or three days ago I was talking with a man 
 who has been nearly a year and a half in the Army of the Potomac. 
 When I asked him if the soldiers liked General Hooker, he said, 
 " Some do, but there are many who don't : there isn't one soldier in 
 a dozen who likes an officer who rushes into a fight." 
 
 Miss Dix lunched with us a few days ago (we breakfast at eight, 
 lunch at twelve, and dine at five). She says there is great mortality 
 among the soldiers who were wounded at the battle of Murfreesboro, 
 and thence brought to the hospitals at Alexandria and other places 
 near Washington. They were carried (by the rebels) from Murfrees- 
 boro to Chattanooga, thence by way of Richmond to Norfolk or 
 Fortress Monroe ; and it was twenty-six days from the time they were 
 wounded till their wounds were dressed. No wonder their mortality 
 is great. 
 
 Religious services on the Sabbath have been held for a year past 
 in the chapel ; but, until I came, no secular lecture had been given 
 there. On the 14th of February I consecrated it to that purpose, 
 having an audience of 200 persons gathered from the several de- 
 partments of the hospital; and I also lectured on the 17th and 
 20th. I expect to continue this service twice a week while I re- 
 main here. It breaks the monotony of the hospital evenings, pleases 
 many of the insane, makes the government of them easier, and in- 
 creases their attachment to the person in general charge of them, — 
 if he is also the lecturer. All the one-legged men who are well 
 enough are in my audiences ; and, as the chapel is in the third story 
 and they walk with crutches up the forty-seven steps of the two flights 
 of stairs, the noise they make is appalling to sensitive persons. It 
 reminds me of the negro song, — 
 
 Sich a-gittin' upstairs I nebber did see. 
 
 March i. — 15 more insane patients have come in; and, of the 
 whole 60, 57 have come into my department. A fine young man 
 was brought here two days ago from one of the Connecticut regi- 
 ments, with three of his toes so badly frozen that they are likely 
 to slough off, unless amputated. His wife, a young woman appar- 
 ently under twenty-three, arrived from Connecticut to-day, having 
 been informed of his illness when he was in one of the general 
 hospitals here. He is so much bewildered that he told her it was 
 only a week since he had seen her, yet the physicians at his hos- 
 
1502-1505 247 
 
 pital thought him feigning insanity. One minute's observation by 
 a person of experience with the insane would prove that he is 
 not feigning. A Michigan soldier, whose case is sadly interesting, 
 died a few days ago. He was brought here in November with a 
 bullet wound received at the second battle of Bull Run, — a wound in 
 the left temple directly over the outer extremity of the eyebrow. 
 He could give no account of it, except he said the bullet had been 
 taken out. At intervals here he had spasmodic attacks resembling 
 epilepsy, his mind being weak between the fits. In one of these 
 paroxysms he died ; and then the bullet was found lying at the base 
 of the brain, over the back of the eye-socket, partly flattened, and 
 divided for half its length into two horn-like projections. Its press- 
 ure on the brain had caused the growth of a sac-Hke tumor as large 
 as a hen's egg ; and the discharge from the external wound came 
 from the interior of this tumor. 
 
 I have been talking this evening with a recovered patient who has 
 been more than a year in the Potomac Army. He acknowledged 
 that McClellan is no discipHnarian, and has permitted his soldiers 
 to do much as they pleased, that his dilatoriness has caused the 
 death of 30,000 men, needlessly, of course; but yet he is in favor of 
 iVIcClellan for our next President, because he "was so kind to his 
 men." He allowed, further, that his want of success was owing to 
 lack of discipline in his army, that he might, more than once, have 
 gone into Richmond, and that his neglect to pursue Lee's army 
 after Antietam was a great blunder. On the other hand, he says 
 that, if General Hooker had not been wounded so early as he was 
 at Antietam, his achievements would have been such that he Avould 
 then have been promoted to the chief command, as he has been of 
 late. He complimented Hooker's courage, saying that he '• would 
 never retreat on the battlefield, but would conquer or die " ; yet this 
 soldier does not like Hooker, and says, " the army don't like him, 
 because he is so strict." There's a long story behind what this 
 soldier says, and a deal of meaning in his talk. We have so far 
 failed, and, should we finally fail, must continue to fail to the end, 
 because our generals are seeking popularity rather than \dctory, 
 while the men are unwilling to submit to a discipline which alone 
 will give us victory. 
 
 On Monday last, February 23, General Hooker again dined with 
 us, and spent the night, giving us a long evening's talk with him. 
 
248 PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S RECEPTIONS 
 
 He wished to have General Stone — of Ball's Bluff notoriety — for 
 his chief of staff, believing him to be loyal. But President Lincoln 
 told him that, if he knew all the circumstances of the case, he would 
 not ask it ; and so he selected General Butterfield, of whose industry 
 and efficiency he now speaks in the highest terms. In course of the 
 evening Mrs. Nichols intimated to the general, apparently in joke, 
 the possibility that the rebels might make another raid, and ride 
 round his army, as happened to his predecessor. General Hooker 
 answered very seriously that they would never ride round his army ; 
 and, not more than three days after. General Stuart, their cavalry 
 leader, tried the experiment, and failed. I believe Hooker would 
 rather be shot than have such an attempt succeed. He says he 
 knows everything that the rebels are doing, their camp is full of 
 his spies, and he supposes that his own camp is as full of their 
 spies. One of them, an Englishman, who acted as a spy for both 
 sides, running between Richmond and Washington, and delivering 
 all letters, despatches, etc., which he carried for individuals directly 
 to the government on the other side, has been detected in his 
 double treachery, and shot. In the famous retreat from McClellan's 
 intrenchments around Richmond to the James River, Hooker says 
 that, after the first order to retreat, neither he nor General Kearney 
 either sav/ McClellan or received an order from him, and that, on a 
 day when Kearney saw some movement of a part of the army which 
 he did not understand, Kearney rode rapidly to Hooker, and said, 
 "There is either cowardice or treachery here somewhere." It is 
 evident that Hooker believes that McClellan is greatly responsible 
 for the present state of things in the country. 
 
 March 3. — Saturday last Dr. Nichols and I went to the White 
 House to call on "Abraham and Mary Anne," as we Friends say, it 
 being their regular day of reception. The evening " levees " have 
 not been held this winter ; but in their stead there have been 
 "•soirees " in the morning, — that is, from one to three o'clock in the 
 afternoon. We arrived about two, and found a moderate number of 
 people there, which was largely increased later. " Mary Anne " was 
 doing the honors and receiving the honors without the assistance of 
 her husband, who had unexpectedly been called to the Capitol by 
 some business in the Senate. Mrs. President was dressed in a rich 
 black silk, with a wide lace flounce, and a train which lay on the 
 floor a foot behind her. She wore a set of jewels, — brooch, ear- 
 
1862-1865 249 
 
 rings, two bracelets, and a head-band, — all made, apparently, of jet 
 and pearls set in gold. A man-servant stood behind her, — a new 
 custom never practised by ladies of the White House before, and 
 perhaps introduced to prevent visitors from treading on that train ; 
 and a gentleman usher was very busy introducing all comers to Mrs. 
 Lincoln. The Blue Room, where this occurred, was so far darkened 
 by its heavy blue curtains as to give a twilight aspect to everything. 
 To tell the truth, Mrs. President acquitted herself exceedingly well, 
 even better than I had expected. When I saw her last spring, with 
 her bonnet on, in full mourning, I thought her homely, and, in fact, 
 she can lay no claim to beauty ; but she is a better-looking woman 
 and did this reception better than either Mrs. President Polk 
 or Mrs. Pierce, as I saw them. A great deal has been said by 
 the secessionists and aristocrats and those out of office concern- 
 ing her homeliness and vulgarity of manners ; but, if her manners 
 were " green " when she came to Washington, two years ago, she has 
 succeeded in ripening them fast. She told Dr. Nichols and myself 
 that she was very sorry " my husband " could not be present to 
 welcome us, but that, to make amends, a special reception was to 
 be given Monday evening, — that is, last night. We then took a walk 
 through the extensive greenhouses, and came away ; but, as we were 
 on the portico, — a continuous train of carriages arriving, — the 
 President's carriage appeared, and, while two full coaches were 
 still in front of it, " Father Abraham " slipped quietly out of it, and 
 made his way to the door, almost wholly unobserved. There was a 
 crowd at the door. The President took his place in it, unnoticed by 
 those near him, and, without saying a word, quietly waited for the 
 moving of the waters ; but he tucked his hands into his overcoat 
 pockets, and drew the skirts around him, the air being rather chill. 
 As they came to the doorway, the President and a small, brown- 
 coated, fur-capped man were about even in advantage of position 
 for entering ; but the advantage was a little in favor of Mr. Lincoln. 
 He perceived it, and gave a gentle " crowd," in order to get ahead. 
 But Browncoat had no notion of being beaten by such a lank-looking 
 fellow as he felt pushing him. So he went at it in earnest, and 
 wormed himself in ahead of Father Abraham. It was very charac- 
 teristic. 
 
 Well, time moved on ; and, some fifty hours after this scene, the 
 Monday evening mentioned by Mary Anne had come along. So 
 
250 "ABRAHAM AND MARY ANNE 
 
 Dr. Nichols and I went again to the White House, leaving our over- 
 coats at Miss Dix's, as we went, for fear of losing them in the crowd. 
 'Twas a calm, sweet night, with a bright moon ; and, though both 
 houses of Congress were in session, their galleries crowded with 
 visitors, there was no lack of callers on the President. We got to 
 the rear of the entering crowd about nine o'clock ; and there were 
 not less than one thousand to enter before our turn came, and the 
 house was already so full that many men were jumping out from one 
 of the windows. After we got inside, there were several hundred 
 people between us and the President ; and the crowd was such that 
 Dr. Nichols took a short cut to the great East Room, without trying 
 to see Mr. and Mrs, Lincoln. I persevered, and was triumphant. I 
 communed with Abraham, and told him there was a lady in my 
 neighborhood who sent her love to him. And Abraham inquired, 
 " What is the lady's name ? " And I lifted up my voice, and said 
 unto him, " Her name is Mrs. Marshall." Thereupon Abraham 
 exalted his voice (though it is and was then as soft as that of a 
 deUcate woman, and as gentle), and said, " My respects to her." 
 The crowd pressed on behind me. I was taking up precious time. 
 My message was delivered, my promise kept : why then should I 
 delay ? So I passed on with the multitude into the East Room, 
 where was the same old story I have seen and heard for many winters, 
 — a jam of men and women, but an entirely new set of men and 
 women. With the exception of three or four public men, I saw but 
 two persons I could remember ever to have seen before ; and even 
 Dr. Nichols, long resident here, said he did not recognize more than 
 a dozen of his acquaintance. There was less dress, less style, much 
 fewer persons of really polished manners than in former times, — a 
 change due in part to the political change of administration, but still 
 more to the war, and its effect in bringing certain classes of people 
 to Washington, and keeping others at home or in the campaigns. 
 As Congress was just closing its session, its members were other- 
 wise engaged ; and I saw only one member of the cabinet, — Gideon 
 Welles, of Connecticut. I spoke with Cassius M. Clay, now a 
 general in the Union army, with General Sumner, — a distant cousin 
 of Charles Sumner, — and with General Fremont, still a popular man 
 from the events of the last ten years. When it was whispered that 
 Fremont was in the East Room, there was a general rush, or an 
 attempt at rushing, to find him. Seeing this, he made the circuit of 
 
I862-I865 251 
 
 the great room as quickly as he could, through a dense body of 
 bodies, with outstretched hands, eager for a shake, and immediately 
 and quietly left. He is a smaller man than I had fancied him, his 
 head hardly above my shoulder. 
 
 As by this time Dr. Earle had a very wide acquaintance all 
 over the United States, this remark of his about the new and 
 strange faces at the White House receptions has much mean- 
 ing. The political and military revolution of 1861 had been 
 followed by a social revolution ; and the power of the United 
 States, which had been lodged in a few slaveholders at the 
 South, controlling the army and navy, whose officers were 
 largely their relatives, and a few politicians at the North, rep- 
 resented by Buchanan, Pierce, Caleb Gushing, the Van Burens, 
 and Douglas, — this power was again returned to the hands of the 
 people, who were carrying on the war and freeing the slaves in 
 their own fashion, without heeding the old men or the old 
 traditions. These for the moment were represented at the 
 North by the displaced General McGlellan, at this very time 
 receiving honors and applause from the Northern men with 
 Southern principles, who had lost office and influence when 
 Lincoln became President. It was a covert — and soon to be 
 open — attack on the administration ; to overthrow which Mc- 
 Glellan was brought forward as a Presidential candidate the 
 next year, 1864, but signally defeated in the popular vote. 
 
 A similar change was noted at Washington when Andrew 
 Jackson succeeded John Quincy Adams as President in 1829; 
 and the sweeping change in officials then made was much more 
 than repeated under President Lincoln, whose first act on assum- 
 ing power was to fill the offices, great and small, with his own 
 supporters. As the war went on, he appointed many "War 
 Democrats " ; but the McGlellan episode threw many of that 
 class back into their old party relations, imbittered for a time 
 by the emancipation decrees of Lincoln, which had culminated 
 a few weeks after McGlellan's removal in November, 1862. 
 The same men in Boston who had attacked the emancipation 
 policy in August and September, 1862, united with others of 
 the military profession in April, 1863, in giving McGlellan a 
 
252 INCIDENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 sword, which he was invited to use "for the administration, 
 when it behaves itself " ; that is, when it should give up its 
 pohcy of freeing and arming the blacks. 
 
 Monday, April 6, 1863. — This month came in with as delightful 
 spring weather as could be wished, — with bird-songs, the bursting of 
 lilac-buds in the Washington gardens, green lawns, and other pledges 
 of summer. But now we are in the midst of snow and frost, — yester- 
 day morning six inches of snow, which to-morrow will be all gone, 
 leaving its postscript of mud. And along with these changes of 
 weather we are having an epidemic of small-pox, — no less than ten 
 cases of it in this hospital, — yet no one of our five hundred inmates 
 manifests any alarm at it ; while one case in the city of Worcester 
 would set Leicester and all Worcester County in an uproar of alarm. 
 Such is man's power of adapting himself to his miseries. 
 
 On the evening of March 3 1 I went to the great Union meeting at 
 the Capitol, at which the President and his cabinet were present. 
 I succeeded in getting a place directly beside the Speaker's desk in 
 the great House Chamber; and directly in front of me sat the 
 President, and Secretaries Seward, Chase, and Usher, and the Post- 
 master-general, Montgomery Blair. So for three hours I looked our 
 government in the face, at only a few feet distance. The Presi- 
 dent looked no fatter nor handsomer than usual. His little boy [Tad] 
 was with him, sitting, most of the time, in his lap, and now and then 
 bearding his face. Seward looked old and worn ; Chase, fat, good- 
 humored, and hearty, just like his face on the dollar greenbacks ; 
 Blair, rather lean and nervous. The long speech of the evening was 
 by Andrew Johnson, military governor of Tennessee, which State he 
 used to represent in Congress. It was a loyal and patriotic speech, 
 with many good points; but it showed that "Andy" never wore out 
 many grammars at school, and was never mentally disciplined by 
 chopping logic. He often brought down the house, got many 
 thumps from Seward's cane on the floor, and once, at least, set the 
 President's feet "dancing the hard-heeled shuffle." * 
 
 While waiting for the meeting to assemble, and wandering about 
 
 • When the legal-tender paper currency was issued by Mr. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury, he 
 was allowed to have his o\mi handsome head engraved on the most numerous issue, — the dollar-bills, — 
 so that his face became known to more of the soldiers and other citizens than that of any other living 
 statesman in America. It was afterwards said that this was one of his bids for the Presidency, which 
 never came to him. 
 
1S62-1865 253 
 
 the House to see whom I knew and whom I knew not, I reached the 
 west end of the chamber, and there found seated in the back row of 
 representatives' chairs, behind those formerly occupied by Giddings 
 of Ohio and my pupil of olden time, Buffington of Fall River, an 
 interesting group of Ute Indians from the Rocky Mountains. This 
 warlike tribe has always been friendly to Uncle Sam ; and now they 
 have been brought here to show them how big a man our Uncle is, 
 and so preserve their friendship, and keep them from going over to 
 the rebels, as some of the Southern tribes have done. A delicate, 
 smooth-faced young white man sat with them, who said he had them 
 in charge ; and thereupon I had much conversation with him. He 
 told me their tribe numbers about twenty-three thousand, — men, 
 women, and children. They regard us whites as an inferior race, 
 and one of this party told the Indian Commissioner the day before 
 that in case of war they could whip us. He was going to take them 
 the next day to see the Army of the Potomac, after which, he thought, 
 they would change their minds. 
 
 Soon after this date Dr. Earle returned to Leicester for the 
 summer of 1863, and vi^as then chosen Professor of Psychologic 
 Medicine in the Berkshire Medical Institute, a temporary 
 medical school, where for several years Dr. Holmes, the poet- 
 anatomist, had lectured. This was the first time in the United 
 States that mental diseases were recognized as a necessary part 
 of the study of medical science, though they had long been so 
 considered in Germany and other European countries. Indeed, 
 the University of Zurich has many years had for its professor 
 of psychiatry the director of the Cantonal Asylum of Burg- 
 hoelzli, near by ; and such would have been Dr. Earle's posi- 
 tion at Pittsfield, after his election to the superintendency of the 
 Northampton Hospital, had the Medical Institute continued. 
 He gave his introductory address at the Commencement in 
 November, 1863, and then proceeded to Washington again, 
 where for six months he was once more associated with Dr. 
 Nichols at the Government Hospital. The admissions of army 
 patients had much increased, as the war went on, and during 
 this winter of 1863-64 were nearly forty a month, or more than 
 one a day. His diary recommences thus : — 
 
2 54 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 Washington, Dec. 2, 1863. — I was nearly a week on my way here 
 by Pittsfield, New York, and Philadelphia. November 24 I gave 
 my address at Pittsfield on " Psychologic Medicine " to a small 
 audience. It seemed to give general satisfaction. The next day I 
 went to New York, and on Thanksgiving Day, the 27th, went across 
 the ferry to Brooklyn, and attended Henry Ward Beecher's church 
 there. Every spot large enough for a standing- place was occupied, 
 and the Express newspaper (no friend to Beecher) says more people 
 were turned away than could get in. His sermon had for object 
 to show what we have to be thankful for, as a nation. This naturally 
 led him to speak of the war and the condition of the country since 
 emancipation. He had been speaking but a few minutes when a few 
 of the audience ventured to applaud him. The ice thus broken, 
 more and more joined in the applause, until finally, when he said 
 that the names of Washington and Lincoln would go down to 
 posterity linked together, the whole audience " came down " with 
 a tremendous clapping of hands. 
 
 Immediately after my arrival here I settled quietly down into the 
 hospital routine, and have thus continued. My duties are much less 
 arduous than last winter. Dr. W. W. Godding,* who came here in 
 September last, filling the place I then had, while I have charge of 
 the insane women and negroes ; and Dr. Stevens has the sole care 
 of the sick and wounded soldiers in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and Dr. 
 Gunnell still acts as surgeon to the naval hospital, as last year. I 
 continue my lectures to the inmates of all the hospitals on the even- 
 ings of Monday and Friday each week, while on Wednesday evening 
 there is a dance or some other entertainment ; and we have an 
 excellent musical choir. 
 
 The farm which joins the hospital farm on the south was taken by 
 the government last summer as a cavalry depot ; and the number of 
 horses kept there varies from 10,000 to 15,000. The extent of this 
 establishment, as well as the fate of horses in war-time, may be con- 
 ceived from the fact that the government is advertising for twenty- 
 five men skilled in skinning horses. In consequence of this accession 
 to our neighborhood the travel on our road has increased tenfold ; 
 and there is an almost constant procession of cavalry, of newly 
 bought horses, of condemned ones, of soldiers, and of army wagons 
 with supplies. One night several thousand horses broke from the 
 
 * Now at the liead of the Government Hospital. 
 
1862-1865 255 
 
 enclosure, and the next morning were scattered in roads and fields 
 all about the neighborhood, nearly a hundred having been drowned 
 in the Eastern Branch by the bridge where we cross in driving to 
 Washington. 
 
 Dr. Godding, here first mentioned, remained an assistant 
 physician at the Washington Hospital until he was chosen to 
 succeed Dr. G. C. S. Choate as superintendent of the Taunton 
 (Massachusetts) Hospital. Remaining there until 1877, he was 
 then placed at the head of the Washington Hospital, of which 
 he is still the honored superintendent. He has given me some 
 recollections of Dr. Earle during their early acquaintance, as 
 follows : — 
 
 I first knew Dr. Earle here in the autumn of 1863, he having charge 
 of the female department and I of the male patients, — both assistants 
 to Dr. Nichols, the superintendent. It was while serving here, in 
 the spring of 1864, that he was visited by a committee of the trustees 
 of the Northampton Hospital, and shortly after appointed to its 
 superintendency. I was intimately associated with the doctor dur- 
 ing that six months of 1863-64; and later, when from 1870 to 1877 
 I was in charge of the State Hospital at Taunton, I frequently met 
 him. 
 
 Dr. Earle in 1863, then in his fifty-fourth year, was still a remark- 
 ably good-looking man ; and, though myself twenty-one years younger, 
 I found him very companionable and agreeable. He had already 
 a reputation as a statistician, and had published much in the Jourfial 
 of Insanity and elsewhere on mental disorders. He had travelled in 
 Europe, had been assistant physician at the Frankford Asylum, and 
 had been in charge at Bloomingdale. Earlier he had been a teacher 
 in the Friends' School at Providence, R.I., and had that thorough 
 equipment in the fundamental branches, including English grammar, 
 for which those " Friends' " Schools are famous. I profited by his 
 knowledge ; and, such leisure moments as we had, I enjoyed convers- 
 ing and associating with him. I say associating, for he was fond of 
 games ; and Dr. Stevens and I, after the evening work was over, often 
 utilized the office table for a game of cards with him. Dr. Earle 
 preferred to beat. Indeed, he did not take being beaten kindly ; and 
 we, early discovering his foible, and not having the fear of his su- 
 
256 DR. EARLE IN GAMES 
 
 perior age and wisdom before our eyes, often combined to throw the 
 game into one or the other of our two hands. He, honest and un- 
 suspecting, sometimes was so outrageously beaten as to need all his 
 will-power and philosophy to withdraw in anything like a devotional 
 frame of mind. The same was true of billiards. He was fond of 
 the cue, and we were able to win on that game. 
 
 But he went up to Northampton, and there found time to perfect 
 himself in those caroms and curves, so that, returning on a visit to 
 St. Elizabeth some years later, he challenged the knights of the cue, 
 and "laid out" every one of us. I have somewhere among my 
 papers an interesting souvenir of the good doctor, — an illustrated 
 pen and ink series, sent after his return to Northampton, — illustrating 
 " Ye Visit of Ye Earle of Leicester to his friend Kinge Nicholas at 
 Ye St. Elizabeth, with serratim views of ye overthrow and dis- 
 comforture of ye Philistines." 
 
 He was a most methodic and painstaking, conscientious man. 
 He introduced many methods at St. Elizabeth that bore testimony to 
 this. He evolved a form for registry of cases, and induced the 
 superintendent to adopt it in place of that in use, which — when I 
 came, years later, to take charge of the same side — I found both 
 exhaustive and exhausting. 
 
 Another instance of his methodic ways while I was associated 
 with him was the episode of his chewing tobacco. He decided one 
 morning that he was using too much tobacco, — that he would gradu- 
 ally withdraw, and cut off his ration altogether. He was nothing, 
 unless methodic ; and every morning for a week or more he daily 
 weighed out five grains less of his " fine cut." He would call atten- 
 tion to it, and dilate on the ease with which a resolute man could 
 conquer an appetite that had begun to control him. This ingenious 
 process continued for perhaps a week longer, when one morning, 
 noticing a cloud on his face, I ventured to ask how many grains he 
 had taken off that morning. He replied " that he wasn't well, that 
 he was in no condition to continue it at that time." I never saw 
 him resort to the scales after that, but I think the tobacco pouch 
 remained by him. 
 
 These facts simply show that my friend was human, like all the 
 rest of us. Foibles he had, but they touch not one whit the integ- 
 rity of his life or the value of his work. 
 
1862-1865 257 
 
 Dr. Earle's diary continues: — 
 
 Jan. 28, 1864. — I have some leisure from hospital duties, and 
 devote the time to medical reading for my first course of lectures at 
 Pittsfield next autumn. I have received and declined an invitation 
 to deliver the address at the annual Commencement of the Medical 
 School in the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, in the latter 
 part of March. The number of insane soldiers much increases here, 
 in spite of the public assertion of Rev. Dr. Bellows, of the Sanitary 
 Commission, that no man in the Union army had become insane 
 since the beginning of the war. But upwards of 40 have been ad- 
 mitted here since January i from the armies of the East and South 
 alone, besides 27 who all came at once, each under charge of 
 another soldier, from General Grant's army. Thus more than 70 
 have been received in twenty-seven days. Last year they only came 
 at the rate of 6 a week. 
 
 I notice a remarkable change of sentiment in Washington since 
 last winter. Emancipation is generally accepted as an established 
 fact, even by those most opposed to it ; and it is admitted, even by 
 the friends of General McClellan, that Lincoln is to be re-elected 
 President this year. And so (since it would be hard to give up all 
 court society for five years longer) " old Abe " has risen in the esti- 
 mation of Washington people of the old regime, and Mrs. Lincoln 
 has callers who formerly "turned up the nose " at her. In general, 
 society is accommodating itself to the new state of things, and grad- 
 ually returning to its smooth current of outward harmonj^. There 
 are more evening parties, more sociability. Since the middle of 
 January the weather has been such as we have on the hills of 
 Leicester in May, — no frost in the ground, some fields quite green, 
 overcoats often a burden, windows open for comfort, etc. 
 
 February 21. — My course of life in the midst of war is very even. 
 Breakfast, a walk through the wards of the women's department, the 
 preparation of medicine for my patients, a look at the morning news- 
 paper, lunch, sometimes with visitors, as formerly, the reading of 
 medical books or insanity statistics, perhaps a game of billiards with 
 one of the men patients, then dinner at five, and an evening occu- 
 pation varying between lectures, reading, and a second visit to my 
 wards, — such is the sum of my existence. I sometimes go to the 
 weekly dance, but only as a spectator. 
 
258 ANTI-SLAVERY AND ANNA DICKINSON 
 
 In January I went to the anti-slavery meeting in the hall of the 
 House of Representatives, which was addressed by the celebrated 
 young political lecturer from Philadelphia, Anna Dickinson. The 
 lowest price of tickets was fifty cents; yet the hall was full, with 
 many standing in the doorways and sitting on the steps in the 
 galleries. The President, Vice-President, Speaker of the House, 
 many senators and representatives, and some 1,800 other persons 
 were there to hear an out-and-out anti-slavery address, which at 
 every expression of radical sentiment was greeted with an uproar 
 of applause. It was evidently repeated from memory, yet in every 
 respect well delivered. She was perfectly composed, though in the 
 presence of an audience that would discompose most men ; but who 
 would have thought ten years ago, when the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
 was forced through Congress to extend and perpetuate slavery, 
 that in January, 1864, a woman would stand there and glory in 
 emancipation proclaimed by the President of the United States ? 
 Verily, the world does move ; and when will "the Union as it was " 
 come back again ? 
 
 This month I was at a party at the house of Mr. Kennedy, the 
 superintendent of the census, whose parlors are not large, and who 
 generally gives parties for men alone. More distinguished men were 
 at this one than I ever met before at a private party anywhere. 
 Members of the Senate and House, Judge Usher, Secretary of the 
 Interior, officers of the army and navy, among them Admiral Charles 
 Wilkes, who took Mason and Slidell from the " Trent," and almost 
 brought on war with England thereby. Dr. Peter Parker, many years 
 a missionary in China, Judge Holt of Kentucky, and many of the 
 foreign ambassadors were present, among them Lord Lyons and 
 Baron Stoeckel, the Russian envoy. 
 
 Miss Dix came to this hospital yesterday, and is still here. She 
 lately visited the Virginia Insane Hospital at Williamsburg, now 
 supported by the Federal government, and reports it in excellent 
 order and well supplied. On her return she travelled in company 
 with twenty-five of our army officers, who had escaped from the Libby 
 Prison in Richmond, and heard some sad tales from them, so that 
 she is not much in love with the rebels. Dr. Stevens has had letters 
 from General Hooker at the South-west, who writes that there is little 
 to prevent our armies in that quarter from going to Mobile or 
 Charleston when they choose. 
 
1862-1865 259 
 
 By this time General Hooker, who had resigned the com- 
 mand of the Potomac Army just before the battle of Gettysburg, 
 and had won renown at Lookout Mountain in September, 1863, 
 was in command of the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee, 
 and General Grant had been selected to take command of all 
 the armies in the field. He came to Washington early in 
 March, and there met the President for the first time, though 
 both had been citizens of Illinois for years. Late in April he 
 took personal command of the Potomac Army, and moved 
 against Richmond, proposing "to fight it out on this line if 
 it takes all summer." It did take all summer and" the next 
 winter; but Dr. Earle did not remain in Washington to see 
 the close of the war in April, 1865. His last entry at the 
 Government Hospital is dated May 24, 1864, when the annual 
 meeting of the American Association of Medical Superintend- 
 ents of the Insane, a body which he had helped to found 
 twenty years before, had just closed its sessions in Washington. 
 His diary for May says : — 
 
 The number of our insane has so much increased, as the war goes 
 on, that it has been concluded to break up the hospital for sick and 
 wounded soldiers (St. Elizabeth's), which for almost three years 
 has occupied the eastern part of these large buildings. Other 
 hospitals have been provided for them. So the one-legged and the 
 sick were removed May 2 and 3, and their places are henceforth 
 devoted to the insane. General Grant crossed the Rapidan on the 
 3d, and we are making preparations here and at the army hospitals 
 for the great swath of men who are now being cut down by the 
 scythe of war. It has been a lovely spring. On May Day I took a 
 long walk through the fields and woods of our premises, while every- 
 thing was in the full flush of early spring. The forests were tenderly 
 green with the foliage of the tulip-tree (liriodendron) and the maples, 
 and the ground beneath was sprinkled with many flowers. The 
 blood-root, hepatica, and epigsea had bloomed and gone. The anem. 
 ones, claytonia, violets, and flowering cornel were then in bloom. 
 Elsewhere the cherry and apple blossoms were abundant, the lilacs 
 opening their first blossoms, and the grass was waving in the breeze, 
 almost tall enough for the scythe. At the Association meeting last 
 
2 6o LAST INTERVIEW WITH ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 week, only about twenty members were present, twenty hospitals 
 being represented out of twice that number, such being an effect 
 of the war. We went in a body, so many as we were, to call on 
 " Uncle Abe " at the White House. He looked thin, worn, and 
 haggard ; but we were so early he had not breakfasted. Notwith- 
 standing our small numbers, he told us there was enough of us, 
 he reckoned, " to keep everybody straight or else make everybody 
 crooked." 
 
 And with this interview Dr. Earle's personal acquaintance 
 with Abraham Lincoln seems to have ended. He was assassi- 
 nated eleven months after, having in the mean time been re- 
 elected and seen the end of the Civil War. In the June fol- 
 lowing this interview Dr. Earle was chosen superintendent of 
 the State Lunatic Hospital of Massachusetts at Northampton, 
 and took charge of the 350 patients there July 2, 1864. About 
 that time my acquaintance with him began ; for I had then 
 been for nine months secretary of the first Board of State 
 Charities ever established in America, and had among my 
 official duties the visitation and inspection of the insane under 
 public and private treatment. In what follows, therefore, I 
 speak from intimate acquaintance with Dr. Earle and his 
 work. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 NORTHAMPTON AND THE CURABILITY CONTROVERSY. 
 
 Massachusetts had aided in the establishment of the 
 McLean Asylum for the Insane as a branch of her General 
 Hospital before 1820, but built no State hospital until 1832, 
 when that at Worcester (now used as a chronic asylum) was 
 erected. A second State hospital was opened at Taunton in 
 1854: and so rapidly had the insane increased that a third was 
 begun soon after at Northampton, which was the largest and 
 costliest then existing in Massachusetts, and was opened in 
 1858. Its early administration was unsatisfactory. It had cost 
 more than was estimated, and its finances never had reached a 
 proper balance of income and outlay. Its patients were largely 
 drawn from the chronic cases in the older hospitals, and were 
 mostly incurable. Its first superintendent, Dr. Prince, though 
 an agreeable man, had no special fitness for the position and 
 no proper training in the management of large expenditures. 
 Consequently, the hospital was usually in debt. Its medical 
 staff was unequal to the moderate requirements of that period, 
 — so much less exacting than our day, — and the discipline of 
 attendants and patients left much to be desired. Finally, public 
 criticism, too long withheld, led to the resignation of Dr. Prince. 
 Private censure had not been withheld from early in the hos- 
 pital's history. A few months after its opening, Miss Doro- 
 thea Dix, in pursuance of her habit of making unannounced 
 visits to the hospitals for the insane, and perhaps not wholly 
 satisfied with the selection of the superintendent (which was 
 generally ascribed to favoritism and politics), descended upon 
 the courteous host and hostess at the Northampton institution, 
 and, after leaving them, wrote as follows : — 
 
 Boston, Oct. 22, 1S58. 
 Dear Sir, — I have time for writing but briefly ; but I desire to 
 thank both yourself and Mrs. Prince for the very kind reception 
 
262 MISS DIX AT NORTHAMPTON 
 
 extended to your abrupt and uninvited guest ; and to express by 
 word to yourself the sense of quiet satisfaction I had, in seeing the 
 Institution you direct under so favorable circumstances. Indeed, 
 so many conditions of things and persons satisfied me so well (es- 
 pecially by contrasts) that I do not like to put myself in an ungra- 
 cious attitude by objecting to anything which came under notice. 
 You will excuse my candor, I am sure, '■A for your sake as well as for 
 that of your patients, I allude to one point, — the exposure of your 
 patients in the Chapel to the remarks and observations of strangers 
 and writers, which will surely lessen confidence in the public mind, — 
 eager as most persons are to push into the interior of all such Insti- 
 tutions, they feel differently when their friends are objects of curious, 
 useless notice. ... I have a hundred things to say, but no time now. 
 Should you write, please direct Care of Brown & Dix, Milk Street, 
 Boston. yr fd 
 
 D. L. Dix. 
 
 This note, with its underscoring and abbreviation (the latter 
 only shown above in the signature), is characteristic of the 
 writer, who followed the advice of Tasso, and mixed honey with 
 the "sacred bitters" {hiera pikra) of the censure she was not 
 slow to impart. She shrewdly pointed at a blemish that long 
 existed at Northampton, and increased in some ways, until it 
 was swiftly swept away by Dr. Earle's discipline. 
 
 The new Board of State Charities secured the needful ap- 
 propriation of money from the State ; and, after an interval of 
 three months. Dr. Earle, whose appointment had been favored 
 by the State Board, took charge of the medical and general 
 affairs of the establishment. He found the bonds of discipline 
 much relaxed, and a very small proportion of the patients appar- 
 ently curable. Out of more than 200 whom the State supported 
 there from its own treasury, only 7 were reported to me in 
 September, 1864, as curable, of whom, in fact, only 4 did re- 
 cover. The farm was not large enough, and had been ill- 
 cultivated. In short, everything needed the eye and hand of 
 a skilful master. It was then seen how valuable had been the 
 varied experience and the world-wide observation of the new 
 superintendent, and especially how useful was his early training 
 in frugal and practical industries. 
 
I864-I885 263 
 
 Dr. Earle, though fifty-four years old, was then in the full 
 vigor of life. His uncertain health, occasionally yielding to 
 periods of depression such as led to his resignation at Bloom- 
 ingdale, had been confirmed by age and by careful attention to 
 exercise and recreation. The affairs of the nation, after years 
 of trial and doubt, were taking the favorable turn which led to 
 peace the following year, and to the final removal of the na- 
 tional plague of slavery; and he rejoiced in the opportunity 
 of testing, in a practical way, the ideas he had long held con- 
 cerning the moral treatment and manual occupation of the 
 insane. He could have desired a more hopeful class of subjects 
 for his treatment ; yet that, also, he gradually secured by the 
 admission of a much larger number of private patients, attracted 
 from other States by his high professional reputation. This 
 number soon doubled ; and, at the end of five years from Dr. 
 Earle's coming, it was trebled. This of itself gave the hospital 
 more ease in its finances ; for the price paid by the private 
 patients was more than their cost, while the pauper patients, 
 who made nearly nine-tenths of the whole number in 1864, 
 were then costing more than was paid for their support. At 
 the end of Dr. Earle's fourth year not only had the valuation of 
 the hospital property increased by nearly ;^30,ooo since he 
 came, but the trustees were able to say, "For the first time 
 since the founding of the hospital we have passed a year with- 
 out borrowing money"; and they closed the year with a bal- 
 ance of nearly ;^ 10,000 in hand. This balance went on increas- 
 ing — though often drawn upon for other than current expenses 
 — until, when Dr. Earle resigned in 1885, it stood at $34,000; 
 while the valuation figures had gone up from 1^272,000 in 1864 
 to more than ^440,000 in 1885. This gain came from the high 
 cultivation of the enlarged farm, the better labor of the em- 
 ployed patients, the systematic handling of all expenditure, and 
 for a time the increased income from private patients. 
 
 By this prudent management of the hospital. Dr. Earle dis- 
 armed criticism on the economic side, and made his establish- 
 ment popular with the legislature and the State authorities, 
 who had been accustomed to see it a frequent applicant for 
 appropriations, not only for repairs and new buildings (as was 
 
264 THE NORTHAMPTON HOSPITAL 
 
 the case with other hospitals), but for deficiencies in its current 
 expenses. To meet the lack of a working capital, which every 
 new hospital feels, the Board of State Charities, in accord with 
 Dr. Earle, procured advance payments for nine-tenths of the 
 State patients there (which was perfectly safe, since they were 
 permanent boarders), and thus enabled him to make cash pur- 
 chases, and thereby reduce the current cost. This he also 
 reduced materially by introducing the system of distributing 
 supplies which he had seen practised in frugal Germany ; each 
 person employed being made accountable for the articles de- 
 livered upon his request, and thus becoming more careful 
 against waste or theft, — the latter by no means unknown for- 
 merly in such establishments. In this way he became a model 
 for other hospitals to follow, as they gradually did, but not till 
 some of them had suffered from extravagance and peculation 
 so as to attract public notice. 
 
 What the condition of his patients was in respect to cura- 
 bility will appear from Dr. Earle's second annual report, 
 covering his first full year at Northampton (from Oct. i, 1864, 
 to the same date in 1865) : — 
 
 The size of this hospital being disproportionate to the population 
 of the four western counties and that part of Worcester County 
 which sends its insane to Northampton, it has constantly been made 
 the receptacle for the incurables of the other two hospitals (at 
 Worcester and Taunton), which are filled to overflowing from the 
 cities and denser settlements of Eastern Massachusetts. Of the 134 
 patients admitted in the year, 44 were transferred from those hospi- 
 tals ; and the recovery of any one of these is extremely doubtful. 
 Again, town authorities in this section of the State appear but little 
 disposed to bring their insane to this hospital, so long as they can be 
 taken care of in the poorhouses or at their homes ; and the same is 
 too often true of the families of private boarders or pay-patients.* 
 
 ♦•The usage in Massachusetts was and still is to admit three classes of patients (in respect to tlieir 
 means of support) to its State hospitals and asylums, of which there are now nine instead of three, as 
 in 1S65: I. State patients, having no ascertained "settlement" or legal residence in any city or town; 
 2. Town patients, poor persons having such settlement in some city or town ; 3. Private patients, 
 chiefly from Massachusetts, for whom board was paid by their friends or from their own property. 
 The first class were paid for by the State ; the second, by their municipality ; the third, as above stated. 
 In October, 1865, Northampton Hospital had 235 State patients, 48 town patients, and 69 of the third 
 class. 
 
I864-I885 265 
 
 A few weeks since a man was received here who had been insane 
 forty years, and during the last eleven had been chained by the leg 
 to a staple in the floor of a room in the house of a relative. He had 
 never before been in a hospital. For these and other reasons, out 
 of 134 admitted in the year, the disease of only 34 was of less dura- 
 tion than one year. In all the rest it had passed into the chronic 
 stage of comparative incurability. 
 
 Among this unpromising mass of patients, 468 in all, 33 
 recoveries were reported, — 6 State patients, 6 town patients, 
 and 21 private patients; but 6 of these recoveries were from 
 delirium tremens, or inebriety. The deaths were 41 ; and here 
 the proportions were reversed, 24 being State cases and only 
 14 private patients. This excess of deaths over recoveries 
 continued for a few years; but in 1870, with a total population 
 of 604, there were but 33 deaths against 50 recoveries, while 2 
 were discharged as "not insane," — perhaps the first patients 
 thus frankly designated in our hospital reports. But, among 
 the 604 of 1870, only 103 had never before been in any 
 hospital; while at the end of the year (Oct. i, 1870) the three 
 classes of patients stood : State, 209 ; town, 73 ; private, 122, — 
 the first class diminishing, and the other two considerably in- 
 creasing.* Meantime an asylum for the chronic and quiet 
 insane had been opened at Tewksbury, and a part of its in- 
 mates had been drawn from Northampton. On this point Dr. 
 Earle said : — 
 
 The patients removed to Tewksbury are chiefly the most quiet and 
 undemonstrative in the house ; while among those brought hither 
 from other hospitals an increasing proportion are excited, violent, 
 and destructive. For these reasons the number of the turbulent has 
 been gradually augmented, until it is now threefold what it was 
 when I took charge, six years ago. Thus this hospital has been and 
 still is in a state of transition from little more than an asylum for 
 incurables to the status of a hospital proper, receiving all its patients 
 directly from their homes. 
 
 *In consequence of changes in the laws of pauper settlement the proportion between these 
 classes has now greatly changed. On the ist of October, 1897, among the 522 patients of the enlarged 
 Northampton Hospital, only 47 were State cases, while 3SS were city and town cases, and 87 private 
 patients. Out of 182 admissions, 13S had never been treated before. 
 
2 66 RESULTS AT NORTHAMPTON 
 
 This change, always greatly desired by him, Dr. Earle lived 
 to see ; for in October, 1888, more than three years before his 
 death, his successor, Dr. Nims, reported that, of 166 patients 
 admitted in the year, only one was from outside the four 
 western counties, which had, in fact, nearly doubled their 
 population since 1864. 
 
 At that date (1888) there remained of the original transfers 
 from the other hospitals (including 100 State patients who had 
 been sent up from the South Boston Hospital in 1858) about 80 
 old cases, of whom a few yet remain, ten years later. This 
 persistence of old cases, together with the more frequent 
 admission of recent cases (always more exposed to death than 
 the chronics, until the latter are enfeebled by age), has made 
 the deaths in recent years outnumber the reported recoveries. 
 Thus in 1868 there were 43 deaths among 565 patients ; in 
 1878, 23 deaths among 551, with 26 recoveries; in 1888, 31 
 deaths among 624 patients, with 36 recoveries; in 1885, the 
 year of Dr. Earle's retirement, there were 27 deaths and 29 
 recoveries among 588 patients ; in 1892, the year of his death, 
 among 627 patients there were 31 deaths and 45 recoveries. 
 But in 1896, among 745 patients, there were 46 deaths and 
 only 36 recoveries ; and in 1897, among 735 patients, 45 deaths 
 and only 30 recoveries. A marked feature of Dr. Earle's ad- 
 ministration was the low death-rate among his patients, show- 
 ing the extreme care taken by him, and also the excellent diet 
 which the large and well-cultivated farm enabled him to supply 
 at a comparatively small cost. In 1885, the last year of his 
 direction, there were 364 acres, or nearly double the number 
 he found in 1864; and each cultivated acre produced nearly 
 twice as much as when he began his practical management of 
 the farm, for which his rural life at Leicester had so well 
 qualified him. Thus in 1864 only 40 tons of hay were cut; 
 in 1885, 251. In the former year, 6,256 pounds of pork were 
 raised; in 1885, 17,544. The difference in the crops of fruit 
 was still more marked, and nearly as much so in vegetables for 
 the kitchen. 
 
 Next to the economic benefit of Dr. Earle's administration 
 may be placed its statistical value, both to the hospital itself 
 
1864-1885 267 
 
 and to the State at large and other States. His long study of 
 statistics had shown him how imperfect and useless was 
 much of the information which hospital statistics professed 
 to give, and he speedily reformed the practice at Northamp- 
 ton. My own studies had led me in the same direction ; and 
 when I became Inspector of Charities, in 1879, I ^^ or\CQ con- 
 ferred with him in regard to the forms proper to be used in all 
 the Massachusetts hospitals and asylums, when reporting their 
 insane for the official year. Profiting by his suggestions, which 
 had been strikingly enforced by his then recent publications on 
 the Curability of Insanity, I prepared tables, which, when re- 
 vised by him and approved by Dr. Allen and Dr. Hitchcock, of 
 the State Lunacy Board, became the official form for tabula- 
 tions, and have, ever since 1880, been in use in Massachusetts, 
 with triffing modifications, which do not improve them. Based 
 on the facts thus reported, the principal matters of endless 
 dispute, as to the age, curability, form of disease, death-rate, 
 occupations, etc., of many thousands of the insane, have been 
 partially settled, so far as Massachusetts is concerned ; and 
 other States and countries have profited by this example to 
 improve their own statistical reports, so that it is no longer 
 possible to have those absurd results so gravely and confi- 
 dently stated, upon which Dr. Earle commented sarcastically 
 in his annual Northampton reports, and afterwards in his use- 
 ful volume, exposing the old fallacies respecting curability. 
 
 Two positions taken by Dr. Earle, while in charge at 
 Northampton, drew on him much idle censure from his pro- 
 fessional brethren. The first was his unsparing exposure 
 year by year, from 1876 onwards, of the traditional and decep- 
 tive modes of reporting recoveries, so as to make it appear to 
 the public that insanity in general is a malady easily curable 
 (only true of certain forms of the disease). This provoked for 
 years the most offensive imputations from some of those who 
 had been using, consciously or ignorantly, the old forms of 
 statistical report to propagate a mistaken opinion which flattered 
 professional pride. His only object was truth, whether agree- 
 able to preconceived opinion or not. Yet he was charged with 
 mean motives, and with misrepresenting the statements of 
 
2 68 THE EXTRAVAGANCE AT DANVERS 
 
 those not yet converted by his facts. The other position, no 
 less creditable to his love of truth and his public spirit, was 
 his attitude towards the extravagant scale of expenditure in 
 hospital building for the insane, which prevailed in several 
 States in the decade from 1870 to 1880, and culminated in 
 Massachusetts in the culpable wastefulness of the builders of 
 the Danvers Hospital. Unjustifiable use having been made of 
 a letter which had been extracted from Dr. Earle's good nature, 
 to procure from the legislature an appropriation of $500,000 
 more, to finish the Danvers structure, than he had been assured 
 it would cost, he felt it his duty to give his full opinion con- 
 cerning the matter in his yearly report for 1876. Estimating 
 its final cost at ;^ 1,800,000, including interest before it could be 
 occupied, and its capacity at 500, he computed the building- 
 cost per capita at $3,600, both assumptions being within 
 bounds of the existing fact when the hospital was opened in 
 1878. Dr. Earle then said: — 
 
 Scattered all over Massachusetts there are hundreds, perhaps 
 thousands, of farms, averaging 100 acres of land, with a good 
 country dwelling-house of two stories, and from three to five rooms on 
 the ground floor, a suitable barn, and (often) other out-buildings, and 
 wood sufficient for the perpetual maintenance of two fires ; and any 
 one of these farms may be purchased for less than $3,600. The 
 market value of more than 500 such farms will be spent in the con- 
 struction of that hospital. For at least one-half of its cost, nothing 
 is added to its excellence as a curative institution, and no compen- 
 sation is gained, at all commensurate with the amount of money 
 disbursed. Had the State built the hospital with one half of its 
 appropriations (actual and in prospect), and with the other half 
 purchased that amount of its outstanding bonds and burned them, 
 it would, in my estimation, have done a greater work of beneficence 
 than it will have performed by the lavish expenditure of that half. 
 The burned bonds would no longer oppress the people with demands 
 for either principal or interest, but the establishment at Danvers 
 entails a perpetual and unnecessary burden to meet its current 
 expenses. It is not a legitimate or truthful expression of the will of 
 the people of Massachusetts. Had it been known in the beginning 
 that it would cost even $1,500,000 (the sum already asked for), no 
 
I864-I8S5 269 
 
 one will pretend that the enabling act for its foundation could ever 
 have been obtained. 
 
 There was no misunderstanding trenchant words like these. 
 They greatly angered the indolent commissioners and incom- 
 petent architects and engineers who had wasted so much public 
 money, and they caused much anguish of mind to the plausible 
 medical men who had helped support the pretension that such 
 costly buildings would promote recoveries. These knew that 
 their reputation was not equal to the task of crying down the 
 most eminent of their profession, one of the thirteen founders, 
 in 1844, of the Association of Superintendents, whose deliberate 
 votes against monster asylums they had helped to set aside ; but 
 they were none the less vexed on that account. The public re- 
 sponded at once to the plain language of the Northampton 
 superintendent, which was widely copied in the press, and had 
 much to do with the searching legislative investigation that 
 followed in the winter and spring ensuing. As its result, the 
 commissioners were turned out, the new hospital was put into 
 the hands of a new board, who found all Dr. Earle's anticipa- 
 tions of their financial difficulties fully realized, and it was five 
 or six years before this crowded building could meet its yearly 
 outlay from its own income, as the Northampton hospital had 
 done, under Dr. Earle's frugal management, for nearly twenty 
 years. 
 
 The open and secret hostility to Dr. Earle for his outspoken 
 protest against extravagance soon ceased, so evidently was the 
 judgment of the people with him ; and, when in Chicago in 
 June, 1879, ^^ set forth the true theory and wise practice of 
 hospital building for the insane, at the meeting of the National 
 Conference of Charities, he received general applause from all 
 parts of the country. But his sin against traditional opinion 
 and the long delusion of his profession concerning the cura- 
 bility of the insane was too great to be so soon forgiven. His 
 tentative publication on this subject began in his Northampton 
 report for 1875 (Twentieth Annual Report), and was continued 
 for several years in the same annual. In December, 1876, he 
 summed up his first results in an address before the New Eng- 
 
270 REFORM IN LUNACY STATISTICS 
 
 land Psychological Society, of which he was president, and then 
 printed them in a pamphlet of fifty-two pages at Utica, N.Y. 
 They were received by the majority of his associates with 
 reluctance or positive aversion, so completely did they contra- 
 vene the comfortable hypothesis upon which sumptuous hos- 
 pital-palaces had been erected and large appropriations of public 
 money or private endowment obtained. This hypothesis was 
 that insanity is easily and rapidly curable, if only taken at once 
 and treated in a hospital, thus saving to the community the vast 
 sums otherwise requisite to maintain the uncured patients in 
 asylums. It was a pleasing and convenient theory. It pro- 
 vided many medical men with palatial homes and exalted 
 reputations, which some of them deserved and most of them 
 enjoyed; but, as it proved, the facts were all against it. This 
 Dr. Earle and others had known, and Dr. Thurnam, of the 
 York Retreat, had stated the truth years before, but no man 
 had demonstrated it on a large scale, extending research over 
 many lands and many thousand cases ; and so the plausible and 
 comfortable fallacy continued to hold sway during the grotesque 
 inadequacy of the hospital statistics, on the revision of which 
 the demonstration must depend. Dr. Earle had been for 
 decades laboring at this revision. The farther he advanced, 
 the more clearly he saw what the final inference must be; and 
 he gave his colleagues credit for the same penetration and 
 singleness of purpose which he had. For the time he found 
 himself mistaken and disappointed. His figures were unassail- 
 able ; but their meaning was so unpleasing to professional pride 
 of opinion, and so fatal to the system of error long and carefully 
 built up, that it is no wonder they were slowly accepted, even 
 where they were fully understood. For, in the modest inquiry 
 which the Northampton superintendent undertook to make, he 
 soon came upon blunders that so touched his sense of the hu- 
 morous that he could not refrain from exposing them mirthfully, 
 thus adding a barb to the dart he threw with mild efficiency. 
 His earliest victim was that gay and captious Briton, Captain 
 Basil Hall, who travelled in America seventy years ago, and 
 gave Wordsworth and others such a sad picture of the Ameri- 
 can defects. Hall had visited the Hartford Retreat, October, 
 
1864-1885 271 
 
 1827, and there had found something to praise. He said in his 
 second volume : — 
 
 Dr. Todd, the eminent and kind physician of the Retreat, showed 
 us over every part of this noble establishment, — a model, I venture 
 to say, from which any country might take instruction. During the 
 last year there have been admitted here 23 recent cases, of which 21 
 recovered, equivalent to 91.3 per cent. The whole number of recent 
 cases during the year was 28, of which 25 have recovered, equal to 
 89.2 per cent. 
 
 " Thus recognized and indorsed," said Dr. Earle, " the report 
 of the Hartford visiting physicians, otherwise comparatively 
 unknown, was sent by the newspapers through the length and 
 breadth of the land ; and the people received their first im- 
 pression that insanity is largely curable. By a few strokes of 
 his magic pen Captain Hall did what, were it not for him, would 
 have required the labor of years." He then quoted the curious 
 boast of Dr. Gait, of the Williamsburg Asylum in Virginia, 
 made in 1842, that he had cured 100 per cent, of his recent 
 cases, leading this sanguine statistician, reasoning from thirteen 
 cases, " to believe there is no insane institution, either in Europe 
 or America, in which such success is met with as in our own." 
 Dr. Earle slyly added : — 
 
 Dr. Gait had produced the maximum of percentage figures, includ- 
 ing deaths. Nay, had he not (under a recognized principle) mathe- 
 matically demonstrated the curability of all the insane ? What said 
 Dr. Luther Bell, of the McLean Asylum, in his report for 1840? 
 " Our records justify the declaration that all cases, certaijily recent, — 
 that is, whose origin does not, either directly or obscurely, run back 
 more than a year, — recover under a fair trial. This is the general 
 law. The occasional instances to the contrary are the exception." 
 The spring-tide of mathematical curability had now attained its 
 highest point ; and Dr. Gait was upon the crest of its topmost wave, 
 with Dr. Bell beside him in opinionative curability. 
 
 Warnings against this self-deception of the men whom the 
 public trusted were not wanting. Dr. Ray, then at the head of 
 
272 THE DELUSION OF CURABILITY 
 
 the Maine Hospital at Augusta, said in 1842, "Nothing can 
 be made more deceptive than statistics, and I have yet to learn 
 that those of insanity form any exception." His successor, 
 Dr. Bates, in his report for 1850, exposed the juggle with 
 figures at which Dr. Ray may have hinted : — 
 
 I am sure figures are sometimes made the instruments of decep- 
 tion. Suppose, at the end of each year, instead of reporting all 
 cases as recent which were admitted within one year of the attack, I 
 should, for the purpose of appearing to cure 90 per cent, of recent 
 cases discharged, report only such as recent as had not become old 
 by remaining with us. I might impose the belief on the uninitiated 
 that 90 per cent, of recent cases could be cured. Yet every man 
 acquainted with the subject knows that no instance can be shown 
 in which 90 out of 100 cases, admitted in succession, ?io matter how 
 recent, were ever cured. 
 
 And Dr. Earle's English friend, Samuel Tuke, of York, had 
 in 1 841, when introducing the German Jacobi, of Siegburg, to 
 the English reader, said this : — 
 
 The mode of reporting the results of our institutions for the insa«e 
 calls loudly for attention, if we would arrive at any useful statistical 
 comparisons as to the effect of treatment and other circumstances . . . 
 in regard to the cure of this greatest of human maladies.* 
 
 Notwithstanding these warnings, Dr. Earle himself, naturally 
 hopeful, and yielding to the common drift of opinion in his 
 youth, had said in his first Bloomingdale report (for 1844) : — 
 
 Of cases in which there is no eccentricity or constitutional weak- 
 ness of intellect, and when the proper remedial measures are adopted 
 in the early stages of the disorder, no less than 80 in every 100 are 
 cured. There are but few diseases from which so large a percentage 
 of the persons attacked are restored. 
 
 •This passage, and many of the citations before, are from Dr. Earle's " Curability of Insanity," 
 a complete demonstration of the falsity of statistical representations of its easy curability, and of the 
 proper method of reporting recoveries. It should be in every hospital library and every collection of 
 works concerning the insane, not only for its statistical information (nowhere else in English so ex- 
 tensive), but for its calm and scientific spirit. 
 
1864-1885 273 
 
 Cautious as these exceptions were, the percentage was far 
 too high ; and Dr. Earle apologized for his error in his masterly 
 volume,* saying : — 
 
 Thirty-two years ago Dr. Earle was younger than now, and had not 
 the benefit of so extensive an experience. His practical knowledge 
 of the treatment of insanity in 1844-45 had been derived from a 
 number of cases considerably less than were under his care at 
 one time in 1876 (494). He has had time and opportunity and 
 reason to modify many of his opinions ; and among those modified 
 is that of the curability of insanity. Doubtless there are others of 
 the writers he has quoted who would now seek protection, and who 
 deserve it, under a similar plea. 
 
 It seems that Dr. Bell, one of the most able and outspoken 
 of the deluded and deluding alienists of the decade from 1840 
 to 1850, did reach a conclusion more extreme in regard to 
 incurability than Dr. Earle, who quotes him as saying in 1857, 
 " I have come to the conclusion that, when once a man becomes 
 insane, he is about used up for this world." And even Dr. 
 Ray, who attacked Dr. Earle's conclusions in rather too parti- 
 san a spirit, as late as 1879, took occasion to say then : — 
 
 It may well be doubted whether the terms "recovered," "im- 
 proved," " much improved," have been of any use not more than 
 balanced by their inevitable tendency to mislead the reader respect- 
 ing the curability of insanity. The public, as often happens, thought 
 that the information sought for was to be found in a parade of vague, 
 general expressions. 
 
 The peculiar merit of Dr. Earle's whole career at Northamp- 
 ton was to destroy the value and check the parade of " vague, 
 general expressions " and impressions. 
 
 In the year 1870 Dr. Earle was subjected to one of those 
 persecutions by a discharged patient, possessed of money and 
 local influence, which so often fall to the lot of those who care 
 for diseased minds. It was alleged that he was detaining at 
 
 * This was written in 1876, while the volume only came out in 1886. 
 
274 DR. earle's hospital discipline 
 
 Northampton patients who were not insane, that his treatment 
 was sometimes abusive and sometimes neglectful, and that he 
 had not complied with certain exacting and quite needless re- 
 quirements of law in regard to notifying distant relatives of his 
 patients. The last charge appeared to be true. I believe the 
 law has since been practically abrogated. The other charges 
 were wholly disproved ; and a former patient of education and 
 character, who had been relied on to give testimony unfavorable 
 to the physicians, came forward, and said : — 
 
 I consider them competent men, and that the care and treatment 
 bestowed by them could not be improved. If at any time I had a 
 different opinion, it was owing to a diseased mental condition. I am 
 of the opinion now that Dr. Earle conducts the affairs of the hospital 
 with humanity, competence, and kindness. 
 
 Such was the conclusion of all the official persons called on 
 to investigate the complaints, myself among them. And one 
 of the chief qualifications of a superintendent for such a difficult 
 position was as marked in Dr. Earle as in any of the hundred 
 superintendents and directors of hospitals and asylums whom I 
 have personally known, in an experience now covering thirty- 
 five years, — his strictness of discipline, both for patients and 
 attendants. This, which sometimes passed for unkindness, and 
 was really exacting now and then, was the truest kindness 
 when the real interest of all persons was considered. The 
 inflexible justice of a most kindly nature thus displayed itself, 
 often at the cost of much pain to the doctor himself. • In the 
 case above mentioned it gave him so much concern, though 
 conscious of doing his duty, that it seriously affected his health, 
 and led to a third visit to Europe, which he made in the year 
 1871. 
 
 Though rapid, this journey was more extensive than either 
 of his former ones, so far as the inspection of insane asy- 
 lums was involved. He revisited several that he had seen 
 in 1837-38 and in 1849, ^"<^ ^^ gave attention to the many 
 new ones that had sprung up everywhere. He received, as he 
 deserved, the most distinguished welcome in all the countries 
 
1864-1885 275 
 
 visited ; and he noted with keen eye the many changes that had 
 occurred since he was in Great Britain, France, Germany, and 
 Austria twenty-two years before. He could not quite accept 
 the peculiar institution of Gheel in Belgium, as adapted to 
 America or even Scotland ; and his caution made him distrust- 
 ful of the Scotch system of Family Care (a considerable im- 
 provement on Gheel, because under more exact control and 
 classification by the government of the whole country), though 
 it has since amply justified itself and been copied in other 
 countries. The remarkably well-built and well-managed colony- 
 asylum of Alt-Scherbitz was not founded until five years later, 
 and was never seen by Dr. Earle. Had it been, it would have 
 overcome, by its great practical success, some of his objections 
 to a combination of hospital and asylum in detached buildings. 
 There are nearly forty such buildings at this Saxon Anstalt. 
 But he admired the newer Scotch asylums, with their combina- 
 tion of buildings for the recent and the chronic cases. He made 
 the acquaintance of Sir James Coxe, Dr. (now Sir Arthur) 
 Mitchell, and Dr. Clouston, not yet at the head of the Edin- 
 burgh Asylum ; praised the Scotch Lunacy Commission, which 
 his American friend, Miss Dix, had some hand in creating in 
 1857, disliked the monster asylums of London and Paris, found 
 the condition of the Vienna and the Munich insane greatly ad- 
 vanced since 1849, and was particularly pleased with the public 
 spirit of Zurich in providing asylum room for 1,000 insane, when 
 the population of the whole canton was less than 300,000, He 
 saw what was then the new hospital of Burgholzli, over which 
 Dr. Auguste Forel so long presided, and won such a reputation 
 throughout Europe, and thought the size of this Zurich estab- 
 lishment (250 patients) a model for Massachusetts. In his 
 report for 1872 Dr. Earle briefly sketched his plan for the 
 Massachusetts insane, then estimated at about 3,000 in 
 number : — 
 
 Were a system for the care and custody of our insane now to be 
 devised, I would recommend a series of small hospitals, designed for 
 not more than 250 patients each, and so situated in the several coun- 
 ties or quarters of Massachusetts that some one of them should be 
 
276 SYSTEM OF CARE 
 
 easily accessible to every citizen. Whether they should be founded, 
 owned, and conducted by the State, or by the counties or districts 
 respectively, is perhaps a matter of but little importance. 
 
 This passage shows that he adhered to his early opinion in 
 favor of small establishments (like those at Cupar in Scotland 
 and Zurich, which he specially mentioned), and foreshows, in a 
 modified form, the Wisconsin system of county asylums, which 
 was instituted by Mr. Andrew Elmore and Mr. Henry Giles in 
 1881. It was soon after his return from Europe in 187 1 that 
 Dr. Earle arranged for building a small hospital for recent 
 cases (not more than fifty) on land which he had bought for 
 the State across the street from the main hospital, — a plan 
 which, unfortunately, he found himself too old to carry out in 
 face of the difficulties created by professional opinion and the 
 extravagant outlay at Worcester and Danvers. But it has 
 been practically adopted by the trustees of the Westboro 
 Insane Hospital, and such a building is now going up there. 
 
 It was characteristic of the open mind and capacity for new 
 impressions which Dr. Earle's insatiable love of travel indicated 
 that he should continually advance in his opinions concerning 
 the care of the insane, as the increase and the changed condi- 
 tions of that class required changes in their care. Thus, in 
 1879, at his first appearance before the National Conference of 
 Charities in Chicago, with his elaborate report for the committee 
 of which he was chairman on " Management of the Insane," he 
 was found to have modified in detail (while adhering in prin- 
 ciple) the extent and nature of that State management which 
 he had always held desirable and obligatory. The aim, as he 
 stated it, was "a general scheme, by the kindly operation of 
 which every insane person requiring curative treatment, paren- 
 tal care, or custodial restraint, shall be suitably provided for, in 
 such places and manner as will be effective, without transcend- 
 ing the true pecuniary ability of the people." How then reach 
 that aim ? Not by palace hospitals : on that topic he was plain 
 and convincing : — 
 
1864-1885 277 
 
 The argument used to be, " The better the hospital, the greater will 
 be the number cured " ; and the word " better " was in some places 
 interpreted " more costly." Under this rendering the ambition of 
 architects, the pride of commissioners and superintendents, and the 
 universal extravagance of the people during the years next following 
 the Civil War strongly fortified the argument ; and the consequences 
 are now apparent in hospitals which have cost from ^2,500 to $4,000, 
 perhaps $5,000, for every patient to whom they can offer a comfort- 
 able domicile. Hence during the last few years it has cost Massa- 
 chusetts $1,000 a day, Sabbaths included, to supply the shelter of a 
 hospital (to say nothing of support) for the mere current increase in 
 the numbers of its insane. . . . No nation or State has ever been able 
 to afford such expenditure from the public treasury. The wealthy 
 may and can bear it, but its burden weighs grievously upon tens of 
 thousands in the humbler spheres of society. The life's blood of 
 many is drawn, under the forms of law, in providing an ostentatious 
 charity for a few. 
 
 What, then, viras to be done in the face of this increasing 
 multitude, who must somehow be provided for, since the in- 
 adequacy of hospitals is shown by decreased recoveries and 
 overcrowding everywhere } First, maintain curative hospitals 
 and small ones, never exceeding three hundred in the number 
 of patients. Next, vary the monotonous forms of architecture, 
 as is done in England and Germany. Then provide separate 
 asylums for the incurable, grouped around or near the hospitals. 
 Finally, place some of the harmless insane in families, though 
 that is to be done cautiously. 
 
 It is in the directions thus pointed out, nearly twenty years 
 ago, that enlightened opinion has since been moving; and, when 
 Dr. Earle saw the continued success of the Family Care system 
 of Scotland and Belgium, his doubts gave way, and he heartily 
 approved, in 1885 and the following years, my introduction of 
 the Scotch system into Massachusetts, even selecting himself 
 a few of the old cases which were to be boarded out from 
 the Northampton Hospital. In January, 1890, at the age of 
 eighty, he joined with Dr. Talbot, of Boston, Mr. Allen, 
 of Medfield, Mr, Barrus (now a trustee of the Northampton 
 
278 FORESIGHT OF DR. EARLE 
 
 Hospital), and others, — a committee of the National Confer- 
 ence of Charities, — in this recommendation to the Massachu- 
 setts legislature : — 
 
 That there should be in Massachusetts a qualified Lunacy Com- 
 mission, which, with other official boards, should provide for the 
 chronic insane in asylums and families. Particularly should permis- 
 sive power be given to the hospitals and asylums to board out their 
 patients, and to take them back when necessary, without waiting for 
 the action of a central board. This is a power natural and necessary 
 to such establishments, if they are to give their patients the best and 
 most varied opportunities for improvement. It frequently happens 
 that the convalesence of poor persons would be promoted by their 
 removal from the hospitals into private families. For convalescing 
 patients, whether rich or poor, the boarding-out system furnishes 
 advantages of which most of the hospital superintendents have 
 expressed a desire to partake.* 
 
 It will be noticed that these suggestions are in line vi^ith 
 those made by the Massachusetts Commission of 1896, and of 
 Dr. Dewey, Dr. Stedman, and others, who in 1897 recom- 
 mended "after-care of the insane"; but they were made six 
 years before the drift of professional opinion settled in that 
 way. This is a good example of the advanced position usually 
 held by Dr. Earle in all questions affecting the insane, and of 
 the practical view which he took of matters too often discussed 
 theoretically. 
 
 In the late years of Dr. Earle's superintendency at Northamp- 
 ton, opinion had come round most gratifyingly to his position 
 on the main questions. He had become the Nestor of Ameri- 
 can alienists, and was so recognized in places where he had 
 been sometimes viewed with aversion as " one that troubleth 
 Israel." But his physical powers yielded to the advance of age. 
 A tendency to pulmonary disease also manifested itself, and 
 kept him housed much of the long, harsh winters of Northamp- 
 
 •See the Boston Evc7iing Transcript of Jan. 24, 1890. The date of the committee's report, 
 however, was January 4. It was presented to the legislative Committee on Charitable Institutions 
 about the 23d. A lunacy commission, called the " State Board of Insanity," has been established 
 this year (1898) in place of the unsatisfactory board existing in 1890. 
 
1S64-1SS5 279 
 
 ton. He therefore, with his usual prudence and unselfishness, 
 withdrew from his position of command, gave in his resignation 
 seven years before his death (in 1885), and was relieved of the 
 cares of office. At the invitation of the State he continued to 
 reside in the hospital, busy with his correspondence, his Earle 
 Genealogy, and his manuscripts, and died there May 17, 1892, 
 in his eighty-third year. He had already provided his burial- 
 place and monument in the rural cemetery of that lovely city,* 
 to which he left a large public bequest and the memory and 
 example of a good public servant. 
 
 At Dr. Earle's resignation the Northampton Hospital passed 
 into the charge of Dr. Edward Nims, who had long been the 
 first assistant physician, and who understood and carried out 
 Dr. Earle's methods. f Mention should also be made of the long 
 and active service of Miss Fanny Earle, as clerk, — the daughter 
 of Dr. Earle's eldest brother, — who for many years relieved 
 her uncle of much of the labor, both of public and private cor- 
 respondence, and materially aided him in the preparation of the 
 Genealogy. 
 
 * Northampton had been celebrated, long before Dr. Earle became its most distinguished citizen, 
 for the beauty of its scenery and the fame of its residents. Jonathan Edwards preached there, and 
 wrote some of his works in Northampton. George Bancroft was a teacher in Dr. Cogswell's Round 
 Hill School, where Motley was fitted for college ; and it was in Northampton that Bancroft began his 
 History of the United States. It was the lifelong home of John Clarke, who there founded 
 the Clarke School for the Deaf (which made oral instruction popular in America) in 1867, a few years 
 after Dr. Earle went there to reside. 
 
 t The vote of the trustees of the Northampton Hospital, upon his resignation, was as follows: — 
 
 Resolved, That, in accepting the resignation of Dr. Pliny Earle, superintendent of this hospital, 
 the trustees have reluctantly yielded to the con\dction that his advancing years and impaired health 
 demand rest and relief from the responsibilities and labor of his position. 
 
 Dr. Earle has been at the head of this institution twenty-one years, and during nearly all that 
 period has also been its treasurer. In its management he has combined the highest professional skill 
 and acquirement with rare executive ability. By his thorough knowledge, his long experience, his 
 patient attention to details, by his wisdom and firmness, his absolute fidelity to duty, and devotion to 
 the interests of the hospital, he has rendered invaluable services to the institution and to the com- 
 munity which it serves. The trustees are deeply sensible of the assistance which he has given them 
 in the' discharge of their duties, and follow him,'in his retirement, with the assurance of their highest 
 respect and esteem. 
 
 Resolved, That the trustees indulge the hope that Dr. Earle will continue to make his home in 
 this institution, that they may continue to profit by his counsels ; and they will provide that his rooms 
 shall always be open and ready for his use. 
 
 Resolved, That these resolutions be entered upon the records of the board, and that a copy 
 thereof, attested by the chairman and secretary, be transmitted to Dr. Earle. 
 
 Henry W. Taft, Chairvian. 
 
 (July, 1885.) Lyman D. James, Secretary. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LESSONS AND INCIDENTS OF A LONG LIFE. 
 
 These pages have exhibited Dr. Earle in the whole extent of 
 a life protracted beyond the ordinary limit, and occupied for 
 fourscore years with an unresting and fruitful activity. His 
 brief infancy, soon passing into the eager pursuit and acquire- 
 ment of varied knowledge, which he instantly applied to some 
 purpose deemed needful, and the few years that followed his 
 retirement from the actual control of a large establishment for 
 the treatment, shelter, and observation of mental disease, — 
 these were the only parts of Dr. Earle's life when he was not 
 actively engaged in important pursuits, useful to himself, his 
 kindred and friends, or to mankind at large. The story has 
 been told as much as possible in his own words. Here it is to 
 be summed up from his account, and from the observation of 
 those who knew him in his various periods of life and spheres 
 of action. Of such the witnesses of his earlier years are now 
 few. He outlived all his nearest kindred and most of his early 
 friends and acquaintances, and even the pupils of his half- 
 dozen years of class instruction are now few and fast passing 
 away. He was the last survivor, I think, of the old and now 
 extensive organization which, in its first form, was the Ameri- 
 can Association of Medical Superintendents of Institutions for 
 the Insane, and which now has another name. Of its original 
 thirteen members, who founded or early contributed to the 
 American Journal of Insanity, Dr. Earle, if I am not mistaken, 
 died last. He held its presidency in his last year of control at 
 Northampton, and resigned it when he gave up the superin- 
 tendency. And in the years since his death many of his 
 colleagues, younger than himself, in this and other countries, 
 have passed away, — Drs. Bucknill, Hack Tuke, Lockhart Rob- 
 ertson, Heinrich Laehr, J. P. Gray, Bancroft, Andrews, and 
 others ; so that comparatively few are now left who saw his 
 

1837-1892 28l 
 
 professional work in the hospital with the trained vision of 
 practical experience. I have supposed that he selected me as 
 his biographer and editor partly because circumstances made 
 me officially cognizant of that work at Northampton, without 
 previous bias for or against him from professional brotherhood 
 or jealousy, — as Tacitus says, sine ira et studio, quonifn causas 
 procul habeo. It was by that work and by his demonstration 
 of the true theory of Curability — which his success at North- 
 ampton allowed him the opportunity to develop and publish — 
 that he desired to be judged in the field of science and prac- 
 tice to which he consecrated fifty years of his life. 
 
 Consecration is the right word to describe his care for the 
 insane. With all his worldly prudence and common sense, and 
 notwithstanding his broad toleration of theological differences, 
 he was from the first, and essentially, a religious man, gov- 
 erned in all the important actions of life by a sense of relig- 
 ious duty and that regard for the fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of man, which the small sect of his family and fore- 
 fathers especially cherishes. Of the narrowness of the Quaker 
 Church he had nothing : of its profound instinct of divine 
 guidance and the worth of the human soul he had much. In 
 the growing strength of materialism among scientific men and 
 physicians, he still maintained the spiritual and im,mortal 
 nature of our minds, and could have said with Shakespeare, " I 
 think more nobly of the soul, and no way approve their 
 opinion." In one of his lectures to physicians in middle life, 
 he thus stated his view; — 
 
 Were the arguments for the hj'pothesis that in insanity the mind 
 itself is diseased tenfold more numerous than they are, and more 
 weighty, I could not accept them. My ideas of the human mind are 
 such that I cannot hold for a moment that it can be diseased, as we 
 understand disease. That implies death as its final consequence, 
 but Mind is eternal. In its very essence and structure (to use the 
 terms we apply to matter), in its elemental composition and its 
 organization, it was created for immortality. Consequently, it is 
 superior to the bodily structure, and beyond the scope of the wear 
 and tear and disorganization and final destruction of the mortal part 
 of our being. 
 
282 RELIGIOUS CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 It required some courage and firm religious conviction to 
 adhere to this noble opinion during the latter half of the pass- 
 ing century ; but Dr. Earle continued to maintain it, and it 
 gave a dignity to his special occupations which nothing else 
 could so well provide. It was in this spirit that he took them 
 up as a medical student in Philadelphia, and thus he fulfilled 
 his whole duty in them through life. 
 
 From his brethren and sisters of the Society of Friends 
 exhortations were not lacking to a more active proselyting 
 effort among his patients, not in the narrow sense of making 
 them Quakers, but to bring them into the general Christian 
 fold. Thus his English friend, Anne Knight, who was asso- 
 ciated with Mrs. Fry in her labors at Paris in 1838, and whom 
 Dr. Earle found there on his return from Italy and Greece in 
 April, 1839, had this advice to give him, when about to sail for 
 America (April 28) : — 
 
 Dear Fliny Earle, — Excuse my dismissing the formality of doctor 
 and addressing thee, in the freedom of Christian sisterhood, a few 
 words which I can hardly withhold on this prospect of thy departure 
 (forever, perhaps) from us. To-day I ventured, in wishing thee 
 every blessifig, to hope thou wouldst " minister to a mind diseased " 
 as well as to its afflicted earthen vessel. It has remained with me, 
 augmenting into earnest desire, that the stability of thy mind, en- 
 larged by this European experience, with increased ability to help 
 thy diseased fellow-creatures, may be ever engaged in directing their 
 hearts to that only and best fountain of healing, which can raise them 
 up to life eternal. Oh, never lose sight of thy power, in the efidear- 
 ing function of alleviating the pains of others, to hold up to their 
 view that Saviour by whose stripes we are healed ! . . . Opportunities 
 for spiritual help are far more in the power of a medical than a 
 Pastoral man. Thou art admitted where a preacher ordained is re- 
 jected, — at the couch of the dying infidel, in the last scene of the 
 daughter of wickedness. How may such be allured to the Saviour 
 by gentle and gradual means, without saying a word of death ! How 
 often does vitality spring up to utilize our honest endeavors with our 
 fellow earth-worms ! ... In fear of having been too free, and feeling 
 my own unworthiness and presumption in so doing, I remain, with 
 every good earthly and heavenly wish, thy sincere friend. 
 
I825-I84I 283 
 
 Two years later an American lady, who had been a pupil 
 both of Dr. Earle and his sister, gave him the same religious 
 warning, introduced with praise for his youthful prosperity in 
 his chosen work (April, 1841) : — 
 
 My best wishes for success and eminence in all thy undertakings. 
 I often hear thee spoken of in the most respectful terms, and I read 
 comments upon what thou offers to the public ; and all is of a flatter- 
 ing nature. Now forgive me, dear Pliny, if I say, " Remember from 
 whom all good comes." Thou must know that I feel myself much 
 indebted to thy family, and a lively interest in every member of it. 
 Should thou come to Massachusetts [from Philadelphia] it would 
 afford me much joy to receive thee here [At Sandwich, where the 
 oldest American Quaker meeting is]. 
 
 The early promise implied in these affectionate suggestions 
 was fully kept, but hardly in the manner then hoped by Pliny 
 Earle and his friends, — a pronounced literary career, combined 
 with his philanthropic efforts. For it is to be regretted that he 
 was not gifted (along with his higher qualities) with a genius for 
 expression, nor had acquired by training a better style ; since it 
 must be confessed that he seldom charms or even convinces by 
 his man7ier of writing. He lacked imagination ; and his very 
 fancy, though quick to see the common and even the grotesque 
 features of nature and life, seldom imparted actual liveliness to 
 his style. He was educated at a period when the standard of 
 rhetoric in New England was very low, and when the common 
 style of those who passed for good writers, unless they had a 
 touch of genius, like Channing, Emerson, and Hawthorne, was 
 diffuse and languid, given to long periods and roundabout forms 
 of expression. The genius of Dr. Earle was for observation 
 and faithful study, not for expression. Therefore, in the tens of 
 thousands of pages which he wrote and published, while he con- 
 veyed impressive and indispensable fact, he did not charm by 
 his presentation of the subject. Like his father, as he depicts 
 him in my early pages, Pliny Earle the younger was mathe- 
 matical. His mind found its shortest road and its best vehicle 
 in numerical statement. Consequently, he has put the statis- 
 
284 CHARACTERISTICS OF DR. EARLE 
 
 tics of his subject, whatever it might be, on the soundest and 
 clearest basis ; and the inferences which he drew from the 
 figures he marshalled were not the startling fallacies of the 
 amateur in statistics, but the reasonable conclusions which, 
 sooner or later, the world must and would accept. 
 
 Upon this mathematical foundation rested his great economic 
 success in the management of his hospital. He knew exactly 
 the weight and measure and number of each thing needed, the 
 value of every dollar to be expended, and the times and seasons 
 in which that value would be greatest. Before his time there 
 had been no remarkable economic management of the insane 
 in Massachusetts, and hardly in the country anywhere. Pro- 
 fusion and stinginess by turns marked the outlay for them ; and 
 the worth of their manual labor, both sanatory and pecuniary, 
 was ill understood. Dr. Earle saw what his patients could do, 
 computed in his calculating head how much that meant in 
 money saved, how much in nerves quieted, muscles strength- 
 ened, power ot will developed, discipline gradually infused into 
 wayward natures ; and so, out of a most unpromising collection 
 of patients, the refuse and debris of treatment in other hospitals 
 or neglect in unsuitable places, he produced a band of odd- 
 looking but cheerful and productive workers. His process was 
 viewed by other superintendents at first with amused scepticism, 
 then with aroused interest, then with some jealousy ; but, finally, 
 they gave to his methods of employment the sincere compliment 
 of imitation. 
 
 It was this same arithmetical turn of mind which made him 
 so impatient of the glaring, useless extravagance in asylum 
 building, and gave to his censure of it the convincing pungency 
 which those on whom it fell found hard to endure, though use- 
 less to resent. Somebody has defined the highest happiness of 
 the New Englander as consisting in the power to do good and 
 at the same time make money by it. The contrary of this, — 
 to do harm to his friends, the poor insane, and to throw away 
 millions of money in doing it, — when seen going on all about 
 him, moved Dr. Earle to unwonted severity of comment. His 
 nature was kindly beyond that of most men, or even women. 
 He abhorred cruelty or harshness in any form, and would rather 
 
I835-I849 285 
 
 praise or keep silent than inflict pain by censure. But this 
 wave of profusion in the care of the insane which he saw over- 
 running the country drew from him the severest rebuke he 
 ever uttered, except when he saw the helpless insane abused or 
 sadly neglected. 
 
 Dr. Earle's kindness was the natural expression of a warm 
 sympathy with human nature in its manifestations, great and 
 small, provided they were not cruel or vicious. That delightful 
 expression of Terence's — " I am a man : nothing that con- 
 cerns man lacks interest for me" — was more descriptive of 
 this Quaker dancer, this smiling tourist, this susceptible ad- 
 mirer of beauty, than of most men I have known. He did not 
 expect, nor even wish, all mankind to resemble himself or be 
 governed by his strict moral sense. He was ready to allow 
 leeway to the thoughtless, the ignorant, the young, and espe- 
 cially to the grotesque. His sense of humor was quick and 
 keen, though he had not the Attic salt of witty expression in 
 much readiness ; and whatever appealed to his toleration of the 
 grotesque was inwardly pleasing. Like Jaques, when he met 
 Touchstone in the forest of Arden, 
 
 His lungs began to crow like Chanticleer 
 
 whenever he encountered those oddities that every traveller 
 must meet as he passes from country to country. The best- 
 natured man in the world, he was an admirable travelling com- 
 panion and the happiest kind of tourist ; for nothing pleased 
 him more than travel. In return, he made friends everywhere, 
 saw the best company wherever he might be, and had no glum, 
 unsocial ways, such as might have been associated by the un- 
 thinking with his Quaker garb and some traces of early rus- 
 ticity which long adhered to him. Whist-playing, dancing, 
 music, and the lighter recreations of young or old were ever 
 agreeable to him. His unquenchable curiosity and his love of 
 pleasing made him acceptable everywhere. His own comment 
 on his first visit to Europe, of which so much has been said in 
 the early chapters, is worth citing. When he was again in 
 England in 1849, ^^ thus wrote to his sister Lucy : — 
 
286 RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS 
 
 My introductions have opened to me a new circle of acquaintance ; 
 and, either because I was formerly much in London or because I 
 am a Uttle older and somewhat less verdant, I find I am directing 
 my observation differently. Boys of ten in yellow breeches, with 
 Quaker coats big-buttoned, and buckled shoes, are no longer a 
 novelty. Processions of girls in blue frocks, long yellow gloves, and 
 white caps decked with red ribbons, pass by me like the idle wind. 
 Lord mayors and sheriffs in gilded coaches, their footmen in tin- 
 selled velvet, plush, and silk, are now to me like the dancing figures 
 on a wandering hand-organ. When I was here before, I gave my 
 attention almost wholly to acquiring popular rather than permanently 
 useful knowledge. Now I am seeking the utile cum dulce. 
 
 This self-condemnation was hardly warranted by the facts of 
 1837-39, but he had passed through much of the serious path- 
 way of life in the intervening ten years. Among other experi- 
 ences he had cherished an unsuccessful love for an American 
 lady whom he met in Europe on his first visit, the recollection 
 of which may have been the decisive reason why, with all his 
 susceptibility and all the favor with which he was received 
 by women, he never married. In this instance calm friendship 
 had followed the temporary interruption of correspondence, 
 renewed years after, and containing, on the lady's part, some 
 passages concerning spiritual subjects, which should be quoted 
 as giving a higher view of the faith held by women in the 
 Society of Friends than might be inferred from some of the 
 citations already made regarding theological disputes. Miss X. 
 writes : — 
 
 I perceive that you incline to the spiritual acceptation of some of 
 the phenomena [of mind-reading, etc.]. All minds cultivated in the 
 Quaker faith are more inclined to admit such an interpretation than 
 the rationalistic and philosophic many. ... I say ratio7ialistic instead 
 of rational^ as opposed to spiritual, in my definition, because I think 
 the spiritual and the rational are intimately allied. Indeed, a truly 
 spiritual being must be rational, since the greater includes the less. 
 But I mean that casuistry of thought, self-styled philosophy, which 
 assumes independence of the religious element, and explains all 
 facts, all laws, all miracles, by its own infallible insight, becoming 
 
i853 287 
 
 absurd through egotism. To these there is no sacredness, no 
 mystery, even in the manifestations of Supreme Power : miracles are 
 not, because they do not need them. The true Quaker, on the con- 
 trary, should be a humble, gentle, self-distrusting spirit, leaning on a 
 Power so vast, so incomprehensible, yet so ever-present, that he bor- 
 rows its serenity through fidelity and inmost obedience. This influ- 
 ence inclines Quakers more than other men to receive any new mani- 
 festation of the spiritual with great readiness, because they believe the 
 universe of matter and of mind to be pervaded by the living power of 
 an ever-creating God. To me the strongest evidence of the miracles 
 of the New Testament is in the conviction of my own soul. They 
 commend themselves to me as true by their harmony with the super- 
 human nature of him who wrought them, by their lofty lessons of 
 benevolence, self-sacrifice, and triumph over common circumstances. 
 They prove the superiority of God to all the known laws of his 
 universe, but they reach beyond our sight to that world of spirit 
 that we believe lies all around us here. Fidelity is the key-note to 
 that eternal harmony of which we only dream in this mode of being, 
 but whose faint echoes come to us now and then, to reconcile us to 
 many privations, and bind us more firmly to the great task of life's 
 duties. 
 
 How superior this spiritual insight and assured faith in the 
 unseen even to that sublime passage of Latin verse * which 
 the Pythagorean Avienus prefixed to his paraphrase of the 
 astronomical poem of the Greek Aratus ! and which may thus 
 be rendered, in the measure so familiar to Dr. Earle and his 
 contemporaries, — the iambic pentameter of Pope and Gold- 
 smith : — 
 
 Yonder the hall, and there the primal throne 
 Of God, the Father, is in lightnings shown, — 
 Germ of all motion, elemental might, 
 Ethereal fire, earth's heat, and core of light ; 
 
 * Hie statio, hie sedes primi Patris ; iste patemi 
 Principium motus, vis fulminis iste corusei, 
 Vita elementorum, mundi calor, aetheris ignis, 
 Astrorumque vigor, perpes substantia lucis, 
 Et numerus celsi modulaminis ; hie tener aer 
 Materiaeque gravis concretio ; succus ab alto 
 Corporibus coelo ; cunctarum aliraonia rerum ; 
 Flos et flamma animae, qui discurrente meatu, 
 Molis primigenae penetralia dura resolvens, 
 Implevit largo venas operatus amore, et seq. 
 
265 AVIENUS AND THE FRIENDS 
 
 Impulse of stars, from whose aye-rolling spheres 
 
 Their lofty music still my spirit hears. 
 
 Soft air concurring with material dense, 
 
 This universe its life-blood draws from thence, 
 
 Till all its parts receive their aliments. 
 
 Through primal Chaos in diffusion rolls 
 
 Thy vital stream, the flame and flower of souls, 
 
 Fills every channel with thy potent aids, 
 
 As Love immense the impenetrable pervades. 
 
 A secret voice doth on our hearing fall : — 
 " Me first and last and midmost shalt thou call ! 
 One and the Same these acts diverse bespeak, 
 Be the apparent impulse strong or weak. 
 The Lord thy shepherd is. The widest rove 
 Draws not his flock beyond his sacred love : 
 All earthly things in his fixed groove must go. 
 Grand master of the uplifted and the low. 
 He governs well the swift-revolving pole. 
 Where each unsocial orb finds path and goal ; 
 Leads the fair dance of Seasons in the year, 
 Where Winter's frosts no longer chill with fear, 
 Since softly smiHng Spring comes on amain. 
 And dusty Summer parches up the plain, 
 Till Autumn's burden falls of fruit and grain." 
 
 Here it is the visible universe on which the thought of the 
 poet is fixed : in the exhortation of the disciple of Fox and 
 Woolraan, it is the Inner Light, more attractive than all the suns 
 and stars and abrupt fires of heaven, which carries confidence 
 to her mind. Her remarks were called out by some account 
 which Dr. Earle had written of the " manifestations " of so- 
 called " Spiritualism," then common ; and this, again, had been 
 in response to her observations on Feuchtersleben and his 
 theory of Imagination, concerning which she said: — 
 
 How striking is his expression, "There is no other entity but 
 activity, — the purest, the only true enjoyment of living beings " I 
 How much philosophy in this epigram: "Annoyance is man's 
 leaven, the element of movement. Without it we should grow 
 mouldy " ! How keen, yet how true, that hypochondriasis is 
 
I849-I853 289 
 
 egoism carried to excess, and that egoism arises from want of cul- 
 tivation ! How beautiful this tribute to Nature, " Her significant 
 silence develops man " ! His remarks upon Imagination seem to 
 me to explain many of the phenomena attributed to mesmeric or 
 spiritual agencies, some of which I have witnessed lately [June, 
 1853] with curious interest. The undoubted integrity of the 
 medium left no other rational interpretation of the result save that 
 of "the vital effects of one individual reacting on another who is un- 
 conscious of the influence." Is it equally true that ^' all Nature is 
 but an echo of the mind ; and from her we learn the highest of all 
 laws, — that the Real springs from the Ideal, and the Ideal by degrees 
 remodels the world " ? 
 
 It was not often that Dr. Earle found himself debating these 
 high philosophical questions in his correspondence, but he was 
 long interested in that unexplained side of nature which is here 
 touched upon. He had seen many experiments in mesmer- 
 ism and its related semi-sciences, from 1840 onwards, both in 
 America and Europe; but he reached no definite conclusion, 
 except that much was imposture and much also inexplicable. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the true explanation of Dr. Earle's remain- 
 ing single through life is that given concerning the banker- 
 poet, Rogers, with whom he dined at the hospitable house of 
 Charles Dickens in London, July 5, 1849. He told the anec- 
 dote in an account of the dinner sent to his sister a day or two 
 later : — 
 
 I was punctual to the hour named in the invitation, 6.15 p.m., and 
 was met in the entrance hall by two white-gloved men-servants, who 
 showed me to the library, where I was received by Mr. Dickens, his 
 wife, and a young lady of one-and-twenty, with an intelligent, amiable 
 countenance and a profusion of curling hair. In a few minutes Mr. 
 Prescott, of Boston, entered, — a so« of our historian of Mexico, — 
 soon followed by Mrs. Macready, wife of the actor, and she by George 
 Sumner, the brother of Charles. Conversation ran briskly for half 
 an hour, when Mr, Dickens said it was dinner time, but they were 
 waiting for Mr. Rogers. Hardly had he spoken when the door 
 opened, and a man entered, burdened with the weight of eighty 
 years, short of stature, robust of body, his head large, bald, but with 
 some hair perfectly white, — in his general appearance much resem- 
 
290 ROGERS THE BANKER-POET 
 
 bling the late John Quincy Adams. This was the poet, the author of 
 " Italy " and the " Pleasures of Memory." There were no more 
 guests, Mr. Bancroft, our ambassador, having been invited, but de- 
 tained by a previous engagement, — the annual Speech Day at 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill, the school of Byron, Sir Robert Peel, and other 
 celebrities. 
 
 At our dinner there was no learned or literary talk, but Dickens's 
 readiness and fund of anecdote were always at hand to fill any gap 
 in the conversation. Mr. Rogers was mirthful, or, rather, showed a 
 quaint, quiet, piquant humor. He seemed much disposed to talk 
 with the ladies, still exhibiting that general preference for the sex 
 which, as the curling-haired young lady afterwards remarked, has 
 prevented him from forming any individual alliance with a partner 
 for life. He suggested going to Vauxhall in a part}^, and the ladies 
 promised to go. Soon after, talking of women, he said that, much as 
 he liked them, they had one fault — they take other people at their own 
 valuation, and so always fall in love with coxcombs. Mrs. Macready 
 cried out upon this as the most ungallant speech she had ever heard 
 from him, and she with the other ladies declared they wouldn't 
 go with him to Vauxhall. " However, you are right," said Mrs. 
 Macready. 
 
 Dr. Earle's " general preference for the sex " did not prevent 
 him from strongly favorable impressions in regard to particular 
 ladies, one of whom, Fraulein Fanny Martini, daughter of Dr. 
 Martini, of Leubus in Silesia, corresponded with him for a year 
 or two after meeting him at her father's asylum, where he spent 
 several days in the summer of 1849. Her letters display a 
 lively, cultivated mind, fond of poetry and novels, and thus ap- 
 pealing to his literary tastes. Her personal charms must hav^e 
 been marked, from the solicitude of Dr. Earle to continue the 
 acquaintance ; for he was ever captivated by beauty. She had 
 begun their conversation at Leubus by some smart saying about 
 "dreadful Quakers," which led him in his first letter from Paris 
 to give her an account of who and what Quakers are. To 
 this she replied in sprightly English : — 
 
 I am vain enough to believe all the kind words in which you re- 
 member Leubus, especially as I presume Quakers are not allowed to 
 
1849-1853 291 
 
 flatter. Believe, my dear sir, that I not only found nothing " dread- 
 ful " in receiving your letter, but we all were very glad and happy 
 that you had not forgotten us. May you sometimes when at home 
 and with your family remember your German friends, and may you 
 not quite forget the thoughtless girl who gave the best evidence of 
 her ignorance by calling the Quakers dreadful ! And still, my good 
 sir, can I not blame so much the said forwardness ; for without it I 
 fear I should never have heard of all those truly Christian and moral 
 laws and institutions of which you v/ere kind enough to tell me in 
 your letter. ... As to the reading of novels, I am sure that the 
 human heart, and especially that of woman, is almost the same in 
 every land and nation ; that it is ever eager to dream ; and then that 
 charming and pernicious butterfly. Fancy ! I must tell you that I 
 read now " Dombey and Son," and am perfectly charmed by the 
 description of Florence. It is indeed a pity that she is less curious 
 than myself, and never thinks of reading the manuscripts of her poor 
 beautiful mamma. If you ever see Mr. Dickens once more, ah ! tell 
 him that, if he has many admirers in Germany, there are none who 
 Hke more his genius and the excellent heart he must possess than 
 my mother and myself. . . . Balls, an amusement very seldom afforded 
 to me at Leubus, gave me great pleasure at Dresden and delight in 
 dancing. I hope you have not forgotten the Fran^aise (or, rather, 
 quadrille) on my birthday ; and I am sure that, if it depended on 
 your decision, you would not only allow your amiable and beautiful 
 Quaker ladies a little dancing, but help them even in doing so. . . . 
 I would commit to you to read the prosaic works of our dear Schiller, 
 and for common usage the German newspapers. Unfortunately, we 
 have but few well-written novels in German, nothing but bad trans- 
 lations, the politics and philosophical literature being solely cultivated 
 by our literators. Novels are left to the care of lady writers, who, 
 unfortunately, try to copy George Sand, producing books that have 
 neither morality, religion, or real good taste, and not having even 
 the excuse of an erratic genius and the charm of originality. We 
 have most charming poems by Geibel, Uhland, Chamisso, and the 
 delicious little poems of Goethe. 
 
 It seems a pity that this spiriUielle Silesian Fanny could not 
 be induced to cross the Atlantic, — she does not seem to have 
 been unwilling, — and become the bride of the Quaker whom 
 
292 FANNY MARTINI AND THACKERAY 
 
 she found no longer "dreadful." She waited three years for 
 the proposal which might have been expected but never came, 
 and then married in Germany, communicating the engagement 
 to Dr. Earle in a letter of January, 1853, which also expressed 
 her deep interest in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," just read, and her 
 unfavorable verdict on Thackeray, whom she had met in Dres- 
 den. Of him she wrote : — 
 
 The most interesting of our new Dresden acquaintances was Mr. 
 R. Noel, the phrenologist, himself very amiable ; and in his house 
 we saw Thackeray, the great English novelist. Perhaps you have 
 become acquainted with him in America, for he was on his way 
 there. I must confess that his person is very different from what I 
 supposed him to be, and that I was not a little disappointed by his 
 serious and inaccessible manners. 
 
 This description of Thackeray's manners could never apply 
 to Dr. Earle, who was ever kindly and gracious, with a touch 
 of courtliness as he grew older, and became the protector of so 
 many helpless and unfortunate persons. He had written to 
 Miss Fanny from Cuba or soon after his return in 1852, and 
 awakened in her the old desire to travel and know the world by 
 sight, in which she strongly resembled her American friend. 
 She says : — 
 
 Your description of the isle of Cuba highly interested me, and 
 once more made my heart thrill with the evident desire to see the 
 world and its wonders. I am sure it is a shame and a pity I am not 
 a man. How I would roam through lands and seas, always eager 
 to learn, to see new and various scenes of life, new customs, and 
 foreign people ! A woman's lot is beautiful, very true ; but the 
 tranquillity, the limitedness, of a homeward life is not for all. And 
 my only comfort is books, enabling me at least to hear of things I 
 shall perhaps never see. ... I hope you believe that I am no more 
 afraid of Quakers or think them to be dreadful, even if you had not 
 told me of the meeting, where the young people do quite the same as 
 everywhere, in all countries and in every tongue, — flirting and mak- 
 ing love. And so I believe almost, my dear sir, that you, too, found, 
 perhaps, at that same meeting the friend whose love and care shall 
 
i844 293 
 
 embellish your life and soothe every sorrow. May it be so ! for a 
 being so kind as you are is not made for solitude and a single life. 
 You see I have become an advocate for marriage. You know I was 
 resolved never to marry, but Heaven would not have me an old 
 maid. 
 
 As Lander said, — 
 
 " I will not love." This word has often 
 
 Come from a troubled breast, 
 Seldom from one no sighs can soften. 
 
 Seldom from one at rest. 
 
 The advice of Fanny Martini was good, but her friend never 
 availed of it. 
 
 Probably the best explanation of Dr. Earle's celibacy was 
 the care which circumstances required him to take of some 
 members of his own family. A brother of great mechanical 
 ingenuity, but of little worldly prudence, a sister who claimed 
 much tenderness and consideration, and to whom he wrote 
 more frequently than to any other person, a younger brother 
 who, in the words of a Leicester neighbor,* "had less than his 
 equal share of the mind and capacity of the family, but a gift 
 at 'the plain language' in more than mere words," — all these 
 had a claim on a brother's thoughtfulness which his marriage 
 might have impaired or set aside. As years went stealthily 
 by, at times darkened by his depressed moods, a feeling of this 
 kind would gain strength in his equitable mind ; and, if it 
 could not keep him from falling in love, it might prevent those 
 indissoluble ties which bind the married man. 
 
 Dr. Earle has been mentioned as " one of the founders " of 
 the American Journal of Insanity, but the remark is not liter- 
 ally true. That long-established quarterly was the sole vent- 
 ure of Dr. Brigham, then (in 1844) the head of the New York 
 State Asylum at Utica, N.Y. But Dr. Earle was the first col- 
 league whom he took into his confidence, writing to him thus 
 at Bloomingdale, May 28, 1844: — 
 
 * Rev. Samuel May, the veteran Abolitionist, a classmate of Dr. O. W. Holmes, and one of the 
 small band which early rallied round Garrison, vs-ith his cousins, S. J. May, S. E. Sewall, and Bron- 
 son Alcott. See his general reminiscences of the Earle family in the Appendix, page 3S3. 
 
294 DR- BRIGHAM AND DR. EARLE 
 
 I am about starting an American Journal of Insanity, quarterly, 
 octavo, pages ninety-six, edited by the officers of this asylum. The 
 first number will be published early in July. It is intended for the 
 general public as well as for the profession. This is an entire 
 secret, as I have mentioned it to no one except Dr. [T. Romeyne] 
 Beck, of Albany. The first number I must prepare myself; but 
 after this I ought and must have help, and I shall look to you, and 
 hope to interest you in the work. I will send you immediately the 
 first number, when out, and shall want your opinion, advice, and 
 assistance. . . . June lo. — I feel under great obligation to you for 
 your kind words of encouragement about the JotirnaL I shall adapt 
 it to the general reader, though I hope to make it useful to the 
 profession, especially after I get you and others to contribute to it. 
 
 This soon happened ; and Dr. Earle had a long article, 
 adapted to the "general reader," on "The Poetry of Insanity," 
 in the number for January, 1845, which, as Dr. Brigham wrote, 
 " has brought in letters many fine compliments for you from 
 school-dames up, or down, to grave doctors of divinity." In 
 connection with Dr. Earle's innovation of reading lectures to 
 his Bloomingdale patients, Dr. Brigham makes these suggestive 
 remarks in a letter of February 27 : — 
 
 I see that you lecture. It is a good idea ; but suppose you 
 lecture to them on insanity, — that is, in a way to instruct them 
 about the nature of their disease, its prevention, etc. ? I find it 
 does no harm, and to some patients it does good to talk with them 
 about insanity, etc. One patient now here, a physician, says his 
 knowledge of diseases, especially insanity, enabled him to guard 
 against attacks repeatedly. I beUeve, if people were well instructed 
 on insanity, there would be less of it. 
 
 It was the same belief which kept Dr. Earle assiduously 
 writing for so many years on a subject in itself unattractive 
 and for readers too often inattentive. But he did not regret 
 this labor, nor consider it lost, any more than his German con- 
 temporary, Dr. Heinrich Laehr (mentioned in his " German 
 Asylums "), who continued to exchange publications with Dr. 
 Earle, and wrote to him repeatedly in their old age. In one of 
 these letters of 1887 Dr. Laehr says : — 
 
1846-1892 ■ 295 
 
 I recall with great pleasure both occasions (in 1849 ^^^ ^^71) 
 when I met you in Halle, and here at Zehlendorf, in my Schweizer- 
 hof.* Though I have read that you have given up the public office 
 you so long held, and intrusted to other hands the fruitful 
 labor of so many years, yet I am certain you did not thereby 
 renounce our calling, to which your life has been devoted. Rather 
 have you gained leisure for the improvement of our science, without 
 losing interest in it. You have not only witnessed the chief develop- 
 ment of it in America, but have had a share in that development ; 
 and I fancy that a glance into the past, such as my " Gedenktage 
 der Psychiatrie aller Lander " permits, will receive more sympathy 
 from you than from our younger brethren, who are inclined to look 
 forward, and too easily forget that they stand on the shoulders of 
 others. May God grant you strength for effort and pleasure in the 
 work of our noble profession ! 
 
 The last work done by Dr. Earle in this line was the chap- 
 ter on " Curability " in Dr. Tuke's Dictionary of Psychologi- 
 cal Medicine, published in 1892, in which Dr. Laehr also had 
 a chapter on the " History of the Insane in Germany." But 
 Dr. Earle did not live to see the volumes issued, though he 
 read the proof of his article. 
 
 In 1846, when Dr. Brigham had made his quarterly success- 
 ful, he desired Dr. Earle to become its owner and editor, recog- 
 nizing in him the qualities which made him so long the collector 
 and disseminator of truths which the profession and the public 
 needed to know. He wrote to him (Nov. 11, 1847): "I am 
 getting old and averse to labor, and cannot, I think, take charge 
 of the Journal another year. Will you not take it } Under 
 your charge it would do much good. There are now sub- 
 scribers enough to pay, and it brings many exchanges. I hope 
 you will think favorably of it." The offer could not be accepted ; 
 and, when given up by Dr. Brigham, it passed, for long years, 
 into the control of an able man who made it too much the organ 
 of his own opinions and interests, so that from 1854 to 1867 
 no article by Dr. Earle appeared in its pages. In its first ten 
 
 * This was a private asylum which Dr. Laehr had long directed, and which he gave over to his 
 son in 1SS9. In 1849 he had been an assistant of Dr. Damerow, at Halle, where Dr. Earle first met 
 him. 
 
296 WRITINGS OF DR. EARLE 
 
 years he had published fifteen articles there, and his work on 
 the German Asylums made four of these articles in 1852-53. 
 In 1867-68 he published four articles there, three of them being 
 public addresses, and in 1877 a portion of his work on "Cura- 
 bility." Could he have edited the Journal in the spirit of its 
 founder, it would much sooner have reached that comprehen- 
 sive, scientific position which it has held for some years past. 
 
 Dr. Earle's medium of communication with the public, here 
 and in Europe, was the much earlier established Philadelphia 
 quarterly, the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, to 
 which he contributed not less than fifteen original papers and 
 eighty-five reviews of books and reports between August, 1838 
 (when a part of his graduating thesis of the year before was 
 printed), and January, 1869, when he reviewed the annual re- 
 ports of fifteen American hospitals for the insane. When the 
 New York Academy of Medicine was founded, he read the first 
 paper before its members, a " History of Insane Hospitals in 
 the United States," which was published by the Academy, and 
 afterwards used in his long chapter on " Insanity " in the census 
 volume for i860, and in a shorter article on the same subject in 
 the American Almanac of G. W. Childs, the celebrated Phila- 
 delphia journalist and publisher. 
 
 He also contributed occasionally to the London Jour7ial 
 of Mental Science, while under the editorship of his English 
 friends, Drs. Bucknill and D. H. Tuke, with the latter of whom 
 he maintained correspondence as long as he lived. The death 
 of Dr. Tuke has prevented me from obtaining the letters of Dr. 
 Earle ; but from those of the Tuke family, of which he knew 
 three generations, a few passages may be cited : — 
 
 York, 16, 8 7110., 1841. — [Samuel Tuke.] I must in the first place 
 thank thee for a copy of thy " Notes on a Visit to the Asylums for 
 the Insane in Europe," with which I was much interested. In the 
 second place I must express my satisfaction and pleasure in finding 
 that thou art applying thy knowledge and skill to that department of 
 thy profession which treats the diseases of the mind, and that thy 
 talents are engaged in connection with the Asylum for Friends at 
 Philadelphia. It is matter of deep satisfaction to me to see how 
 
1841-1873 297 
 
 many intelligent and right-minded persons are now earnestly engaged 
 in studying the alleviation and care of the most grievous of maladies. 
 I hope the work of Dr. Jacobi [of Siegburg,] which I have had trans- 
 lated, will prove acceptable to those engaged in the management of 
 our hospitals for the insane. I have gone, in the Introduction, into 
 the question of the prevalence of insanity in England, and particularly 
 in the Society of Friends, I wish you would investigate that subject 
 thoroughly in your State. Thou wilt, I think, be interested in our 
 " statistical tables," which have just been printed, and of which I 
 send six copies. I was much interested in yours, which has lately 
 come to hand [Report of the Friends' Asylum]. 
 
 It was these tables of the York Retreat which first put Dr. 
 Earle upon his lifelong inquiry into the curability of the insane. 
 Samuel Tuke's opinion was that insanity among Quakers was 
 much promoted by their close intermarriages, and this was why 
 he wished his young friend to make thorough investigation in a 
 matter of some delicacy. 
 
 Falmouth, Feb. i, 1873. — [D. H. Tuke.] The arrival of your an- 
 nual report, which I have studied with much interest, induces me to 
 write now. I shall find the statistics of use in revising, as I am now 
 doing, our " Manual of Psychological Medicine " for a third edition. 
 What is the most recent ascertained proportion of lunatics (insane 
 and idiots) in the United States ? As it stands in the Manual, it is 
 I in 738, as reported in i860. Can thou at the same time give me 
 any statistical evidence, beyond what appears in your report, that 
 in America over-education and excessive emotional excitement mate- 
 rially increase the number of the insane .'' I have always maintained 
 they do ; but at present it is hard to prove it in England, where sta- 
 tistics are all in favor of the lunacy-producing effects of ignorance. 
 Dr. Thurnam is a convert to this view, which has been ably sup- 
 ported by Dr. Benjamin Richardson. 
 
 I sent a copy of my book, "The Influence of the Mind upon the 
 Body in Health and Diseases," in October, 1872, for thy acceptance. 
 Has t\iQ Journal of Insanity or any other journal noticed it? It lays 
 claim to no original views, but I hope it will be found a useful book, 
 and may induce some to employ psycho-therapeutics more definitely. 
 What address would find Miss Dix now ? 
 
290 DR. TUKE S COMMENTS 
 
 In the autumn of 1884 Dr. Tuke visited America, and spent 
 a day or two with Dr. Earle at the Northampton Hospital, 
 which then for the first time came under his observant eye. 
 His comments, taken from his book, "The Insane in the 
 United States and Canada," — a very fair account of the con- 
 ditions then existing, — are as follows: — 
 
 The name of Dr. Earle is almost as well known to English as to 
 American alienists. He and Dr. J. S. Butler are now the only sur- 
 vivors of the original thirteen who founded (in 1844) the American 
 Association of Superintendents of Hospitals for the Insane, and he 
 was in 1884 its president. Among the noteworthy features of his 
 hospital is its financial success. No doubt this might be associated 
 with a far from satisfactory condition of the patients, but the reverse 
 is the case. The amount of work performed by the patients has 
 been a point of special attention with Dr. Earle. Thus the laundry 
 work for an average of 530 persons is done with only two assistants 
 (women), whose aggregate wage is $35 a month. For the last fifteen 
 years two-thirds of all the necessary manual labor upon the premises, 
 Dr. Earle says, has been performed by the patients. With an aver- 
 age of over 30 cows, the milking is all done by patients, an employee 
 overseeing them. The poultry-house is under the sole charge of 
 a patient. I may mention the remarkable extent to which indoor 
 recreation in some form is carried out : The patients assemble in the 
 chapel almost every evening for instruction, entertainment, and 
 amusement ; and Dr. Earle is convinced that the labor and expense 
 thus bestowed bring a liberal recompense in the contentment and 
 satisfaction of the patients, and their greater self-control and orderly 
 conduct, not only during these meetings, but at other times and 
 places. . . . The farm is one of the important means in the hygienic 
 and restorative treatment of patients, and affords no inconsiderable 
 source of income, — upwards of $10,000 per annum. 
 
 From frequent visits, official and otherwise, to Dr. P2arle's 
 hospital, I can fully confirm these statements. Probably I 
 have "assisted," as the French say, at fifty of these evening 
 lectures and readings in Northampton, once or twice with Miss 
 Dix in her visits there. Dr. Earle began the system of lectures 
 to patients at Frankford in the winter of 1840-41, the first in- 
 
1864-1885 299 
 
 stance of the kind known. At Northampton he proceeded on 
 a more liberal scale, bought costly apparatus for illustrating 
 chemistry and physics, and indulged his taste for travel by 
 collecting views of foreign cities and countries, and exhibiting 
 them to his patients with illustrative lectures. In his third 
 winter at Northampton (1866-67) there were 45 lectures, 6 of 
 them on brain disease and mental disorder ; and these last were 
 heard by an average audience of 256 patients, the average of 
 employees and patients for the whole course being 282, when 
 the whole hospital population was less than 500. Dr. Tuke's 
 "every evening" must be taken with some limitation. Dr. 
 Earle kept the account, and has recorded, with his usual exact- 
 ness, that in eighteen years, 1867-84, both included, "the 
 average annual number of days on which assemblages of the 
 patients occurred was 332 ; and the largest percentage of 
 patients in attendance was 'j6, or more than three-fourths." It 
 is believed this experience is unique in the history of asylums. 
 
 As for the labor done by patients, I was also personally 
 cognizant of that for more than twenty years ; and no such 
 example has been known to me, before or since, in American 
 hospitals. It was to this steady but not compulsory discipline 
 of labor that the financial success of the hospital was due in 
 great part ; and, though the record of recoveries at Northamp- 
 ton showed small numbers, because the cases were so largely 
 chronic, yet there were many unrecorded virtual recoveries, — 
 patients who, while still insane, were capable of self-support 
 and self-direction under kindly supervision. So, when I came 
 to select patients of the chronic class for boarding in families, 
 in 1885 and three subsequent years, I found the largest pro- 
 portion of desirable cases at Northampton. Some of these, 
 after ten years of family life and perhaps thirty years of in- 
 sanity, are still living comfortably in rural households. 
 
 The allusion to Whittier, the Quaker poet, in the next 
 letter recalls the curious fact (mentioned by Dr. Earle in his 
 paper on color-blindness in 1845) that so good an observer of 
 nature was insensible to certain colors, — could not, for instance, 
 distinguish between strawberries and their leaves by color 
 alone, and saw but three colors in the rainbow. This might 
 
300 
 
 ■PLIXVS LETTERS AND WHITTIER S POEMS 
 
 better qualify him for a Quaker poet than for any other kind. 
 Dr. Worthington had succeeded Dr. Earle at Frankford. 
 
 Returned to his pleasant suburban retreat, Lyndon Lodge, 
 at Hanwell, where so many American friends have been hospi- 
 tably received, Dr. Tuke thus wrote the next year after his 
 book appeared : — 
 
 Jan. 31, 1886. — I was grieved to hear of the death of Dr. Worth- 
 ington and Dr. Sawyer, to both of whom I had become attached. I 
 first saw Dr. Worthington at York some thirty years ago. Then we 
 met at Bournemouth, when he was last in England, and in London, 
 where he was ill and I attended him. I visited him at Baltimore in 
 1884 very pleasantly. His disposition was gentle and affectionate 
 to an unusual degree. For the conflicts of our present age (as affect- 
 ing psychological politics) he evidently had no heart, and was dis- 
 posed to say, " Non possumus," to the calls for reform in asylum and 
 almshouse, contrasting strongly with Dr. Godding herein. Dr. 
 Sawder seemed the right man in the right place at the Butler Hos- 
 pital in Providence, and it was very agreeable to see him and his 
 wife at Lyndon Lodge. I suppose the church would label him a 
 heretic ; but, if so, there will be many heretics in heaven among 
 those you and I have known and valued on earth. 
 
 I am glad to see that Whittier has expressed his unity with the 
 little book I sent you. I find in his poetry a continuous charm and 
 comfort. As I am almost always absorbed in insane studies and 
 people, I find it necessary to break away from them at times, and then 
 generally resort to Whittier. 
 
 Jati. 6, 1888. — I should much like to add to my collection of 
 " Pliny's Letters." I profit by the occasion of the new year to con- 
 gratulate my old friend on having lived to see 1888, and hope it finds 
 him still able to enjoy life and occupy his retirement and well-earned 
 leisure with congenial pursuits. [It was in this year that Dr. Earle 
 closed his antiquarian researches of fifty years by the publication 
 and distribution of his Earle Genealogy, a volume of more than 
 five hundred octavo pages, which cost him thousands of dollars, as 
 well as almost endless correspondence and labor, his affectionate 
 tribute to his American ancestors and kindred to the number of 
 more than 4,000.] Did I tell you of my delightful autumn holiday 
 last year in the Black Forest, and my attendance at German medical 
 
1886-1892 30'[ 
 
 meetings, in one of which I met Snell, whom you visited at Eich- 
 berg ? I went with him to the old asylum there, but he is now at 
 Hildesheim. Why are German memories so particularly delightful 
 to us ? I hear that you are pedigree-hunting. Remember that, if 
 the elision of one letter would make you an Earl, the change of one 
 would make me a Duke. 
 
 Dec. 2, 1888. — I am sorry to know that the state of your health 
 precludes the fulfilment of the dream of revisiting old England. Be 
 assured we should have welcomed you under our roof. I am in- 
 terested in all the particulars you send me of your present mode of 
 life. When I visited Dr. Nugent, the Irish inspector of asylums, 
 who is at least eighty-four, I found him with Cicero's De Senectute 
 in his hand. What surprising mental and physical powers (I will 
 not say judgment) Gladstone displays at seventy-eight ! John Bright 
 is supposed to be nearing his end. Strange whirligig of fate that he 
 should live to have two empresses (our Queen-Empress of India and 
 the Empress Frederick) anxiously interested in his state, and liking 
 him much better than they do Gladstone. Gladstone has shown his 
 nice feeling by speaking kindly of Bright, and frequently wiring to 
 know how he is. 
 
 The Earle pedigree miist have been a very agreeable pastime. I 
 used to have a hobby that way myself, but the cares of life have 
 forced me to think mostly of my own concerns. My only daughter, 
 Maria, is to be married next spring to a doctor (not a Friend), to 
 whom I can intrust her with every confidence. Our consulting 
 rooms are in the same house in Cavendish Square. 
 
 It was in his London house that I called on Dr. Tuke in 
 July, 1890; and his first inquiry was for Dr. Earle. On my 
 second visit to Europe, in 1892, our good old friend had died, 
 and I engaged Dr. Tuke to write some reminiscences for this 
 Memoir ; but he died too soon for that. At his urgency I 
 visited the Alt-Scherbitz Asylum in Saxony, which I agreed 
 with him in thinking even better than the Northampton Hospi- 
 tal, because its houses were better arranged and its system of 
 employment quite equal to that of Dr. Earle. 
 
 Dr. Earle was for forty-eight years an honorary member of 
 the Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, — longer, I think, than his friend Dr. Tuke was ; and he 
 
302 DR. JOHN THURNAM 
 
 had contributed more than once to the long-established y<7«r//rt/ 
 of Mental Science, of which, at his death, Dr. Tuke was an 
 editor. In the first number (CLXIII.) of the Journal after 
 this event (July, 1892) appeared this notice: — 
 
 Dr. Earle, as is well known, attracted great attention at one time 
 to the question of the degree to which the insane recover, and caused 
 much surprise, not unaccompanied with incredulity, by demonstrating 
 from statistics that the percentage of recoveries was smaller than 
 supposed and the proportion of relapses greater. He was foremost 
 in exploding the constant and seductive fallacy of confounding per- 
 sons with cases ; and, unfortunately, not a few remain unable to under- 
 stand or appreciate the distinction between the two. He revelled in 
 figures, whether scientific or financial, and in regard to the former 
 may be compared to Dr. Thurnam, for whose laborious researches 
 he entertained the greatest respect. In regard to asylum construc- 
 tion, he favored a departure from the orthodox views current among 
 the old school of American alienists. In this and other respects he 
 was a man of independent opinion. In religion he was broad and 
 catholic in his views and a foe to theological intolerance. Ministers 
 of all shades of belief officiated in turn at the Sunday services held in 
 the asylum. 
 
 Earlier in the same year (May 6, 1892), in his address at the 
 centenary meeting of the York Retreat, Dr. Tuke, who was the 
 great-grandson of William Tuke, the virtual founder of that 
 pioneer establishment, alluded to the visit made there in 1838 
 by Dr. Earle, and spoke more at length of Dr. John Thurnam, 
 its physician, who was for years a correspondent of his Ameri- 
 can friend. I find several of his letters preserved by Dr. Earle, 
 and may cite a passage or two from this first sober reasoner on 
 the curability of the insane. Dr. Thurnam wrote from the 
 York Retreat,' Oct. 14, 1845, thus: — 
 
 Respected Friend, — In reply to thine of the 15th ult., I may state 
 that through Dr. [Luther] Bell I heard with much pleasure of the 
 Committee on Statistics, appointed at the meeting of your Associa- 
 tion last year, and that it would afford me much pleasure to do 
 anything in my power which might forward its objects. I am not, 
 
1837-1845 3°3 
 
 however, aware of any works on the subject which have of late issued 
 from the British press. MM. Parchappe and Debonteville, of the 
 Rouen Asylum, have recently produced a valuable report, under the 
 title of " Notice Statistique sur I'Asile des Alienes de la Seine 
 Inferieure " (Rouen, 1845), which they express their readiness to 
 exchange for the reports of other asylums. The notices of British 
 asylums in Dr. Julius's " Beitrage zur Britischen Heilkunde " (Berlin, 
 1844) are also interesting and valuable. 
 
 My own book was announced for the present month, but I fear it 
 may not be actually out till a month later. Though not my own 
 publisher, I naturally feel interested in the success of the publication, 
 and should be glad of any suggestion from thee as to the best method 
 of introducing the book amongst you. We have had the pleasure of 
 seeing here both Dr. Bell and Dr. Ray from your country. The con- 
 tinuance of such intercourse between the superintendents of the two 
 countries, I think, augurs well for the prospects of asylums on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. I wish more of us had visited you than have 
 yet done so. A member of our committee, James H. Tuke, has, I 
 expect, before this called on thee ; and I hope he will see many of 
 your best asylums before he returns. 
 
 This gentleman (J. H. Tuke) was the son of Samuel Tuke, 
 who bad welcomed Dr. Earle to his father's house in 1837, 
 when he was making his first visit in York ; and the account of 
 this given by the young American at the time, in a letter home, 
 is worth citing here. He said : — 
 
 Soon after dinner, on the day of my arrival in this city, a son of 
 Samuel Tuke called at the hotel, with an invitation from his father 
 for me to make a home at his house during my stay in York. This 
 politely proffered hospitality was accepted, and I shall ever remem- 
 ber with pleasure the hours which I have spent beneath this roof in 
 the society of an intellectual and intelligent family. Samuel Tuke is 
 well known in the United States, by those interested in the treatment 
 of lunatics, for the attention which he has devoted to the subject, and 
 the essays connected with it which have emanated from his pen. It 
 is probable that no other man living without the pale of the medical 
 profession is so well acquainted with the proper management of the 
 insane and the most suitable construction, arrangement, and dis- 
 
304 THE YORK RETREAT 
 
 cipline of lunatic asylums. His grandfather was the projector of the 
 Retreat, an institution of the kind near York, which, under the 
 auspices of the son and others, has attained a high reputation. This 
 asylum was one of the pioneers in that great and important revolution 
 which has taken place in the moral treatment of the insane. " The 
 Retreat near York " has long been quoted in the United States as 
 approaching nearer to perfection in its management and as giving 
 a higher percentage of cures than any other public establishment in 
 England. It was established by members of the Society of Friends, 
 the funds being obtained by annuities, donations, and annual sub- 
 scriptions. The original cost was ^^"5,971 sterling, including the ex- 
 pense of eleven acres of ground which constitutes the farm. The 
 receipts from patients were inadequate to defray the current expenses 
 for several years. Our countryman, Lindley Murray, was an early 
 and active promoter of the interests of this estabUshment. 
 
 I breakfasted yesterday with Dr. Caleb H. Williams, the visiting 
 physician of the Retreat, and he went with me to the asylum, and 
 accompanied us through the several departments. There are four 
 classes of patients according to price. In the lowest class the sum 
 of 4 shillings sterling per week is paid, while in the highest it varies 
 from 20 to 80 shillings. 
 
 Probably the York Retreat was the first of the European 
 asylums inspected by Dr. Earle, vvrho afterwards saw so many ; 
 and there was none among his colleagues whom he valued more 
 than Dr. Thurnam, who lived to welcome him to England again 
 in 1871. Dr. Thurnam was not superintendent of the York 
 Retreat at the date of Dr. Earle's first visit there in 1837, i^ot 
 having been appointed until 1838; and he left there in 1849, 
 the same year that Dr. Earle left the Bloomingdale Asylum. 
 He then took charge of the Wiltshire County Asylum, and 
 died there Sept. 24, 1873. It was more than a year before 
 Dr. Earle, at Northampton learned of his friend's death ; and 
 I find a letter of Mrs. Thurnam, of January, 1875, informing 
 him of the sad event. She wrote : — 
 
 Dr. Thurnam died quite suddenly; and I have no hesitation in 
 asserting that his ceaseless industry, his devotion to his suffering 
 fellow-creatures, and his conscientious, even overpowering, sense of 
 
1865-1S87 30S 
 
 the responsibilities of his office wore him out prematurely. From 
 1838, when he was appointed to the Friends' Retreat, to the time 
 of his death, thirty-five years, he had been unremittingly at work, 
 dying at last, as he himself expressed it, " in harness." No man 
 should give more than twenty years to such work. Be warned in 
 time ! and, if possible, let me urge upon you to retire from the 
 battlefield while you can yet enjoy some well-earned repose and 
 leisure. ... I venture to request that, if Miss Dix be still living, and 
 yon can learn her address, you will do me the favor to inform her of 
 my irreparable loss. I think she will be sorry for me. 
 
 Miss Dix did in fact survive until July, 1887; and the men- 
 tion of her illustrious name gives occasion to speak of her long 
 acquaintance and friendship with Dr. Earle. She was his sen- 
 ior by seven years, although careful not to disclose her exact 
 age, and must have met him while at Frankford or, perhaps, 
 even earlier. Like the sisters of Dr. Earle, she had been 
 a teacher of girls, contemporaneously with them, and would 
 naturally have known the family. But the earliest letter of 
 hers which I find is one written from Ohio, in severe illness, 
 while Dr. Earle was at Bloomingdale, and after one of her self- 
 sacrificing campaigns in the cause of the suffering insane. 
 From that time forward they met and corresponded often ; and 
 it was at the Northampton hospital, as Dr. Earle's guest, that 
 I first met Miss Dix. I had often heard of her from Dr. Howe 
 and others who had aided her in her work or had been her 
 pupils ; but when I met her, in 1865, age had lessened her 
 activity and given even more rigidity to her opinions than they 
 had by force of her positive and exacting nature. With much 
 dignity of character and great acquired experience of the 
 world, there remained something of the schoolmistress in her 
 mode of presenting her subjects and meeting those differences 
 of opinion that occur even among the most philanthropic. A 
 Quaker education, with its repression of self and its deference 
 to others, would have modified that imperiousness which she 
 seems to have inherited, and which she had learned to restrain 
 through tact, where her great objects were fully in view. 
 Advancing years had lessened this tact, without rendering her 
 
306 MISS DOROTHEA DIX 
 
 less positive. They had also seen her peculiar work mainly 
 accomplished, while for the needs of the situation which her 
 own heroic activity had so largely created she had neither the 
 vital force nor the special knowledge and discrimination re- 
 quired. Through her it was, campaigning for the neglected 
 insane from State to State and from country to country, that 
 so many new asylums had been built, so many old ones en- 
 larged ; but they had in too many instances become centres of 
 intellectual indolence or of semi-political intrigue ; to whose 
 busy and well-paid medical men new ideas were irksome, and 
 any forward step in the care of their patients or the guidance 
 of public opinion was a kind of reproach to their imbibed com- 
 placency of attained perfection. It was the familiar story of 
 goodness going to seed and planting the surrounding fields 
 with a growth which was not goodness, or at least was a de- 
 generate and reverting form thereof, — a fact familiar to poets. 
 Wordsworth saw at his university — 
 
 Honor misplaced, and Dignity astray; 
 Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile, 
 The idol weak as the idolater ; 
 And Decency and Custom starving Truth, 
 And blind Authority beating with his staff 
 The child that might have led him ; Emptiness 
 Followed as of good omen, and meek Worth 
 Left to herself, unheard of and unknown. 
 
 Miss Dix had done her work. The fame of it remained and 
 will not be forgotten. It was, however, a work for a time of 
 ignorance and developing civilization, and by no means a per- 
 manent model for all coming time. This fact she hardly recog- 
 nized, nor was it natural she should. Like all strong natures 
 of her type, she saw what she was appointed to see, wrought 
 her task therein with zeal and swift accomplishment, but she 
 saw little beyond. Nor could she well understand that saying 
 of Wordsworth's successor, — 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
 
i844 307 
 
 In her own chosen sphere, however, at the time of her 
 activity, she had the range and the success of Peter the Hermit 
 in preaching his crusade; and she might go by the name of 
 Dorothy the Hermitess, so retired was her private life (often 
 that of a suffering invalid) and so brilliant her public successes. 
 Her achievement in drawing ^50,000 from the bank account of 
 Cyrus Butler, of Providence (equivalent to half a million in 
 these days of trooping and syndicated millionaires), more than 
 half a century ago, has been narrated by her lively biographer, 
 Mr. Tiffany. But there are some circumstances of the inter- 
 view which he does not relate, and which, perhaps, are doubtful 
 in their accuracy, though certainly be7i trovate when the two 
 personages are recalled. There was a small asylum for the in- 
 sane in Rhode Island ; but, as usual then and not unknown 
 now, the poor, who need the most care, got the least there. 
 Miss Dix entered the field, provided herself with the startling 
 facts of number and neglect, and then inquired who, in the city 
 of Roger WiUiams and Francis Wayland, might give the need- 
 ful money. Several names were shown her, among them Mr. 
 Butler's, a bachelor, a rich man, but not till then suspected of 
 much munificence. Accompanied to his door by her friend, the 
 Unitarian minister, but without an introduction, she entered, and 
 found an elderly man and a silent clerk within the office. In- 
 quiring for Mr, Butler, the clerk pointed to the old gentle- 
 man, who wheeled round, looked at her, and asked what she 
 wanted. "If not intruding, I wish to make a statement to you 
 that will hurt no one, but give you the opportunity of a monu- 
 ment to your name as a benefactor of the poor which will never 
 be forgotten." " Be brief, and tell me what this means," was 
 the ungracious reply. " Briefly, then, I have learned that the 
 poor insane of your town are without a suitable hospital ; and 
 I am looking for a citizen who has both the means and the 
 liberality to start a movement which cannot fail to succeed." 
 "Are you Miss Dix.? If so, sit down." She took a chair; and, 
 before she left her auditor, she had given him the facts of the 
 situation, not without an appeal to that rigid New England 
 conscience which was her own impelling force. " What do 
 you wish me to do } " " To subscribe ^50,000 for the enlarge- 
 
3o8 MISS DIX AND DR. EARLE 
 
 ment of your insane asylum, and let it be called henceforth the 
 ' Butler Hospital.' " He turned to his check-book, wrote a draft 
 for the sum asked, and Miss Dix went forth the marvel of 
 Rhode Island, which had always been hearing how Moses 
 smote the rock, and the Israelites drank the gushing stream, but 
 had never seen the miracle wrought. 
 
 Miss Dix was among the constant correspondents of Dr. 
 Earle ; and he was one of the few persons from whom she took 
 pleasure in receiving instruction rather than imparting it, when 
 the care of the insane was involved. And with reason : for he 
 had studied the subject in many lands, and had practised the 
 art before a kind of accident brought the sufferings of the in- 
 sane to her notice, and engaged her sympathetic heart in their 
 behalf. They did not agree in opinion always, for Dr. Earle 
 was conscious of defects in his professional brethren which 
 Miss Dix was not quick to perceive in her friends ; but she 
 recognized his devotion to the cause she had taken up, and it 
 was ever a pleasure for her to see the ease and quiet command 
 with which he moved among her friends, the patients. It was 
 apparently a real disappointment to her, though a pleasant one, 
 when she reached Constantinople in 1856, and found that Dr. 
 Earle's Timar-han6, that place of torment in 1838, had been 
 replaced by a well-kept Turkish asylum. She was fresh from 
 her victory over neglect and ill-timed levity in the high officials 
 of Scotland, where, by her own activity and pathetic elo- 
 quence, she had secured the appointment of a royal commis- 
 sion, out of which grew in time the admirable lunacy system 
 of Scotland, in some points the best in the world ; and she 
 would have rejoiced in a trial of strength with the Sultan. But 
 all had changed since Dr. Earle's visit. A young Turk of in- 
 fluence had been a student in Paris, like Dr. Earle. Like him, 
 he had visited a good French asylum. Then he returned to 
 Constantinople, and introduced the French methods of care, 
 themselves much improved since the douche period. Miss Dix 
 went to Suleiman's Mosque and Hospital, and was delighted. 
 "The insane of Constantinople are in far better condition than 
 those of Rome or Trieste, and in some respects better cared 
 for than in Turin, Milan, or Ancona. The superintendent 
 
I875-I879 309 
 
 proposes further improvements, I had little to suggest and 
 nothing to urge." 
 
 The sphere of the two friends was very different : hers was 
 a public career, influencing the powerful in behalf of the helpless ; 
 his, though public in its result, was among the helpless them- 
 selves. And it was by his perception of their specific needs, not 
 their general condition of neglect, that he was able to improve 
 that condition. He dealt in details and particulars, in figures 
 of arithmetic rather than figures of speech ; and he saw with 
 clear foresight the evils that may come from beneficence itself. 
 Miss Dix in later life became aware of these, in some measure, 
 and intimated what the remedy might be. She objected, like 
 Dr. Earle, to extravagant outlay ; and, after her experience in 
 army nursing during the Civil War, she began to perceive the 
 need of training attendants for the insane, to which some medical 
 superintendents are yet blind. In October, 1875, she wrote to 
 Dr. Earle after a brief visit to Northampton : — 
 
 Regretting only that no opportunity occurred for full conversation 
 upon some questions of wide concern to hospitals for the insane, now 
 very numerous and popular institutions, I suppose the knowledge 
 and direct influence of successful and long-experienced practitioners 
 was never of more real consequence as " helping means " to those 
 whose connection with institutions is but recent, and whose acquaint- 
 ance with the Protean phases of insanity is deficient both by study 
 and observation. I have been sorry to hear much complaint of hall 
 attendants, by outside parties, much more than in ordinary seasons. 
 . . . When less money is extravagantly consumed in new and spacious 
 buildings, there will be fuller ability for employing a more numerous, 
 and perhaps more informed and trained, force of nurses and attend- 
 ants than are in service at present. 
 
 This was written in the heyday of that outrageous expendi- 
 ture in hospital building of which two new structures in Massa- 
 chusetts were then instant examples, and against which, as was 
 seen, Dr. Earle was roused to protest. He did so with much 
 effect at the Chicago Conference of Charities in 1879; and, in 
 the widely circulated address made by him there, he paid his 
 
3IO HOSPITAL-BUILDING AND MANAGEMENT 
 
 brief, emphatic tribute to his more prominent friend, then 
 seventy-seven years old, saying : — 
 
 In 1841 Miss Dix began that long and laborious career of phil- 
 anthropic devotion to the interests of the insane with which her name 
 is indissolubly connected, and to which the annals of all history 
 furnish no parallel. To Dr. Woodward and Miss Dix, more than to 
 any other two persons, are the insane of our country indebted for the 
 awakened interest of the people in their behalf, and, consequently, for 
 that rapidity of practical action manifested in the erection of asylums 
 and hospitals for their benefit, which has in no other country been 
 exceeded, even if it has been equalled. 
 
 Retiring from his hospital in 1885 (October i), the trustees 
 recorded their estimate of Dr. Earle's worth in the vote already 
 printed in the previous chapter. It fell to me, as an editor of 
 the Springfield Repiiblican (the local newspaper of that section 
 of New England), to speak of him then ; and some passages of 
 the article may here be cited : — 
 
 Perhaps no hospital superintendent ever attended more system- 
 atically to all the details of his work or carried them more completely 
 in his mind, while at the same time he knew how to throw upon 
 others the work that properly belonged to them. His discipline has 
 been strict and exacting, particularly in regard to industry and 
 frugality ; while the condition of most of his patients and the location 
 of his hospital have denied to him those brilliant results which are 
 oftener claimed than attained in this specialty. He has cared little 
 for show or for fame, but has done his daily duty with accurate 
 fidelity. 
 
 As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye. 
 
 His reward has come in the gradual recognition of his services by 
 many who were once slow to admit them, and still slower to allow 
 that the quiet veteran, in his old-fashioned hospital and among his 
 dry statistics, was the real head of his profession in America. Such 
 has been the fact, however, for years ; and it is this which makes Dr. 
 Earle's withdrawal from active duty an event of more than local con- 
 sequence. He will remain a citizen of Northampton, and will there 
 
1878-1885 311 
 
 prepare for final publication the writings on which he has long been 
 engaged. 
 
 These writings were the Earle Genealogy, concerning which 
 some curious particulars will be found in the Appendix, and the 
 final edition of his "Curability of Insanity." Both involved 
 and had long compelled a large correspondence and frequent 
 reference to the special library he had collected at Northamp- 
 ton, where, by invitation of the authorities, he continued to live 
 at the hospital. This library enabled him to bring before the 
 Association of American Medical Superintendents of Institu- 
 tions for the Insane (of which he was president in his last year 
 at Northampton), in his address of June 16, 1885, a mass of 
 facts concerning recoveries and curability which that learned 
 and at last persuaded body had never before considered. And, 
 as many of its members had chafed at Dr. Earle's frank 
 censure of the waste of public money in building the Danvers 
 Hospital, he felt warranted in recurring to that subject in this 
 address, which he soon after revised for publication. He said : 
 
 The Danvers Hospital was opened for the reception of patients on 
 the i8th of May, 1878. It is, emphatically, one of the establish- 
 ments upon which a flood of money has been poured for the 
 purpose of creating a curative institution as nearly perfect as possi- 
 ble, under the light of existing knowledge. If abundance of pecun- 
 iary means in construction, together with what was believed to be 
 the highest embodied ideal of architectural arrangements, could 
 cure insanity more rapidly than a less costly and more simple struct- 
 ure, that hospital, most assuredly, was prepared for a demonstration 
 of the proposition. It was evident that great efforts were made to 
 arrive at such a demonstration, and thus to prove that the curative 
 advantages of the institution were an adequate compensation for the 
 excess of expenditure. 
 
 I may observe in passing, so true is this statement, that, 
 when I questioned several of the then superintendents of the 
 Massachusetts State Hospitals (who appeared in excuse for the 
 outlay at an investigation by the legislature of 1877, which I 
 conducted), they gave as a sufficient reason for spending 
 
312 RECOVERIES AT DANVERS 
 
 ^1,500,000 where $750,000 had solemnly been declared ample 
 by the architect that the excess of money would promote 
 recoveries. When I asked them to point out exactly how it 
 would do that, they took refuge in generalities, well knowing, I 
 fear, that the money had been lavished on the comfort of the 
 officers and attendants rather than for the cure of patients, 
 and more in ignorance of what was really needed than with any 
 very definite aim at even luxury of living. Dr. Earle went on : 
 
 The usual custom of a large transfer of incurable cases from older 
 hospitals and asylums was omitted at Danvers, and the supply of 
 patients was derived chiefly from current commitments. By this 
 means the proportion of recent cases was much higher than usual 
 from the first ; and, as Boston and five other large centres of popula- 
 tion (which usually furnish a larger ratio of recent cases than the 
 rural districts) are within a short distance from Danvers, that pro- 
 portion was raised still higher. And now for the results. In course 
 of the first five fiscal years, out of more than 2,500 cases admitted, 
 554 cases were discharged recovered; but 115 persons, who had 
 recovered a total of 121 times, had returned to the hospital. So 
 that the net recoveries were but 433, or less than 17 per cent, of the 
 admissions. Within the three years ending Sept. 30, 1884, the re- 
 coveries were but 265 ; while 80 persons, representing 86 recoveries, 
 were readmitted. So that the actual recoveries were but 179, only 
 11.70 per cent, of the admissions during the three years. 
 
 Here was the dilemma of the extravagant hospital builders 
 coolly stated in a way from which there was no escape. They 
 had said the outlay at Danvers and similar places must pro- 
 mote recovery. This was either true or false. If true, why 
 had not the cures occurred ? If false, why had the statement 
 been made .-' Dr. Earle believed it was made in careless igno- 
 rance, because the statistics of American asylums had not been 
 so reported as to convey the truth. In 1879 he had revised, 
 and I had introduced in Massachusetts, such forms of statisti- 
 cal report as brought the true facts to light. In this way the 
 failure at Danvers to come up to the promise of the builders 
 was clearly revealed. And, in closing his final address to his 
 colleagues, Dr. Earle said: — 
 
1879-1885 313 
 
 I would express the hope that the time is not far distant when our 
 Association will so far perfect its statistical system as to make a dis- 
 tinction between persons and cases, and thus enable the reader to 
 learn how many of the reported recoveries are first recoveries, and 
 how many are subsequent. This improvement was made in the 
 Massachusetts tables in 1879, and in those of the British Medico- 
 Psychological Association in 1883. Surely, the American Associa- 
 tion ought not to lag far behind.* 
 
 Valuable as statistical exactness is, recoveries are not 
 secured thereby, but by close observation, personal care, and 
 the wise use of moral and medical means. Nor is it always 
 possible to indicate the means or cause of recovery. When 
 Dr. Earle and I were arranging the form of the Massachusetts 
 tables just mentioned, we provided for one showing the cause 
 of death in asylum patients. This was retained and is still in 
 use ; but another form, providing for a report by the physi- 
 cians on " Cause of Recovery " in patients recovered, was 
 stricken out at the request of the asylum physicians. As I 
 remember the incident, Dr. Earle said concerning that table, 
 " If you can get the cause truthfully stated, it will be of much 
 value ; but it will be exceptional that the true cause will be 
 known, or, if known, truly stated." He allowed it to pass, 
 however, and was ready to make such reports himself; but his 
 foresight proved exact, and the form was set aside. His 
 friends were perhaps inclined to claim more for him in the 
 matter of recoveries under his care than he would have allowed 
 for himself. His cousin, Mrs. Spring, in a letter from Los 
 Angeles in the summer of 1897, made these statements, quite 
 new to me, concerning the first motive for his choice of the 
 alienist's specialty, and his early success in treatment : — 
 
 My kinsman, Pliny Earle, was one of many children ; and I think 
 of them in their orderly Quaker home, with their wonderful mother 
 and noble father, as one of the most intellectual families I have ever 
 known. They had a very dear, beautiful, brilliant cousin, — so 
 lovely and charming that mothers said to their daughters, " Be like 
 
 * Yet this simple change has not yet been generally made in the United States. 
 
314 MRS. SPRINGS RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 Mary Earle." From a terrible illness she recovered, all but the 
 brain, and, after many years, died a wretched death in an insane 
 asylum. This called Pliny's attention to such sufferers, and so he 
 devoted his life to their cure or alleviation. Dr. Brown-Sequard 
 once said to me, " He is the only one of us who does cure them." 
 Dr. Earle had a remarkable power of organization, of peaceful influ- 
 ence and enduring patience. He was prepared for any emergency, 
 knew the tendencies of each patient, and kept untiring, vigilant 
 watch of them all. I remember in one of the dancing evenings 
 at Bloomingdale, when Margaret Fuller, William Henry Channing, 
 Marcus Spring, and I were present, one of the patients darted out 
 of the dance, and, putting up her hand on Dr. Earle's shoulder, said, 
 " Thou model of a man I " and then took her place again. Long 
 afterwards I went there alone, and for weeks watched his treatment 
 of those unfortunates, — not as a mass, but as individuals. Before 
 he took charge, they had been subjects of amusement for visitors 
 [the thing Miss Dix had censured at Northampton before he took 
 charge], but Dr. Earle never allowed them to be intruded upon. I 
 was told in New York that his testimony was the first legal evidence 
 where insanity was claimed or suspected, and I knew a case where 
 his evidence saved a man's life. It was he who settled the difficult 
 Parish Will case. 
 
 Mrs. Spring adds, "A disappointment in early life turned 
 his interest still more upon the life he had chosen." At all 
 events, he gave to it his most sacred thought, and expended in 
 hospitals artd asylums the gayety of his nature, in all forms of 
 entertainment, as well as his serious studies and his incessant 
 care. Then, at the unmistakable summons of age, he prudently 
 withdrew from his responsible position, attended to those per- 
 sons and affairs that had claims on his consideration, desig- 
 nated his biographer, and gave him both needful explanations 
 and ample discretion for editing or omitting, and calmly pre- 
 pared for the last scenes. He distributed his printed works to 
 friends and to libraries, made provision for the perpetuation 
 of his memory at Northampton, which he had come to love as 
 a home, by generous bequests to the local library of broadest 
 scope and most liberal management, erected his own funeral 
 monument there, and took care, in perpetuity, for the plain 
 
IS92 315 
 
 tombstones of ancestors and kindred at Leicester. He forgave 
 his enemies (if any such remained), said farewell to kinsmen 
 and dear friends, and awaited the inevitable hour with quiet 
 trust in the good Power that had guided his way of more 
 than fourscore years, with outward and inward illumination. 
 He died, after a short illness, on the 17th of May, 1892. 
 
 Pliny Earle, as these pages have disclosed, however faintly, 
 was a personage as marked as his name was unusual. Along 
 with strong family traits, he yet had an individuality which 
 gave him distinction, from childhood to old age, and could not 
 be defined or limited by his social, religious, or national environ- 
 ment. "To define," said our friend Alcott, "is to confine"; 
 but no such imprisonment fell to the lot of Dr. Earle. Of sin- 
 gular personal beauty (which the portraits here engraved but 
 partly recall), and with a grace of manner that was but the 
 native expression of the kindliest heart, he attracted notice 
 wherever he might go, and awakened expectation which his 
 success in life, for some years, did not seem to justify. He 
 won no high name in literature, was neither a brilliant orator 
 nor a noted man of science, secured few of those glittering 
 prizes which even his modesty would have valued, and held no 
 position of wide command or conspicuous influence. In all 
 this he shared the common lot, which awards even tempo- 
 rary distinction to but few, and that for the most varied 
 reasons, compelling praise or blame. But he slowly rose above 
 most of his contemporaries in the zeal and perseverance with 
 which he sought the good of mankind ; and in a profession in- 
 trinsically noble, where he found errors abundant, ideas few, 
 and a level of mediocrity veiled, but not concealed, from keen 
 observers like himself, by vague rhetoric and complacent rou- 
 tine. To this he opposed the singleness of purpose and sim- 
 plicity of character which belonged by nature to his race and 
 name. He was favored by long life and providential opportuni- 
 ties ; and thus the features of his intellectual and moral 
 nature became better known, and had their foreordained effect. 
 Few men, perhaps none in America, have done more to clear 
 the way for the best treatment of the classes to whom he con- 
 secrated his powers, or have been of better example to the 
 future man of science or the philanthropist. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 I. The Publications of Dr. Earle. 
 
 Leaving out of view the young scholar and poet's contributions to 
 the Worcester Talisman, Spy, and other local periodicals, some of 
 which he gathered into his Philadelphia volume of 1841, "Marathon, 
 and Other Poems," the following is believed to be the fullest list of 
 his acknowledged writings that has appeared in print : — 
 
 Books and Papers. 
 
 (I.) (1841) A Visit to Thirteen Asyhims for the Insane in Europe. 
 (Philadelphia: J. Dobson. pp. 144.) This had before appeared in 
 the American Journal of the Medical Scietices for October, 1839 
 (Vol. XXV., pp. 99-134). It was reprinted later, with many changes 
 and additions. However, many of the original errors, arising from 
 imperfect observation or dependence on untrustworthy authority, 
 remained in the reprint. For example, the account of the traditional 
 origin of the " Community Asylum at Gheel," as he called the famous 
 colony at that Belgian town, is wholly incorrect, and the statistics much 
 in arrears, coming down no later than 1821. Dr. Earle placed in the 
 hands of his biographer a corrected copy of this reprint. An extract 
 or two will be given from this, to show his earlier style. The visits 
 describe conditions extending from July, 1837, to January, 1839. 
 
 (II.) (1848) History, Description, and Statistics of the Bloofningdale Asy- 
 lum for the Insane. (New York: Egbert, Hovey & King. pp. 136.) 
 To this was added, for completion, — 
 
 (III.) (1848) Four Attnual Reports of the Bloomingdale Asylum for the 
 Insane. (1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, all for the years preceding their 
 date. pp. 55, 48, 32, 28; in all, 163.) Up to their date, these two 
 volumes contained the fullest account of the operation and results of 
 an American asylum which had ever been published ; and the presenta- 
 tion of its statistics in new forms, after much labor in tabulation, made 
 it the first essay in the reformation of statistics of insanity in America. 
 
 (IV.) (1853) Institutions for the Insane in Prussia, Austria, and Ger- 
 many. (Utica : New York Asylum, Printers, pp. 229.) These visits 
 
3l8 PUBLICATIONS OF DR. EARLE 
 
 were all made in the year 1849, with many others upon which Dr. 
 Earle did not report, but which served to correct former impressions, 
 and to make his comments on the annual reports of European asylums 
 of great value. To his volume Dr. Earle added a supplement of six- 
 teen pages, containing information furnished by Laehr in 1852, and a 
 list of German asylums at that date, tabulated by Dr. Earle, which, as 
 containing information curious in itself, and nowhere else accessible in 
 English, is reprinted in this Appendix. The mere political changes 
 made in the past half-century, largely by the genius and energy of 
 Bismarck, give these minute divisions of German-speaking Europe 
 curious interest. The first form of the volume was published in the 
 American Journal of Insanity, then printed at the Utica Asylum, 
 where Dr. Brigham had begun it. I have made use of a corrected 
 copy of the volume of 1853, put in my hands by Dr. Earle. 
 
 (V.) (1853) E7C7-opean Institutions for Idiots. (New York: William Saun- 
 derson. Printer, pp. 22.) 
 
 (VI.) (1854) The Practice of Blood-letting in Mejital Disorders. (New 
 York: S. S. & William Wood. pp. 126.) 
 
 (VII.) (1857) Medical Opinion in the Parish Will Case. (pp. 50.) 
 
 (VIII.) (1862) Chapter on Insanity in United States Census: Quarto 
 Volume for i860. (Printed by the Government Printers.) 
 
 (IX.) (1864-85) Reports of the State Ltmatic Hospital at Northampton, 
 Mass. (Printed by the State Printers at Boston. Pp. nearly 2,000 in 
 all.) 
 
 (X.) (1877) The Curability of Insanity. (First form of this work in a 
 pamphlet issued by the New England Psychological Society. Boston.) 
 
 (XI.) (1879) The Matiageme7it of the Insane in the Atnerican States. 
 (Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference of Charities at Chicago, 
 June, 1879, pp. 42-59.) (Boston: A. Williams & Co.) 
 
 (XII.) (1887) The Curability of Insanity : A Series of Studies. (Phila- 
 delphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, pp. 232.) 
 
 (XIII.) (1888) 77!!^ Earle Family: Ralph Earle and his Descendants. 
 (Compiled by Pliny Earle, of Northampton, Mass. Printed for the 
 Family.) (Worcester, Mass. : Press of Charles Hamilton, pp. xxiv, 
 480.) This may be considered Dr. Earle's magnutn opus, since it 
 occupied him, at intervals, for half a century, and involved an expendi- 
 ture on his part of some thousands of dollars. It is a masterly work, 
 of incredible labor almost, and yet deals with only one of the eight or 
 ten families in America named Earl, Earll, or Earle. It contains more 
 than 4,000 names of the cousins, near or remote, of Dr. Earle, and yet 
 omits more than 1,000 as not coming within the scope of the book. 
 In connection with what the volume tells of the artistic branch of the 
 Leicester Earles, this Appendix will contain something about the two 
 
1838-1892 3^9 
 
 Ralphs, James and Augustus Earle, who were the art-contingent, and 
 were divided between New and Old England in the political separation 
 of the two countries; James being the husband and Augustus the son 
 of a Tory mother, though the grandson of a patriot soldier of the Rev- 
 olution. Ralph drew the first sketches of the early fights at Concord 
 and Lexington. An uncle of the last English artist of the family 
 married into the family of General Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, 
 and painted his great kinsman's portrait ; his nephew was sailing the 
 Mediteranean with Admiral Smyth or acting as draughtsman to the 
 " Beagle," in which Darwin made his grand voyage round the world. 
 (XIV.) (1838-92) An incomplete list of Dr. Earle's contributions to Reviews, 
 Annuals, Dictionaries, etc., follows : — 
 
 1838. Insanity : Its Catcses, Duration, TertninatioJi, and Moral Treat- 
 ment. (Part of his Medical Thesis of 1837.) 
 
 1840. The Clitnate, Population, Diseases, etc., of Malta. 
 
 1840. Medical Institutions, Diseases, etc., at Athens and Constantinople. 
 
 1 84 1. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in London. 
 1842-45. Observations on the Rapidity of the Pulse of the Insafie. 
 1843. The Curability of Insanity. (First paper.) 
 
 1845. ^^^^ Inability to distinguish Colors. 
 
 1845. Experiments with Conium fnactdatum. 
 
 1847. Cases of Paralysis Peculiar to the Insane. 
 
 1849-57. Cases of Partio-General Paralysis, or Paralysis of the Insane. 
 
 1840-42. Reviews of Sir William Ellis, of Dr. F. Leuret, of the Statis- 
 tics of the York Retreat, of Eleven Hospitals. 
 
 1843-44. Reviews of Reports of Twenty-five American Hospitals, of 
 the Retreat near Leeds, and the Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals 
 in England. 
 
 1845. Reviews of the Reports of Twenty American Hospitals and Eight 
 English Hospitals. 
 
 1846. Indian Hemp and Mental Alienation. (Review of J. Moreau.) 
 
 1846. Reviews of Reports of English Lunacy Commission and of 
 Fifteen American Hospitals. 
 
 1844-47. The Poetry of Insayiity, Contributions to the Pathology of In- 
 sanity, Cases and a Leaffro7n the Annals of Insanity. 
 
 1847. Reviews of Reports of Nineteen American Hospitals. 
 
 1848. Reviews of Reports of Eighteen American Hospitals. 
 
 185 1. The hisane at Gheel. 
 
 1852. The Lunatic Hospital at Havana. 
 
 1849-52. Reviews of the Reports of Twenty-six American Hospitals. 
 1853-55. Reviews of the Reports of Forty American Hospitals. 
 1856. Reviews and Report of Twenty-three American Hospitals. 
 1856. Itisa7iity and Idiocy in Massachusetts. 
 
320 PUBLICATIONS OF DR. EARLE 
 
 1 85 7. New Afnerica/i Bistitutiotis for the Itisajie. 
 
 1S57. Reviews of the Reports of Twenty-five American Hospitals. 
 
 1858. Reviews of the Reports of Twenty-eight American Hospitals. 
 
 1859. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-four American Hospitals. 
 i860. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-three American Hospitals. 
 
 1 86 1. Reviews of the Reports of Fifteen American Hospitals. 
 
 1862. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-six American Hospitals. 
 
 1863. Hospitals in British Afnerica. 
 
 1863. Reviews of the Reports of Ten American Hospitals. 
 
 1864. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-nine American Hospitals. 
 
 1865. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-six American Hospitals. 
 
 1 866. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-five American Hospitals. 
 
 1867. Reviews of the Reports of Thirty-three American Hospitals. 
 1867. History atid Description of the NorthamptOTi Luttatic Hospital. 
 
 1867. Psycopathic Hospital of the Future. 
 
 1868. Psychologic Medicine iti the Medical Curriculum. 
 1868. Prospective Provision for the Insane. 
 
 1868. Reviews of the Reports of Twenty American Hospitals. 
 
 1869. Reviews of the Reports of Fifteen American Hospitals.* 
 
 In addition to these articles, Dr. Earle published in 1846 a review 
 of " Esquirol on Mental Diseases," in a New York periodical; a 
 " History of Insane Hospitals in the United States," the first paper 
 read before the New York Academy of Medicine, and published in its 
 records ; in 1863 an article in the American Almanac on " Insanity " ; 
 in 1 88 1 an article on the "Curability of the Insane " in the Proceed- 
 ings of the Conference of Charities ; and in 1892 a long article on the 
 same subject in Dr. D. H. Tuke's "Dictionary of Psychological 
 Medicine," published in London two months after Dr. Earle's death. 
 In the fournal of Social Science he published in 1890 his paper on 
 " Popular Fallacies concerning the Insane." In his early days he 
 had written copiously for the literary and daily journals, and con- 
 tributed, in 1837, 1838, 1839, many letters to the Worcester Spy, 
 describing his journeys about Europe. 
 
 A paper on Color Blindness, exhibiting what may be called Dr. 
 Earle's middle style, when writing for the people rather than for 
 physicians, appears in this Appendix ; and, to show his latest style 
 and condensed form of statement, the Social Science paper on "Pop- 
 ular Fallacies concerning the Insane " and his contribution to Dr. 
 Tuke's " Dictionary of Psychological Medicine " are reprinted. 
 
 * See also Dr. Earle's later " Reminiscences" in this Appendix. It is difficult to be sure that all 
 he so copiously wrote is catalogued, and his manuscripts are not here noticed. 
 
i837 321 
 
 II. Selections from "Thirteen Visits." 
 
 An English Asylum. 
 
 The number of patients in the Wakefield Pauper Asylum at the 
 time of my visit, in the summer of 1837, was 334, of whom a small 
 minority were women. Fifty or sixty of the men labor, regularly, 
 either in the manufacture of the articles above mentioned, in garden- 
 ing, or in some mechanical trade. All the utensils used by the 
 patients at their meals, unless necessarily metallic, are made of 
 wood. The working patients are furnished, besides their regular 
 meals, with two " drinkings " during the day, each of them consisting 
 of three-fourths of a pint of beer and four ounces of bread. Nearly 
 two hundred dollars per annum is paid for tobacco, which is also 
 divided among the laborers, each being entitled to a weekly ration 
 of one ounce. Many of the patients, as we passed through the 
 wards, begged for tobacco, or for money to purchase it with. One 
 of them, after having thus played the mendicant, put into my hands 
 a piece of cloth, upon one side of which he had written, in large 
 letters, ^^Millen?imm. Green, blue, and yelloiu united^ And upon the 
 other, "■Victoria \st, July 28, 1837. Virgin Queen of Peace. Amen. 
 Aquila.^^ It will be perceived from the date that this was but a 
 short time subsequent to the accession of Victoria to the throne of 
 Great Britain. The universal popularity which the youthful queen 
 enjoyed at that time among her sane subjects thus seems to have 
 penetrated the walls of the institutions for lunatics. And this poor, 
 infatuated maniac beheld the " green, blue, and yellow," the insignia 
 of the different political parties of the realm, united through her 
 means, and hence the "consummation devoutly to be wished," the 
 immediate advent of the millennium ! " Eh, eh," said he, after I had 
 read the above ; and, as he spoke, he looked up into my face with a 
 piercing glance and a most significant smile, " do you know what 
 Aquila signifies in English ? " Being answered in the affirmative, 
 "Well, sir," he continued, "/am the Eagle"; and he placed a most 
 emphatic stress upon the pronoun, in order to give an adequate idea 
 of the dignity of his person. 
 
 The women were supping when we went through their department, 
 each eating her ration from a small wooden dish, similar to a pail. 
 
32 2 ASYLUMS IN 1 536 
 
 That air of neatness and comfort which reigns throughout the estab- 
 Ushment is particularly conspicuous in the section for the females. 
 One of the women, who had been refractory, had her arms confined. 
 I had previously observed, in the men's department, that confine- 
 ment by straps, in chairs and beds, is also resorted to in cases of 
 violent mania. 
 
 " Who are you ? " inquired one of the women who were eating, 
 after having scrutinized me with the wild and searching gaze of a 
 maniac. " Are you a Methodist minister ? " " No," said I, " I am an 
 Americajiy This answer was perfectly satisfactory ; and no sooner 
 was it uttered than half a dozen patients suddenly rose, " Oh, you are 
 from America : then you know my brother," said one. " Do you 
 
 know J. F. ? " inquired a second. "Have you ever seen ? " 
 
 asked a third: "he is my husband's brother." "I have a sister in 
 America," remarked a young woman, looking up with a smile so 
 gentle and an expression of countenance so calm and subdued that 
 one beheld in it more of the attractive innocence and beauty of sane 
 and healthy childhood than the fierceness and wildness of confirmed 
 lunacy. 
 
 27ie Utrecht Asylum. 
 
 The building, though still small, has been enlarged ; the courts 
 have been planted with trees and flowers ; and at the time of my 
 visit, in July, 1838, their size was being much increased by extend- 
 ing their limits over the sites of some ancient buildings, purchased 
 by the " Regents " of the asylum, and demolished by their order. 
 The building is shaped like the letter L. The room of the superin- 
 tendent is in the angle, in the second stor}', so situated that he 
 can see every patient who is out of doors. The wards have dor- 
 mitories on but one side, the remaining space being a gallery, 
 which is used as a place of promenade in bad weather. There is a 
 common sitting-room for each class of the inmates. Their number 
 was 94, that of the two sexes being about equal. They are divided 
 into three classes: those of the first class pay 812 florins, equal to 
 about $125, per annum; those of the second, 412 florins, or 
 S65 ; and those of the third, 100 and 150 florins. The third 
 class is composed of paupers. Those who pay but 100 florins are 
 natives of Utrecht: those who pay 150 come from other places. 
 The rooms of the first class are furnished handsomely, but not with 
 
1838 323 
 
 that elegance which is seen in those of the similar classes in some 
 asylums. 
 
 When necessary, the camisole, or the strait-jacket, fetters, the 
 douche, and the dungeon are put in requisition as means of restraint 
 and coercion. The stream of water forming the douche is but one- 
 fourth of an inch in diameter, while those of Salpetriere and Bicetre, 
 at Paris, are about seven-eighths of an inch. The quantity of water 
 flowing from the latter must, consequently, be nearly twelve times as 
 great as from the former. There is but one bathing-tub in the es- 
 tabUshment. The patients resort to reading, writing, drawing, music, 
 cards, billiards, chequers, or draughts, and some other games, for en- 
 tertainment and amusement. There is a library intended for their 
 use. The billiard table, a large and handsome one, was made by 
 two of the former patients. In one of the men's rooms several 
 patients were occupied in drawing and reading ; and, had it not been 
 for the wildness of the eye and the characteristic traits of counte- 
 nance, which cannot be mistaken, in one or two others who were pres- 
 ent, I could hardly have believed myself to be in a mad-house. Most 
 of the men in the first class were in the court devoted to their use. 
 Among them was a physician. He conversed freely upon his situa- 
 tion, gave an account of his commencement of practice, and the 
 success which attended his efforts, until his friends thought it best 
 for him to take lodgings in the lunatic asylum. At length he asked 
 me if I thought him deranged. He had talked so rationally, and this 
 question was put so directly and so earnestly, that to avoid answer- 
 ing it was almost impossible. An evasive reply, if any, must be given. 
 " It is difficult to define derangement," said I ; " and, if we should 
 accept the definition given by some authors, we should include al- 
 most the majority of mankind," He appeared satisfied with the an- 
 swer, and only remarked, with a melancholy tone, " Je crois bien que 
 la plupart des gens soient des alienes." Poor man ! although reason 
 was dethroned, it was evident, from his conversation, that the affec- 
 tions retained their empire. 
 
 [There has been some confusion of dates, even in France, until 
 recently, in regard to the world-renowned deed of Pinel. Dr. D. H. 
 Tuke, writing of his ancestor, William Tuke, who did for England 
 more than Pinel did for France, set this matter right in 1892, soon 
 after Dr. Earle's death. He said : " Pinel's nephew, Casimir Pinel, 
 discovered in the registers of Bicetre that the exact date of his noble 
 inspiration was 1793. 'On doit croire que ce fut vers les derniers 
 
324 PINEL S DEED OF THE YEAR I 793 
 
 mois de 1793, et non de 1792, que Pinel se presenta a I'Hotel de Ville 
 pour demander I'autorisation h. la Commune de faire enlever les 
 chaines aux alie'ne's de Bicetre.' (' Lettres de Pinel,' 1859.) 
 M. Semelaigne, the great-grand-nephew of Pinel, gives the date of 
 his nomination to Bicetre as Aug. 25, 1793, and the day of entering 
 upon his duties there as Sept. 11, 1793. ('Philippe Pinel et son 
 oeuvre,') Then followed the like humane deed at the Salpetriere.' " 
 Dr. Semelaigne was present at York in 1892 when the story of 
 William Tuke was told by his descendants and successors, in celebrat- 
 ing the Centenary of the York Retreat, July 21, 1892.] 
 
 Pinel, the Younger, describes his Father'' s Deed. 
 
 The Bicetre is hallowed as being the scene of the boldest and 
 noblest achievement recorded in the annals of insanity. Here morn- 
 ing first dispelled the midnight gloom of lunacy ; and the guiltless 
 maniac was released from the thraldom which associated him with 
 criminals and brutes, taken by the hand as a brother, and acknowl- 
 edged to be worthy of the kindest attention, commiseration, and 
 sympathy. 
 
 The following brief account of the commencement of the labors of 
 Pinel, extracted from a paper read by his son before the Royal 
 Academy of Sciences, commends itself to the attention of every 
 reader : — 
 
 "Towards the end of 1792,* Pinel, after having many times urged 
 the government to allow him to unchain the maniacs of the Bicetre, 
 but in vain, went himself to the authorities, and with much earnest- 
 ness and warmth advocated the removal of this monstrous abuse. 
 Couthon, a member of the Commune, gave way to M. Pinel's argu- 
 ments, and agreed to meet him at the Bicetre. Couthon then inter- 
 rogated those who were chained ; but the abuse he received, and the 
 confused sounds of cries, vociferations, and clanking of chains, in the 
 filthy and damp cells, made him recoil from Pinel's proposition. 
 ' You may do what you will with them,' said he, ' but I fear you will 
 become their victim.' Pinel instantly commenced his undertaking. 
 There were about fifty who he considered might, without danger to 
 the others, be unchained ; and he began by releasing twelve, with the 
 sole precaution of having previously prepared the same number of 
 strong waistcoats, t with long sleeves, which could be tied behind the 
 back, if necessary. The first man on whom the experiment was to be 
 
 * Really, 1793. 1 A garment now known by its French name, camisole. 
 
1793 325 
 
 tried was an English captain, whose history no one knew, as he had 
 been in chains for forty years. He was thought to be one of the 
 most furious among them. His keepers approached him with cau- 
 tion, as he had, in a fit of fury, killed one of them on the spot with 
 a blow from his manacles. He was chained more rigorously than 
 any of the others. Pinel entered his cell unattended, and calmly said 
 to him, ' Captain, I will order your chains to be taken off, and give 
 you liberty to walk in the court, if you promise me to behave well, and 
 injure no one.' 'Yes, I promise you,' said the maniac; 'but you are 
 laughing at me, — you are all too much afraid of me.' ' I have six 
 men,' said Pinel, 'ready to enforce my commands, if necessary. 
 Believe me then, on my word, I will give you your liberty if you will 
 put on this waistcoat.' 
 
 " He submitted to this willingly, without a word. His chains were 
 removed ; and the keepers retired, leaving the door open. He raised 
 himself many times from his seat, but fell again on it ; for he had 
 been in a sitting posture so long that he had lost the use of his legs. 
 In a quarter of an hour he succeeded in maintaining his balance, and 
 with tottering steps came to the door of his dark cell. His first look 
 was at the sky ; and he cried out enthusiastically, ' How beautiful ! ' 
 During the rest of the day he was constantly in motion, walking up 
 and down the staircases, and uttering short exclamations of delight. 
 In the evening he returned of his own accord into his cell, where a 
 better bed than he had been accustomed to had been prepared for 
 him, and he slept tranquilly. During the two succeeding years 
 which he spent in the Bicetre, he had no return of his previous 
 paroxysms, but even rendered himself useful by exercising a kind 
 of authority over the insane patients, whom he ruled in his own 
 fashion. 
 
 " The next unfortunate being whom Pinel visited was a soldier of 
 the French guards, whose only fault was drunkenness. When once 
 he lost his self-command by drink, he became quarrelsome and 
 violent, and the more dangerous from his great bodily strength. 
 From his frequent excesses he had been discharged from his corps, 
 and he had speedily dissipated his scanty means. DisgTace and 
 misery so depressed him that he became insane. In his paroxysms 
 he believed himself a general, and fought those who would not ac- 
 knowledge his rank. After a furious struggle of this sort he was 
 brought to the Bicetre in a state of great excitement. He had now 
 
320 
 
 PINEL AND THE MADMEN 
 
 been chained for ten years, and with greater care than the others, 
 from his frequently having broken his chains with his hands only. 
 Once, when he broke loose, he defied all his keepers to enter his cell 
 until they had each passed under his legs ; and he compelled eight 
 men to obey this strange command. Pinel, on his previous visits to 
 him, regarded him as a man of original good nature, but under ex- 
 citement incessantly kept up by cruel treatment ; and he had promised 
 speedily to ameliorate his condition, which promise alone had made 
 him more calm. Now he announced to him that he should be 
 chained no longer ; and, to prove that he had confidence in him, and 
 believed him to be a man capable of better things, he called upon 
 him to assist in releasing those others who had not reason like him- 
 self, and promised, if he conducted himself well, to take him into his 
 own service. The change was sudden and complete. No sooner 
 was he liberated than he became attentive, following with his eye 
 every motion of Pinel, and executing his orders with as much ad- 
 dress as promptness. He spoke kindly and reasonably to the other 
 patients, and during the rest of his life was entirely devoted to his 
 deliverer. ' I can never hear without emotion,' says Pinel's son, 
 ' the name of this man, who some years after this occurrence 
 shared with me the games of my childhood, and to whom I shall 
 always feel attached.' 
 
 " In the next cell were three Prussian soldiers, who had been in 
 chains for many years, but on what account no one knew. They 
 were, in general, calm and inoffensive, becoming animated only 
 when conversing together in their own language, which was unintelli- 
 gible to others. They were allowed the only consolation of which 
 they appeared sensible, — to live together. The preparations taken 
 to release them alarmed them, as they imagined the keepers were 
 come to inflict new severities ; and they opposed them violently, 
 when removing their irons. When released, they were not willing to 
 leave their prison, and remained in their habitual posture. Either 
 grief or loss of intellect had rendered them indifferent to liberty.* 
 
 " Near them was an old priest, who was possessed with the idea 
 that he was Christ. His appearance indicated his belief. He was 
 grave and solemn, his smile soft, and at the same time severe, re- 
 pelling all familiarity. His hair was long, and hung on each side of 
 his face, which was pale, intelligent, and resigned. On his being 
 once taunted with a question that, * if he was Christ, he could break 
 
 * Dements, of course. 
 
1793 327 
 
 his chains,' he solemnly replied, ' Frustra tentaris Dominum tuum.' 
 His whole life was a romance of religious excitement. He under- 
 took, on foot, pilgrimages to Cologne and Rome, and made a voyage 
 to America for the purpose of converting the Indians. His domi- 
 nant idea became changed into an actual mania, and on his return to 
 France he announced himself as the Saviour, He was taken by the 
 police before the Archbishop of Paris, by whose orders he was con- 
 fined in the Bicetre as either impious or insane. His hands and 
 feet were loaded with heavy chains, and during twelve years he bore 
 with exemplary patience martyrdom and constant sarcasms. 
 
 " Pinel did not attempt to reason with him, but ordered him to 
 be unchained in silence, directing, at the same time, that every one 
 should imitate the old man's reserve, and never speak to him. This 
 order was rigorously observed, and produced on the patient a more 
 decided effect than either chains or the dungeon. He became 
 humiliated by this unusual isolation, and introduced himself to the 
 society of the other patients. From this time his notions became 
 more just and sensible ; and in less than a year he acknowledged the 
 absurdity of his previous prepossessions, and was dismissed from 
 the Bicetre. 
 
 *' In the course of a few days Pinel released fifty-three maniacs 
 from their chains. Among them were men of all conditions and 
 countries, — workmen, merchants, soldiers, lawyers, etc. The result 
 was beyond his hopes. Tranquillity and harmony succeeded to 
 tumult and disorder ; and the whole discipline was marked with a 
 regularity and kindness which had the most favorable effect on the 
 insane themselves, rendering even the most furious more tractable." 
 
 The Asylmn at Charenton. 
 
 Dr. Louis favored me with a letter of introduction to M. Esquirol, 
 the m'edecin en chef oi the asylum at Charenton, and the distinguished 
 veteran in the treatment of the insane. With this I went to the 
 asylum, where I had the pleasure of meeting him to whom it was 
 addressed, in the scene of his present labors among the unfortunate 
 people who love and honor him as a father, and in whose welfare 
 his interest continues, unrepressed by the weight of accumulated 
 years. After his visit to the patients was completed, I sat an hour 
 with him in the parlor of the institution, during which time he con- 
 
328 ESQUIROL AT CHARENTOX 
 
 versed chiefly upon the subjects of lunacy and of lunatic asylums. 
 After speaking of the comparative merits of the various establish- 
 ments of the kind in Europe, and giving the preference to that at 
 Reggio, in Italy, over all others that he had ever visited, he made 
 many inquiries with regard to those of the United States, and 
 expressed much interest in the progress of improvement in the 
 treatment of the insane upon this side of the Atlantic. 
 
 The asylum of Charenton, in a village of the same name, is about 
 five miles eastwardly from the city of Paris. It is situated upon the 
 southern declivity of a hill, which runs parallel to the river Marne 
 near its shores, and but a short distance from its junction with the 
 Seine. It was originally a hospital, under the care of the Brothers 
 of Charity. About the beginning of the eighteenth century a 
 department was for the first time devoted to the reception of persons 
 afflicted with mental ahenation. In 1795 the hospital was sup- 
 pressed; but in 1797 it was re-established, and devoted exclusively 
 to the treatment of the insane. It is now called, in common with 
 some other establishments of the kind in other parts of France, 
 " Maison Royale d'Alie'ne's." It includes many edifices, which have 
 been erected at various periods, and extensive gardens and prome- 
 nades, which extend to the summit of the hill upon the declivity of 
 which it is situated. The following description is translated from 
 the recent elaborate work of M. Esquirol, to which I am also 
 indebted for most of the subject-matter for the remarks upon this 
 asylum : * " The section for men is composed of four courts (of 
 which three are planted), three infirmaries, one ward for patients of 
 a suicidal propensity, one dormitory, one gallery and six corridors 
 into which open the doors of the several rooms ; one bathing-room, 
 and six rooms where the patients assemble. These last-mentioned 
 can be heated. The section for women has a garden, four planted 
 courts, two infirmaries, one ward for women disposed to commit 
 suicide, two bathing-rooms, seven dormitories, six galleries and cor- 
 ridors into which open the doors of the apartments, and five rooms 
 in common, which may be heated." 
 
 An extensive additional department for females, combining most 
 of the modern improvements, was erected about twelve years ago, 
 and first occupied in 1829. This is one of the best-arranged and 
 most neatly kept establishments of the kind that I have had the 
 
 •Des Maladies Mentales, considdrdes sous les Rapports Medical, HyRi^nique, et Mddico-ldgal. 
 Par E. Esquirol. Paris, i^ji. 
 
i«3« 329 
 
 opportunity to examine. The furniture is good and sufficiently 
 handsome, without being extravagant. The beds of the dormitories 
 are hung with white curtains. No corresponding department for the 
 men has hitherto been erected. 
 
 The Milafi Asylum. 
 
 Manual labor is pursued to a considerable extent by the patients. 
 A large garden belonging to the asylum furnishes employment to 
 nearly one hundred of them during the warm season. In one room, 
 through which we passed, between forty and fifty men were engaged 
 in braiding /^7^//rt; di Spagna — Spanish straw — for carpets. They 
 worked as steadily, and appeared as orderly, as if they had not been 
 lunatics. In another apartment several men were employed in mak- 
 ing shoes, and as many more in tailoring. One of the latter was 
 cutting clothes. Soon after we entered he commenced talking to 
 me, and conversed so rationally that I supposed him to be a sane 
 person, acting as overseer to the others. Under this supposition I 
 inquired of him if all those under his care were insane, to which 
 he answered in the affirmative. Perceiving that he conversed in 
 French, I asked him if he was a Frenchman. He replied that he 
 was not, and added, " Je suppose que vous etes Anglais." " No," 
 said I, " I am an American." " Ah ! vraiment," he responded, 
 dropping his shears and lifting both hands as if agreeably surprised, 
 " vous etes Americain. Eh bien, vous etes trbs-heureux, vous etes 
 carbonaro. Tous les Americains sont des carbonari. Je voudrais 
 bien etre dans ce pays-la." Knowing the subject of the carbonari 
 to be rather a delicate one in Italy, these remarks, together with 
 some others subsequently made, induced me to suspect him insane, 
 and this suspicion, upon inquiry of the direttore of the asylum, 
 who accompanied me, proved correct. 
 
 An artist, in the same apartment with the patient above men- 
 tioned, was occupied in cutting designs in paper. He showed me a 
 representation of Bonaparte at St. Helena, and another of the gar- 
 den of Eden. They were, indisputably, the most elegant workman- 
 ship of the kind that I have ever examined. I attempted to pur- 
 chase the latter, but he informed me that it was already disposed of. 
 
 Many of the women were making lint, or charpie, for the use of 
 the hospital in the city ; and in one apartment there were about 
 
330 asylujMS in italy and turkey 
 
 ninety sewing and spinning tow upon throstles whirled by the hand. 
 For coercion and restraint the douche and confinement in bed, or of 
 the Umbs, are effectual means. I observed one patient manacled 
 with irons, and strong leather mittens upon his hands. He tears off 
 his clothes whenever his arms are unrestrained. Several others 
 wore strong leathern belts, to which their arms were fastened. In 
 the same ward with these men there was another, very gentleman- 
 like in appearance, who was exceedingly anxious lest I should go 
 away unaware of his dignity or of the distinguished honor I had re- 
 ceived by admission into his presence. Accordingly, he approached 
 me, and repeated, with the utmost volubility, a long list of titles, 
 which he graced, such as "prince" of one place, "king" of another, 
 "emperor" of a third, and, finally, "ruler of the world." In his 
 anxiety to furnish me with this important information, he followed us 
 far out of the ward. 
 
 The only means of amusement which I saw were a swing and a 
 giustra, if I rightly understood the word. The latter is so con- 
 structed that four, or, indeed, eight persons seated at the extremities 
 of two beams which cross each other at right angles, in the centre, 
 may revolve horizontally in a circle. These are in the principal 
 court occupied by the men. The court is shaded by two parallel 
 rows of sycamore-trees, beneath which are many seats for the pa- 
 tients, permanently fastened to the ground. 
 
 The Asylum at Constanthwple. 
 
 Connected with some of the mosques there are buildings for the 
 reception of the sick, — a kind of hospital, in which the poor who 
 are suffering under disease may have their wants ministered to by 
 the hand of charity. That which is adjacent to Suliman-ye, or the 
 mosque of Suliman, is devoted exclusively to the insane. There 
 none but men are admitted, the women according to Turkish cus- 
 tom, as well as in conformity with the precepts of the religion of 
 Mahomet, being kept in private seclusion. The building is but one 
 story in height, and, like the cloisters of many Gothic cathedrals, and 
 the khans or caravanserais of Turkey and Natolia, completely sur- 
 rounds a central court. The entrances to all the rooms are beneath 
 the corridor at which the court, upon all sides, is limited. 
 
 I visited this asylum during the feast of Eairam, near the 
 
1838 331 
 
 close of the year 1838, in company with two American gentlemen, 
 residents at Constantinople. We entered the court, passing several 
 miserably clad people, " sitting at the gate," not " to ask alms," but 
 to receive it, if voluntarily offered. Within the court were many 
 people, mostly young men and boys, vv^ho had come either for the 
 gratification of curiosity or to administer to the wants of the af- 
 flicted. We passed along the corridor to the first window. From 
 between the bars of the iron grating with which this was defended 
 a heavy chain, ominous of the sad reality within, protruded, and was 
 fastened to the external surface of the wall. It was about six feet 
 in length. The opposite extremity was attached to a heavy iron 
 ring, surrounding the neck of a patient who was sitting, within the 
 grating, upon the window-seat. We entered the room, and found two 
 other patients, similarly fastened, at the two windows upon the oppo- 
 site side of the room. It was a most cheerless apartment. A jug to 
 contain water, and, for each of the patients, a few boards laid upon 
 the floor, or elevated three or four inches, at most, and covered with 
 a couple of blankets, were all the articles of comfort or conven- 
 ience with which, aside from their clothing, these miserable creatures 
 were supplied. Although in the latter part of December, they had 
 no fire. Nor were the windows glazed ; but close shutters, attached 
 to each, rendered it possible measurably to shield the inmates from 
 severe weather, whenever it might occur. The length of the chain 
 of each patient is barely sufficient to enable him to lie down upon 
 his comfortless bed of boards and blankets. Leaving this apartment, 
 we proceeded successively to the others, twelve or fifteen in number, 
 in all of which we found the patients in a very similar condition to 
 those whom we had first seen. There was but one who was not 
 chained. He was an elderly man, though still retaining much of the 
 vivacity of earlier years. His long and profuse hair and beard were 
 nearly white, and his complexion very delicate. He was formerly 
 a priest of the Islam faith. He has been deranged and confined in 
 this place nearly fifteen years, during which time he has thrice 
 broken the chain with which he was secured. He is now alone in 
 his apartment, within which no one is permitted to enter. He 
 talked and raved incessantly, threatening to kill those who were 
 making him their gazing-stock. 
 
 Like those in the apartment first mentioned, all the patients, with 
 one exception, were without fire. The person forming this excep- 
 tion was one of the most hideous of undeformed human beings. He 
 
332 THE INSANE IN CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 has been in the Timar-hane, as this asylum is called by the Turks, 
 more than forty years. His hair and beard, both naturally abun- 
 dant, curly, and black as ebony, appeared as if they had not been 
 cut or combed since his entrance. They nearly concealed his face, 
 and the former hung in a profusion of literally " dishevelled locks " 
 about his neck and shoulders. His head would have been a 
 nofipareil for an original to the figure of Cain, in David's celebrated 
 picture of " Cain meditating the Death of Abel." He lay crouched 
 upon all fours, resting upon his knees and elbows, and holding his 
 head and hands over a inanghah of living embers. Whatsoever was 
 said, whether addressed to him or otherwise, could only induce him 
 slowly to turn his huge head, and present his hideous face more 
 directly to view. His case was a striking example of dementia. 
 
 The patients, generally, appeared to enjoy pretty good health, 
 aside from the lesion producing insanity. I was informed that a 
 physician attends them regularly. There is a person who has the 
 charge of supplying them with food, and they receive considerable 
 attention from those who visit them. While we were there, many 
 visitors were conversing with them, giving them articles of food, 
 money, and tobacco, and doing them a kind office by filling and 
 lighting their " chebouks." These patients presented a diversity of 
 forms of insanity, and a variety of hallucinations. One of them was 
 seated against the bars of his window, cross-legged, and with arms 
 folded upon his breast, in all the counterfeited dignity of a sovereign, 
 and the imperturbable gravity of a saint. It was evident by his de- 
 meanor that he esteemed himself one of the rulers of the earth, — a 
 Mahmoud, a Mahomet, or a Great Mogul. Upon being informed 
 that I was an American, " Please," said he, turning towards me 
 slowly, and without the slightest change of countenance, — " please, 
 effendi, to give my respects to the Sultan of America." This said, 
 he assumed his former position, and maintained it with the most 
 scrupulous exactitude. 
 
 There was another, one of the finest-looking Mussulmans that 
 ever worshipped before the altars of Stamboul. His beard might 
 acknowledge no rival in beauty excepting that of Mahmoud U. 
 and his eye possessed all the mingled fire and softness of the 
 Orient. He was occupied in sewing. He was surrounded by 
 several young Turks, but continued his labor, regardless of any of 
 those who were present. The gentleman of our party who speaks 
 the Turkish language addressed him, and at length won him, al- 
 
i«3« 333 
 
 though with considerable reluctance on his part, into conversation. 
 I have never witnessed a greater blandness and suavity of manners 
 than in him. Upon being asked the cause for which he had come to 
 that place, "Please, gentlemen," said he, "to be seated, and I will 
 relate the whole history." Inasmuch as the uncovered stone floor 
 presented an aspect rather uninviting as a seat, we excused our- 
 selves ; and he was requested to proceed. Thereupon he placed 
 himself in an attitude worthy of the orators of antiquity, and related 
 a long story in a most amusing but graceful manner. The whole 
 substance of it was that people began by calling him a fool, and, 
 going from bad to worse, at length ended by bringing him to the 
 Timar-hane of Suliman-ye. 
 
 Such, then, is the gloomy picture with which these sketches of 
 some of the asylums for suffering humanity are brought to a con- 
 clusion. It presents us with an additional motive for hoping that 
 the stream of knowledge, which, taking its rise in Chaldea, has 
 flowed to us, constantly augmented in its course, through Egypt, 
 Greece, Rome, and the nations of Western Europe, may reverse its 
 course or release a branch, once more to fertilize the desolate 
 regions of intellect throughout the East. It is a proposition the 
 truth of which cannot be questioned that in proportion as a nation 
 advances in intellectual cultivation, its practical benevolence assumes 
 a loftier standard. When, then, the light of science shall gild with 
 brighter rays the empire of the Ottoman, we doubt not that the 
 chains of the maniac will be broken, and his condition rendered 
 such as to leave a hope that alienated reason may reassume her 
 proper throne. 
 
 It is difficult to reconcile the treatment of the patients in the 
 Timar-hane with the testimony of physicians in regard to the 
 attention paid to unconfined lunatics in Turkey, and with the prev- 
 alent opinion among the followers of Mahomet that the insane are 
 the especial favorites of heaven, that their " discord " is 
 
 Harmony not understood, 
 
 that their language appears to us to be incoherent and unmeaning 
 merely because the minds of the sane are not sufficiently spiritualized 
 to comprehend it. Dr. Millingen, an EngUsh physician who had 
 practised nearly twenty years in Constantinople, informed me that he 
 had known the wandering lunatic to be received by strangers, and 
 for weeks in succession receive all the kindness of the most cordial 
 hospitality. 
 
334 
 
 GERMAN ASYLUMS 
 
 1 
 
 4S7 square miles. Population, 2,830,936. 
 
 At Cologne. 
 
 At Aix la Chapelle. 
 
 At Aix la Chapelle. 
 
 Takes incurables from Sicgljurg. 
 Pastor Fliedner, director. 
 For men, opened more than 100 years ago. 
 Dr. Focke, second physician. 
 Andernach. Incurables from Siegburg. 
 
 638 square miles. Population, 1,468,998. 
 
 Dr. Schwartz, second physician. 
 
 460 square miles. Population, 1,790,240. 
 Dr. H. Laehr, second phy,sician. 
 
 576 square miles. Population, 1,197,701. 
 
 1 1 
 
 1 - 
 1 1 
 
 s. :- 
 
 s 1 
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 1 ^ 
 
 1 
 
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 1 
 
 9 Dec, 1851 
 so Dec, 1851 
 ()■; End 1 85 1 
 126 Dec, 185 1 
 III Dec, 1851 
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 25 End 1851 
 228 Nov., 1851 
 117 Dec, 185 1 
 98 Dec, 1851 
 
 28 End 1 85 1 
 
 334 Dec, 1851 
 
 4 End 1850 
 
 313 Dec, 1851 
 19 Dec, 1851 
 
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 69 Dec, 1850 
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 176 End 1851 
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 Alexian Brothers 
 
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 Siegburg . . . 
 
 St. Thomas . . 
 
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 Magdeburg . . 
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 Stralsund . . . 
 
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 Charite . . . 
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1852 
 
 335 
 
 s 
 
 741 square miles. Population, 3,065,800. 
 
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 536,51 square miles. Population, 1,364,000. 
 
 1,178 square miles. Population, 2,499,400. 
 
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 Expected to open in 1852. 
 
 «■ 
 
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 Schwetz .... 
 
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 Near Coblentz. For insane and idiots. 
 
 Established by Dr. F. Nasse, father of 
 
 present proprietor, who died in 1851. 
 
 Between Cologne and Bonn. 
 For 25. 3 geographical miles from Bonn, 
 2 from Siegburg. 
 
 Founded at Sumpendorf, in 18 19, by the 
 father of Dr. Gbrgen. 
 
 Near Dresden ; founded by Dr. Braunlich. 
 
 Dr. Dietrich, second physician. 
 
 Near Leipzig. 
 
 Formerly Heimbach ; near Esslingen. 
 
 14 English miles from Stuttgard. 
 
 Founded by Dr. Schnurrer, senior. 
 In the suburbs of Jena. 
 
 Near Kiel, Dr. W. Jessen, 2d phy.sician. 
 
 
 2 large gardens 
 
 7 acres 
 50 acres 
 
 Large park 
 
 6 acres 
 2| acres 
 
 20 acres 
 
 •3 
 1 
 
 22 End 1851 
 
 16 rooms 
 
 For 20 
 8 in 1850 
 
 1 5 End 1850 
 
 4 End 1850 
 
 About 30 
 
 For 20 
 For 20 
 25 in 1844 
 
 For 25 
 J'"or 50-60 
 
 2 
 
 Q 
 
 Dr. Erlenmeyer 
 Dr. M. Nasse 
 
 Dr. Herz 
 Dr. Albers 
 Dr. Richards 
 Dr. Meyer 
 
 Dr. Whitfield 
 Dr. Posner 
 Dr. Zelasko 
 
 Dr. Gorgen 
 
 Dr. Matthias 
 Dr. Pienits 
 Dr. Guentz 
 Dr. Stimmel 
 Dr. Schnurrer 
 
 M. Bauer, prop. 
 Dr. Kicser 
 Dr. Marting 
 Dr. F. Engelken 
 Dr. H. Engelken 
 Dr. P. Jessen 
 
 1 
 
 s, 
 
 
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 col colcoco coco! 00 loo:»col cooclr~.co 
 
 •c 
 1 
 
 Prussia : 
 Rhine Province 
 
 Brandenburg 
 Posen 
 Austria : 
 Lower Austria 
 
 Germany : 
 Kingd'm Saxony 
 
 Wiirtemberg 
 
 S axe- Weimar 
 Saxe-Meiningen 
 Near Bremen 
 
 Schleswig 
 
 3 
 
 Bendorf . . 
 Bonn . . . 
 
 Bonn . . . 
 Bonn . . . 
 Endenich 
 Eitorf . . . 
 
 Moers . . . 
 Beriin . . . 
 Kowanowko 
 
 Vienna . . 
 
 Lindenhof . 
 Poina . . . 
 Thonberg . 
 Kennenburg 
 Schbndorf . 
 
 Jena . . . 
 Marienthal . 
 Oberneuland 
 Rockwinkel . 
 Hornheim . 
 
1852 341 
 
 General View of the German Institutions for the Insane 
 zvitJi Reference to their Destination. 
 
 AA. PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Bendorf, Berlin, Bonn 3, Eitorf, Endenich, Hornheim, Jena, Kennenburg, Kowa- 
 nowko, Lindenhof, Marienthal, Moers, Oberneuland, Pirna, Rockwinkel, Schon- 
 dorf, Thonberg, Vienna. 
 
 BB. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 I. CONNECTED WITH OTHER INSTITUTIONS. 
 A. With Penal Institutions. 
 
 I. Curables and Incurables. — Strelitz, Gera. 
 
 2. For Incurables. — Berlin. 
 
 B. With Other Hospitals. 
 (a) In the same building. 
 
 1. For Curables attd Incurables. — Berlin, Breslau, Brunn, Dantzig, Gratz, Ham- 
 burg, Klagenfurt, Mlinster, Schwetz, Trient, Wiirtzljurg. 
 
 2. For Incurables. — Cologne, Leipzig. 
 {b) In separate buildings. 
 
 ' I. For Curables and Incurables. — Bremen, Kaiserswerth, Laibach, Luxem- 
 burg, Roda, Trieste, Vienna, Hubertusburg, Treves. 
 
 C. With Asylums for Chronic and Incurable Cases. 
 I . For Curables a7id Incurables. — Hofheim. 
 
 2. For Incurables. — Aix-la-Chapelle, Frankenthal, Gesecke, Hainai, Merx- 
 hausen, Pforzheim, Stralsund, Wittstock. 
 
 II. INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 1. Mixed, Curables and Incurables together. — Armstadt, Bamberg, Baireuth, 
 Brake, Brunswick, Dessau, Frankfort on the Main, Gotha, Hall, Hildburg- 
 hausen, Irsee, Jena, Konigsberg, Lintz, Lubec, Mariaberg, Munich, Neu Ruppin, 
 Owinsk, Regensburg, Rudolstadt, Salzburg, Schleswig, Soran, Winterbach, Ybbs. 
 
 2. [a) For Incurables. — Aix-la-Chapelle, Blankenburg, Brieg, Cologne, Colditz, 
 Domitz, DUsseldorf, Magdeburg, Neuss, Plagowitz, Posen, Riigenwald, St. 
 Thomas (Andernach), Zwiefalten. 
 
 2. (b) For Curables. — Greifswald, Klingenmunster, Leubus, Sachsenberg, Son- 
 nenstein, Siegburg, Vienna, Winnenthal. 
 
 3. Relative-connected Institutions, the Curables and Incurables being itt separate 
 buildings. — Eichberg, Erlangen, Halle, Hildesheim, Illenau, Marsberg, Prague, 
 Schwetz, Wehlau. 
 
342 DR. EARLE ON COLOR-BLINDNESS (1845) 
 
 IV. Color-blindness in 1844-45. 
 
 [This paper was printed in part in the American Journal of the 
 Medical Sciences, but is here given with some of the names substituted 
 for initials, and with other variations which make it interesting. 
 When written, the subject was almost unknown in America, and had 
 been but little studied in Europe. It is now well understood ; and 
 seamen, railway officials, army officers, and others act upon the 
 knowledge which fifty years ago was the possession of only a few 
 men of exact observation, like Dr. Earle. He seems to have used the 
 paper as a lecture. It is here printed from his manuscript.] 
 
 " Know thyself ! " Such was the important and comprehensive 
 injunction inscribed upon the entablature of the portico of the tem- 
 ple at Delphos ; and from the time of the first establishment of the 
 Delphian oracle down to the present time man has endeavored, in a 
 greater or less degree, to act in obedience to the command. He has 
 attempted to reveal the hidden secrets of his physical as well as of 
 his mental existence through the agency of every available means. 
 The elements of antiquity (fire, air, earth, and water) have been called 
 upon to contribute towards the attainment of this end. Observation 
 and research have exerted their influence. Matter and mind have 
 united their energies for its acquisition. Astrologers have invoked 
 the agency of the starry hosts. Theologians and metaphysicians 
 have spent their lives in speculations, have promulgated theory after 
 theory, until "of the making of many books there is no end." 
 Anatomists have plied the scalpel with an assiduity which has left 
 hardly a fibre of the human system undissected from its neighbor. 
 Physiologists have theorized until their doctrines are nearly as 
 various as the languages of Babel. Chemists have called into 
 requisition every agent reacting upon the tissues and their products, 
 and have brought the powerful means of analysis and synthesis to 
 their aid. And what is the result ? Mind is still unknown to itself, 
 except by some of its attributes. Its abstract nature and its con- 
 nection with the body are as truly among the arcana of nature at the 
 present day as in the time of Adam. What is our knowledge of the 
 body ? The scalpel has revealed the form, and the microscope, to 
 some extent, the intimate structure, of the several organic systems of 
 which it is composed ; but in what utter darkness are we still groping 
 in regard to the functions of those organs ! The thymus, the thyroid 
 and the bronchial glands, the spleen, the appcndicida vermiformis, the 
 
i84S 343 
 
 pineal gland, — that Cartesian throne of the immortal soul, — the/^r- 
 nix, the pons Varolii, and, one might almost say, the whole mass of the 
 encephalon, — what are these but terra incognita, even to the most 
 " transcendental " anatomist and the most profound physiologist ? 
 
 Receding one step farther, how is our knowledge confounded, in 
 relation even to those organs of which we are acquainted with the 
 immediate use, by the simple question, " How does it act ? " 
 
 I nothing know but that I am, 
 
 says the poet : and in a similar manner, in relation to the functions 
 of the organs in question (that of secretion, for example), the physiol- 
 ogist may assert, with a becoming humility, " I nothing know but 
 that it is." For what is the benefit, what the advancement of knowl- 
 edge, if we attempt to explain the phenomenon of secretion by resort- 
 ing to the undefinable and uncomprehended terms or phrases 
 "vitality," "organic forces," "t'z'j vitae,'^ ^^ vis animae," and the like ? 
 Is it not a subterfuge approximating in absurdity to that of the early 
 natural philosophers, who, having declared that " Nature abhors a 
 vacuum," were compelled to draw the inference, and assert accord- 
 ingly, that, " although Nature abhors a vacuum, yet she does not 
 abhor a vacuum above the height of thirty-two feet." 
 
 These reflections have been suggested by the nature of the subject 
 about to engage our attention. It is a fact long known to physiol- 
 ogists (but of which a very large proportion of the community 
 appears to be ignorant) that there are persons who, although their 
 organs of vision are apparently perfect m every respect appreciable 
 to the senses, do not possess the power of an accurate discrimination 
 of colors. To these persons, colors appear identical which to others 
 are nearly as opposite as white and black. Red and green, suffi- 
 ciently dissimilar to ordinary perceptions, almost invariably appear to 
 them to be alike ; while in respect to most of the other colors, primary 
 or secondary, they are involved, to a greater or less extent, in the 
 same difficulty. 
 
 So far as my own researches have extended, here are all the cases 
 of this peculiar physiological trait that have been published : — 
 
 I. Mr. Harris, of Allonsby, England (Cumberland). — Black and 
 white were the only colors of which he had an accurate perception, 
 and he could distinguish between red cherries and the surrounding 
 leaves by their form alone. He had two brothers with the same 
 
344 BRITISH CASES OF COLOR-BLINDNESS 
 
 defect, one of whom always mistook orange for grass green, and light 
 green for yellow. (Case described in Philosophical Transactions 
 for 1777, p. 260,) 
 
 2. Scott, — He mistook pink for pale blue, and red for green. 
 His father and a maternal uncle, one of his sisters, and two of his 
 sons had the same defect. (Related by himself in Philosophical 
 Transactions, 1778, p. 613.) 
 
 3. Robert Tucker, of Ashburton, England. — Orange and green 
 were identical to him, so were blue and pink. He could generally 
 discriminate yellow, but mistook red for brown, and blue or violet for 
 purple. (Transactions of Phrenological Society, p. 209.) 
 
 4. J. B., a tailor of Plymouth, England. — The solar spectrum ap- 
 peared to him as if composed of the two colors, yellow and blue. 
 Indigo and Prussian blue looked Uke black, purple like a modifica- 
 tion of blue, dark green like brown, and light green like a pale 
 orange. He once patched the elbow of a blue coat with crimson, 
 and at another time repaired a garment with crimson silk, supposing 
 it to be black. Yellow, white, and gray were the only colors he 
 could distinguish with certainty. (Transactions Philosophical 
 Society of Edinburgh, vol. x. p. 253.) 
 
 5. DuGALD Stewart, the mental philosopher, could not distin- 
 guish the scarlet fruit of the Siberian crab from its leaves. 
 
 6. Dr. Dalton, the eminent English chemist, and his brother. — 
 In the solar spectrum he can perceive yellow and blue, the red being 
 "scarcely visible," and the other colors unperceived. Blue and pink 
 are alike to him by daylight, (Memoirs of the Literary and Philo- 
 sophical Society of Manchester, vol. v. p. 28.) 
 
 7. Mr. Troughton, an eminent optician of London. — The whole 
 solar spectrum appeared to him of but two colors, yellow and blue, 
 all the least refrangible rays being of the former tint and the most 
 refrangible of the latter. (Brewster's Optics, American edition, 
 p. 260.) 
 
 8. Another man seen by Sir David Brewster, who could perceive 
 only yellow and blue in the spectrum. {Ibid.) 
 
 9. A man in the British navy of whom it is said that he purchased 
 a blue " uniform " coat, with vest, and red breeches to match. He 
 had one brother similarly affected, (Dr, NichoU in Medico-chi- 
 rurgical Transactions of London, vol. vii.) 
 
 ID. A grand-nephew of the gentleman last mentioned. — He con- 
 
i84S 345 
 
 founded green with red, and called light red and pink blue. Paper 
 stained with radish-root he called "blue," and spoke of green 
 spectacles as " red glasses." Indeed, it appeared that light yellow 
 was the only color that he could accurately distinguish. 
 
 11. Another gentleman, whose case is published by Dr. Nicholl. — 
 In his own words he says : " My eyes are gray with a yellow tinge 
 around the pupil. The color I am most at a loss with is green, and 
 in attempting to distinguish it from red it is merely guess-work. 
 Scarlet, in most cases, I can distinguish ; but a dark bottle-green I 
 could not, with any certainty, tell from brown. Light yellow I know ; 
 but a dark yellow I might confound with light brown, though in 
 most cases I think I should know them from red. All the shades of 
 light red, pink, purple, etc., I call light blue ; but dark blue and 
 black I think I know with certainty. Though I see different shades 
 in looking at the rainbow, I should say it is a mixture of yellow and 
 blue, yellow in the centre and blue towards the edges. I have red 
 crimson curtains in the windows of my bed-room, which appear red 
 to me by candle-light and blue by daylight. The grass in full verdure 
 appears to me w^hat other people call red ; and the fruit on trees, 
 when red, I cannot distinguish from the leaves unless, when I am 
 near it, the more from the difference of shape than color. A cucum- 
 ber and a boiled lobster I should call the same color, making allow- 
 ance for the difference of shade to be found in both ; and a leek, in 
 luxuriance of growth, is to me more like a stick of red sealing-wax 
 than anything I can compare it with." (Medico-chirurgical Trans- 
 actions, vol. ix. p. 359.) 
 
 (This man's eyes, when fatigued by looking at red and green spots 
 on a white ground, became much affected ; but no incidental color 
 made its appearance.) 
 
 12. James Milne. — (One of the three brothers of No. 15.) See 
 below. (Transactions Phrenological Society, p. 222.) 
 
 13. Mr. C. — No details. {Glasgow Medical Journal, vol. ii. p. 15.) 
 
 14. Two cases detailed by Dr. Elliotson, In one of them the 
 rainbow appeared as a band of a brighter color than the rest of the 
 sky, but a little darker at one side than the other, and gradually 
 shaded off between the two sides. {American Jourjial Medical Sci- 
 ences, vol. xxiii. p. 446.) 
 
 15. Three brothers and a cousin mentioned in G. Combe's " System 
 of Phrenology " and in the Edinburgh Transactions of the Phreno- 
 
346 AMERICAN CASES OF COLOR-BLINDNESS 
 
 logical Society. They inherited color-blindness from their maternal 
 grandfather, there being none of the intermediate generation who had 
 the same peculiarity. 
 
 16. M. M, — A case recently published by M. Boys de Loury. 
 He was a draper, but obliged to give up his business on account of 
 the defect. The irides of his eyes were light blue, confounded 
 towards the centre with yellow spots. He thought that vermilion, 
 scarlet, and the color produced by madder were identical. Rose- 
 color appeared to be a dirty white, and carmine a deep blue or 
 violet. {Aimales Medico-psychologiques^ January, 1844.) 
 
 17. A boy, mentioned by Dr. Szokalski, who always confounded 
 blue and red. (Ibid.) 
 
 18. Mary Bishop. — A most interesting case, in which the defect 
 was temporary, being induced by (or at least accompanying) partial 
 amaurosis. {America?i Journal Medical Sciences, vol, xxvi. p. 277.) 
 
 Dr. Hays remarks that several cases of this natural defect have 
 come under his notice. He is the editor of th^ Journal. 
 
 These eighteen are all the cases mentioned in the scientific works 
 which I have consulted. I proceed to notice several others within 
 my personal knowledge, some of them in my own family. The 
 initials are not in all cases the true ones. 
 
 1. John Adams, a preceptor of Leicester Academy. — One even- 
 ing during the period when fashion required a bow of ribbon, cor- 
 responding in color with the garment, upon the lower extremity of 
 each side of the pantaloons, this gentleman was engaged for an 
 evening party. The tailor was remiss, the new garment did not 
 arrive in season, and the preceptor called upon the knight of the 
 shears. It was complete with the exception of the ornament. The 
 owner took them, purchased some ribbon on the way home, and 
 with deft fingers arranged the bows and fastened them with pins in 
 their destined situation. His duty was now fulfilled, his mind at 
 rest. The fastidious spirit of fashion was appeased, the shade of 
 Beau Nash honored, and the dictum of the living Brummell obeyed. 
 What, then, should prevent the most worthy preceptor from figuring 
 (as he did) at the soiree in a pair of light-blue pantaloons, decorated, 
 d la mode de la Legion d'Honneur, with bows most magnificent in 
 size and glaringly red in their color ? 
 
 2. C. D. — He confounds green, red, and brown. A young man, 
 color-blind, purchased a piece of light-blue cassimere for a pair of 
 
i845 347 
 
 pantaloons, and a skein of pink silk with which to make them. Hav- 
 ing carried these to a " tailoress " (the wife of C. D.), she opened 
 them, and, perceiving the incongruity, asked the young man if he 
 could not procure silk more nearly to match the cassimere. Some- 
 what astonished, he took up the silk, scrutinized it and the cloth, 
 and, throwing it down upon the latter with an air of the most perfect 
 confidence and assurance, exclaimed, "What could be a nearer 
 match ? " The tailoress, together with her husband, C. D. (who was 
 present), thereupon enjoyed a hearty laugh at the expense of her 
 employer. In a few days, however, an incident occurred which 
 proved that C. D. himself could distinguish colors hardly better than 
 the young man. He spoke of " a little red dog," but the canine race 
 in the nineteenth century rarely rejoice in a roseate or carmine hue. 
 It was no more red than the pink silk was blue. The purchaser 
 now enjoyed his turn of risibility. 
 
 3. Z. G. — He confounded red and green. 
 
 4. R. M. had the same peculiarity as Z. G. He was for many 
 years a minister in the Society of Friends, and dressed in drab 
 throughout, except his cravat, which was invariably of a brownish 
 red, the " bandanna " so much used in days gone by. He believed 
 it to correspond with his other garments. 
 
 5. J. M., a young man of seventeen years. — I was passing a 
 few weeks during the early summer in the country ; and this young 
 man, together with his sister, stopped at the same place as myself. 
 I one day accompanied him upon a long ramble through the neigh- 
 boring fields and woods. At length, upon arriving at a partial open- 
 ing in an otherwise dense forest, we found a portion of the ground 
 most abundantly covered with the wintergreen, or checkerberry, the 
 Gaultheria prociimbeyis of the botanists. Being fatigued, we sat down 
 in the midst of it, where the berries were as numerous as the leaves, 
 peering out from beneath them by tens of thousands, and presenting 
 their round and rosy cheeks to the blessed light. One would have 
 believed that no person, unless he were blind or marvellously near- 
 sighted, could stand even at the distance of ten feet and direct his 
 eyes towards this prolific bed without beholding them in myriads. 
 But, as I soon discovered, my companion was obhged either to place 
 his head very near the ground or to take hold of the leaves with one 
 hand and feel under them with the other to procure the berries, yet 
 his eyes were not myopic. Immediately suspecting that an inability 
 
348 AMERICAN CASES OF COLOR-BLINDNESS 
 
 to distinguish colors was the cause of his difficulty, I commenced a 
 conversation with him upon the subject of colors in general, without 
 alluding to my suspicion. I then picked some of the green and some 
 of the red leaves of the Gaultheria, and with these, the berries, grass, 
 and other leaves, made a series of comparisons and contrasts, suffi- 
 ciently apparent to ordinary vision, but they were all alike in color 
 to my companion. Upon returning to the house, and when in the 
 presence of his sister, I placed a bright scarlet bandanna handker- 
 chief upon a green table-cover, and asked him the difference of the 
 two. He asserted most positively that there was no difference, to 
 the utter astonishment of his sister ; for neither he nor any of his 
 family had ever suspected the defect. 
 
 6. U. R. — At the age of twenty-five he first found that he could 
 not distinguish colors, thinking a bright scarlet tape exactly to cor- 
 respond with a steel-blue ruler. 
 
 7. Mrs. A. — When merino shawls with broad, flowered borders 
 were in fashion, a merchant in the country purchased a lot which 
 were soon disposed of, with the exception of one. The border of 
 this was so pale, dingy, and ugly that it remained on hand a long 
 time. The merchant had begun to suspect that he should be com- 
 pelled to place the amount of its cost in the account of profit and 
 loss, when Mrs. A. appeared as a customer. She was fairly charmed 
 with the beauty of the border, thought it as handsome as any she 
 ever saw, and purchased the shawl at its full price. 
 
 8. J. W., a man thirty-five years of age. Green, red, and brown 
 are said to appear alike to him. 
 
 9. Mr. A. — A young man in the State of New York. 
 
 10. A gentleman in the city of New York. 
 
 As will appear from an inspection of the first series of cases, the 
 inability to distinguish colors prevails in certain families, and appears 
 to be hereditary. Mr. Harris had two brothers defective like himself, 
 but the vision of his parents and of two other brothers and sisters 
 was normal. Scott's father and maternal uncle, one sister, and two 
 of her sons had the defect ; while another sister and his own two sons 
 were free from it. Tucker's maternal grandfather and a brother of 
 Dr. Dalton had the same defect. In one of Nicholl's cases the 
 mother and father and his four sisters were free from it, but his 
 mother's father had it. This last had two brothers and one sister. 
 One brother had the defect, the others not. In the other case 
 
1845 349 
 
 several of the family were similarly affected. Dr. Hays says, 
 " We know of a family in this country similarly circumstanced."* Dr. 
 Elliotson, in his " System of Physiology," remarks that in families 
 in which the peculiarity is hereditary it sometimes overleaps one 
 generation. This was the fact in one of the cases related by 
 Dr. NichoU, as well as in that of Robert Tucker. Another example 
 will be presented hereafter. 
 
 In none of the cases hitherto published do we find the peculiarity 
 prevailing to so great an extent (in any family) as it does among my 
 own kindred. My maternal grandfather and two of his brothers 
 were characterized by it, and among his descendants there are seven- 
 teen persons in whom it is found. I have not extended my observa- 
 tions among the collateral branches of the family, but have heard of 
 one individual in one of them who was similarly affected. 
 
 Nothing is known of the first of five generations in regard to 
 color-blindness. In the second, of a family consisting of seven 
 brothers and eight sisters, three of the brothers, one of whom was 
 my grandfather, had the defect in question. In the third generation 
 (the children of this grandfather), three brothers and six sisters, 
 there was no trace of the defect. This forms the instance alluded 
 to above, in which the peculiarity overleaped one generation. In 
 the fourth generation the first family is composed of five brothers 
 and four sisters, and two brothers have the defect. In the second 
 there was but one child, a daughter, whose vision was normal. In 
 the third there are seven brothers, of whom four have the defect ; 
 in the fifth, seven sisters and three brothers, in all of whom the 
 vision is perfect in this respect ; in the sixth, four brothers and five 
 sisters, of whom two brothers and two sisters have the defect ; in 
 the seventh, two brothers and three sisters, both of the former hav- 
 ing the defect. In the eighth there was no issue, and in the ninth 
 there are two sisters, both of them able to appreciate colors. 
 Thus, of twenty-four males and twenty-eight females, a total of fifty- 
 two persons, in the fourth generation the peculiarity is found in 
 thirteen males and two females, fifteen in all, or about three-tenths 
 of the whole number. Seventeen of the persons in this generation 
 are married, and the whole number of their children is fifty-three. 
 Many of them are very young, some of them not living ; and, as the 
 defective perception has been detected in but two of the families, 
 
 * American Journal Medical Sciences, vol. xxvi. p. 283. 
 
35© AMERICAN CASES OF COLOR-BLINDNESS 
 
 those alone are placed in the chart as the fifth generation. In one 
 of these families, consisting of three brothers and three sisters, one 
 of the brothers has the defect ; and in the other, a male, an only 
 child, is similarly affected. 
 
 Of the twenty individuals marked as having the peculiarity, but 
 fifteen are now living, and these so widely scattered that it has been 
 impossible for me to make anything like a series of similar observa- 
 tions in their several cases. I believe, however, I am warranted in 
 saying that in every instance there was an inability to distinguish 
 between red and green, — two colors almost as dissimilar, to ordi- 
 nary vision, as black and white. Instances of this are mentioned in 
 each of the first two series of cases given above, and I know many 
 anecdotes illustrating the same in the third series. 
 
 Several young men, among whom was one who could not distin- 
 guish colors, were conversing upon the defect, when the latter was 
 asked if he could tell the color of a neighboring corn-barn. " Oh, 
 that," said he, " is evidently red." The man for once was right, 
 although it is probable that he was aware of the fact that such build- 
 ings are never painted green in that section of the country ; and he 
 would have come off well, had he not attempted to demonstrate his 
 position even beyond a necessary Q. E. D. "It is evidently red," 
 said he ; " but I'll tell you what it resembles : it looks precisely the 
 color of yonder pine-tree." Rich and variegated as are the au- 
 tumnal forests of America, yet neither native author nor sage and 
 sagacious traveller from the Old World has ever given them credit for 
 a rubicund fir-tree. And, doubtless, the stern and sturdy McGregors, 
 while singing to the honor and blessing of the "evergreen pine," the 
 emblematic " saint " of Clan Alpine, never dreamed of the day in 
 which its verdant hue would be pronounced identical with that of 
 a granary smeared with Spanish brown. 
 
 A child ran into the room of his grandmother, where scraps of 
 variously colored paper were lying upon the floor. " Oh," exclaimed 
 he, in childish joy, "here's some red paper," and immediately col- 
 lected all the pieces of green. When he became old enough to wield 
 a pencil, he manifested some skill in drawing; but the yellow bears, 
 and the black birds of paradise, and the green men, and the ladies 
 with green cheeks, red eyes, and blue hair, that were brought into 
 existence by his truly original genius, would have astonished Paul 
 Potter, confounded Correggio, and made Titian, Guido, and Raphael 
 
i84S 351 
 
 believe they had mistaken their calling. Such specimens of human- 
 ity as emanated from his pencil would have ruined the glorious 
 dream of the youthful Michel Angelo Buonarotti. 
 
 Another boy, when picking or attempting to pick some straw- 
 berries, asked of his companion the best method of ascertaining if 
 the berries were ripe, adding that he " always took hold of each 
 h&cx^, pinched \\., and, if it were soft, picked it," therefrom supposing 
 it to be ripe. 
 
 A third experienced the same difficulty in picking strawberries, 
 the berries of the Gaultheria, etc. ; and the consequent want of suc- 
 cess in his berrying expeditions was the source of much youthful 
 affliction. In later years he purchased a sleigh which was painted 
 dark green on the outside and a bright vermilion red within. After 
 it had been in use several., years, some incidental allusion was made 
 to its colors, when he remarked that he had never suspected that it 
 was not of the same color throughout. 
 
 To many of those who have this anomaly of vision it appears that 
 red, green, brown, and even drab, appear identical, and look to them 
 nearly of the same hue as a dingy brown or mud-color does to those 
 whose perception of coloring is accurate. 
 
 A young gentleman of social tastes and habits could never detect 
 beauty in a lady having one of the most important elements of that 
 characteristic, — rosy cheeks. The rouge of the toilet and the carna- 
 tion redolent of ruddy health were, to his warped optics, mere daubs 
 of muddy brown. 
 
 An elderly man who lived in the country was called on by some 
 neighbors who were "breaking out" the roads after a violent snow- 
 storm. Being told that an ox had hurt his foot, and was bleeding 
 profusely, he followed the track where were thousands of bright 
 scarlet spots on the white snow. Then he told his neighbors they 
 were mistaken, the spots were nothing but traces of mud, thrown up 
 from the ground beneath. 
 
 One of the persons mentioned in my list of ten (J. W. or J. M.) 
 was the poet Whittier, to whom I shall again allude. He was visit- 
 ing an acquaintance of local reputation as an amateur horticulturist, 
 and upon the centre-table stood a vase of the most choicely selected 
 dahlias. Among them was one larger and more perfect than the 
 rest, its color white, but the borders of its petals, like the clouds of 
 an American sunset, tipped with a gorgeous red, — a magnificent 
 
352 
 
 WHITTIER A COLOR-BLIND 
 
 flower, at the acme of bloom and coloring. Mr. Whittier's attention 
 being called to the bouquet, he looked rather indifferently (for a 
 poet, whose genius seems allied to flowers), thought the dahlias very 
 well, — indeed, some of them were " quite pretty." Then, selecting 
 the flower described, he remarked that it would be " very pretty, 
 but the edges of the petals looked as if it had been frost-bitten or 
 dropped in the mud." He says that, before knowing that his power 
 of perceiving colors was imperfect, he always wondered that people 
 should talk of "glorious sunsets" or "beautiful sunsets"; for he 
 could detect neither beauty nor glory in them. Moreover, that 
 model of perfect beauty, the rainbow, whose delicate tints. 
 
 Shade unperceived, so softening into shade, 
 
 delight the ordinary eye, appears to Whittier but different shades 
 of one color, and that a dingy brown. The prismatic arch, in this 
 poet's eye, degenerates into a " Charles's wain " of mud. Yet from 
 his writings no evidence of this peculiarity of vision can be detected. 
 The poet throws his gossamer veil of ideality before the vision of 
 the vian, converting his sombre world into a paradise like that of 
 the Persian. 
 
 As not quite alien to our subject, it may be mentioned that Whit- 
 tier is deficient in another faculty which, at first view, would seem to 
 be necessary to the true poet. Although he has music in his soul, 
 yet he has not "a musical ear." He cannot distinguish one tune or 
 air from another ; yet his poetry is not deficient in perfect cadence, 
 harmony, and rhythm. This apparently inconsistent union of high 
 poetical genius with an inability to distinguish color or tune must 
 be considered a most wonderful psychological phenomenon. 
 
 Another gentleman of my acquaintance in whom this peculiarity 
 exists is a well-known professor in one of the prominent medical 
 schools of the United States. His poetical talents are such that, 
 had he immolated to them the truths of natural science, he might 
 undoubtedly have gained a reputation no less extensive and no less 
 amply deserved than that of the author just mentioned. In him, 
 also, the inability to appreciate musical sounds is coexistent with 
 that to distinguish colors. 
 
 In an extract from a letter of my brother he states that his ear 
 was similarly defective, and it may be asserted of the whole family 
 that they are no less generally characterized by this peculiarity of 
 
1^45 353 
 
 organization than for color-blindness. In some of the branches, 
 however, where there was a high degree of musical talent inherited 
 frotn the other side, several of the individuals have it ; and among 
 them are two who cannot distinguish colors, yet have a most delicate 
 "musical ear," and are remarkably quick at "catching a tune." 
 
 In no work that I have consulted is the alliance or simultaneous 
 existence of these two defects mentioned. Other examples in less 
 distinguished persons occur to me. Defective vision being under 
 discussion at a social party where I was, a young man present 
 selected two figures in the carpet which to him appeared precisely 
 aUke. One of them was, in fact, composed of different shades of 
 green, the other of similar shades of brown, or "butternut" color. 
 Another gentleman purchased a piece of red flannel, supposing it to 
 be brown ; and that there is identity of resemblance, in some in- 
 stances, between red, green, and drab, has been shown by the anec- 
 dote of the Quaker minister. An elderly man, also a Quaker, 
 accustomed to dress in drab, being in want of a new coat, selected 
 cloth that accorded with his taste, but, when the draper was about 
 to cut it off, found that it was marked "green." Again, having a 
 drab overcoat in the hands of his tailor, he purchased a green lining 
 to match it. A brother of this last-mentioned Friend bought drab 
 cloth for a coat and a red material for lining, supposing them to be 
 the same color. 
 
 A man with this defect kept a shop in the country, where a lady 
 one day asked for some " quaUty " binding. Several pieces were 
 then lying in view on the shelves. His customer was asked which 
 she would have. "The red." "Well, which.?" She answered as 
 before, " The red." A third time was his question put, in the hope 
 that some specification other than that of color would be given. The 
 customer, beginning to think herself trifled with, cut him short with, 
 " Why, you fool, the red." The man extricated himself by taking 
 down all the colors (as he ought at first to have done) and allowing 
 her to select. 
 
 A boy of fourteen, having to speak of a domestic fowl upon his 
 father's farm, described her as "the yellow hen with a blue tail." In 
 after years, being rallied on this combination of colors, he was some- 
 what piqued, and declared, with much positiveness, " If the tail was 
 not blue, it was pink." Several of my acquaintance having this 
 peculiarity believe that they have improved by practice. Some main- 
 
354 CASE OF W. B. EARLE 
 
 tain stoutly that they can perceive colors as accurately as anybody ; 
 and I have known one or two to declare, like some of the insane, 
 that they are right, and the rest of us wrong. There is thus a 
 delicacy (very unphilosophical, to be sure) at having the defect 
 alluded to ; and some are particularly sensitive when brought to 
 judge of matters of color, lest they expose themselves, like the shop- 
 keeper. 
 
 The Case of Dr. EarWs Brother. 
 
 I have found illustrations of this defect in one of my brothers (it 
 exists in two). From notes which I took of his case several years 
 since, I extract the following : — 
 
 Red and green appear ahke to him. So do green, brown, and olive ; 
 pink, violet, and pale blue ; blue and lilac ; and light green and drab. 
 He perceives but three colors, yellow, orange, and blue, in the rain- 
 bow. The yellow predominates, the blue is very faint. The orange 
 and yellow are but different shades of the same color, so that, in 
 reality, it is but the yellow and blue that he detects in the prismatic 
 arch. He can see but little difference between the summer and the 
 autumnal foliage of the forests. For many years he has cultivated 
 with much assiduity the power of detecting colors, and evidently im- 
 proved therein. These extracts are from a letter received from him 
 a few days since : — 
 
 . " The general appearance of the rainbow to me is that of an object 
 striped with three colors, gradually blended into each other, and 
 themselves varying in their shades. I am unable to say whether, 
 with a good prism, I could, using care, distinguish and mark the 
 seven distinct colors produced by it. 
 
 " As a general rule, however, it seems true that the difference 
 between me and others is more a want, on my part, of a quick and 
 vivid perception of distinctions than an absolute inability to discern 
 them ; for I rarely find two colors which appear different to others, if 
 placed in juxtaposition, without my being able to perceive that they 
 differ. Yet the impression upon my mind is so imperfect that, on 
 seeing them again, at least in some cases, I might be unable to give 
 their respective names correctly. In some few instances, where 
 colors are really different, perhaps I might not discern that difference 
 if they were placed side by side. This would be where the ground 
 color of both was the same, but one of them slightly tinged with red, 
 
i845 355 
 
 such as pale blue and lilac of about equal depth of color, or deep 
 blue and violet. 
 
 " I can always distinguish correctly a full blue, a scarlet, or a yellow, 
 and generally orange also, if near my eyes and examined with care. 
 / ca7i discern yellow and blue of moderate depth at a great distance. 
 But at any considerable distance I might ?iot know whether a red was 
 really a red or a deep greeji, brown, or olive. I cannot, in general, 
 know whether some olive cloths are really olive or brown ; but there 
 are some browns that I can be sure of as being of that color. 
 
 " I cannot see red apples or red cherries or red strawberries at 
 any considerable distance, so as to distinguish them from the foliage ; 
 or, where I do distinguish them, it is not so clearly as I see the green 
 ones. Red, I think, appears brighter and plainer to me by candle- 
 light than in the day. So does blue, but yellow more faint than by 
 daylight. I sometimes have mistaken a light green for a drab. The 
 red which has some mixture of yellow is more vivid to my eyes : that 
 which is crimson, or nearly so, resembles blue to some degree. Of 
 the three principal colors, yellow is most distinct. All colors are 
 agreeable to me, though I suspect red is less so than to people in 
 general. Those red flowers which have a tinge either of yellow or 
 blue are, I think, more pleasing than those which are of a pure red. 
 
 " In the vast variety of compound colors, where there is a slight 
 predominance of the blue over the red, but the degree of illumination 
 equal, I am, in general, unable to tell whether the blue or red tinge 
 predominates, and, of course, am liable to miscall the names. I find, 
 however, that my perception of shades has improved by practice, as 
 it has of musical notes, in which I was deficient ; and I am disposed 
 to think that, with application, I might perfect myself so as to be 
 rarely mistaken." 
 
 That he has improved to some extent I have not the least doubt; 
 but the perfection which he believes attainable is, probably, altogether 
 Utopian. Some years since, at a time when he was more positive 
 than at present (for years have, as usual, tempered assurance in 
 doubtful matters of philosophy) that he had learned to distinguish 
 colors, he was conversing upon the subject in company, and asserted 
 his belief that he could discriminate between red and green. At that 
 moment a child with green morocco shoes entered the room. " If 
 that be true," said one of the guests, " pray tell us the color of that 
 child's shoes." "Pooh!" said he: "those are evidently red.^'' 
 
3S6 
 
 OTHER CASES 
 
 A case similar to the last is this : Two young men, both unable 
 to distinguish colors, were requested, by the sister of one of them, to 
 purchase a skein of green sewing-silk ; 'and, fearing that they might 
 forget or mistake the color, she directed their attention to the 
 morocco facing of the cushions to their gig as being precisely the 
 shade she wanted. On their way to the city the question of the 
 color of the silk became the subject of serious and deliberate debate; 
 and it was decided that the sister had been greatly mistaken in say- 
 ing that the morocco of the cushion was green. Once in the city, 
 they went — mutual mentors — " a-shopping." One of them asked 
 for some " green sewing-silk," hoping that a package of that color 
 alone would be handed down. Alas for the pleasures of hope ! A 
 large package, flaunting as many colors as the coat of Joseph, was 
 displayed upon the counter. The customers, unwilling to expose 
 their defect, were in a quandary. At this critical juncture some 
 blessed incident directed the attention of the clerk another way. 
 One of them " took time by the forelock," seized a skein which he 
 supposed to be green, and stuffed it, unwrapped and " all in a muss," 
 into his pocket. When the clerk returned, " I have taken a skein," 
 said the young man : " what is the price ? " " Was it a large skein or 
 a small one ? " inquired the clerk. The young man began to think 
 that the silk was no xA.riadne's thread, since it involved him more 
 deeply in difficulties instead of showing him the way out. Deter- 
 mined not to withdraw it from his pocket, since, for all he knew, it 
 might be red, brown, drab, or almost any color, he quietly answered 
 " A large one," and paid the increased price accordingly. Fortu- 
 nately, when they returned, the silk proved to be green. 
 
 These cases are mostly given without the true names. I may 
 add, however, that my grandfather, William Buffum, of Smithfield, 
 R.I., had this defect, and that the father of my uncle Thomas Buf- 
 fum 's wife could not distinguish colors, so that both grandfathers of 
 my cousins Horace, Peleg, John, etc., Buffum, were in this predica- 
 ment. In June, 1846, while Dr. D. T, Brown, of the Utica Asylum 
 for the Insane, and Dr. Rufus Woodward, of the Worcester Hospital, 
 were with me in the garden of the Bloomingdale Asylum, picking 
 strawberries, I detected this defect in Dr. Brown. Melatiah Green, 
 a brother of Dr. John Green, of Worcester, cannot well distinguish 
 colors. The cases of my own brothers and of Dr. Elisha Bartlett, a 
 professor in Dartmouth College, have been cited above. 
 
i84S 357 
 
 Causes of CoIoi--b!i?idness. 
 
 The question may now be asked, What is the cause of this defect 
 in the discrimination of color ? I might answer, in the words of the 
 moral poet : — 
 
 Presumptuous man ! the reason wouldst thou find 
 Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind ? 
 First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 
 Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less. 
 
 There are those who maintain that there is no standard for the 
 perception of colors, no criterion by which, in comparing the powers 
 of one individual with those of another, we may say one is right and 
 another wrong. " There is among mankind," say they, " as great a 
 diversity of perception in regard to colors as there is of mental 
 capacity. Furthermore, we have no evidence that, in any two 
 individuals whose vision is called perfect, the impression of any 
 color is identical : that which is green to the ' mind's eye ' of one 
 may be red to that of another, and so of any two colors." 
 
 Strictly speaking, the position here advanced is true. No person 
 can describe the impressions received by the mind through the or- 
 gans of vision: no one can "give color to an idea." The questions 
 involved can never be positively determined in the present state of 
 human knowledge and with our present means of observation and in- 
 vestigation. They are beyond the reach of an exj>erimentum cruets. 
 No true philosopher, however, would resort to an argument of this 
 kind. It is specious, but unsound ; and he who would admit it must 
 inevitably become involved in a difficulty with reference to every de- 
 partment of philosophy, from which he could hardly extricate himself 
 without adopting the alleged doctrine of Bishop Berkeley, that " all 
 matter is but ideal." 
 
 Certain rays of light, impinging upon the retina, produce an effect 
 which, transmitted to the sensorium (whether modified or not we 
 cannot tell in its passage through the optic nerve), give an impres- 
 sion or perception of color which the mass of mankind are consen- 
 taneous in calling red. As the anatomical structure and the func- 
 tions concerned in this process are, if normal, identical in different 
 individuals, it is rational to infer that the results will be similar, to 
 say nothing of the many other arguments in favor of their being so. 
 
358 THEORIES OF COLOR-BLINDNESS 
 
 The several theories which have been promulgated as explanatory 
 of the phenomenon in question may be divided into two classes : — 
 
 1. Those which place the cause of the defect in the apparatus of 
 vision. 
 
 2. Those which suppose it to be in the organ of perception. 
 
 I. (a) Dr. Dalton, in attempting to account for the defect as exist- 
 ing in himself, suggests that the vitreous humor of the eye is tinged 
 with blue and absorbs all the rays of red light. But, as was accu- 
 rately remarked by Dr. Hays, "this is a mere conjecture, which 
 is not confirmed by the most minute examination of the eye, and 
 does not even explain all the phenomena." 
 
 {b) Dr. Young attributes the defect to a want or a paralysis of 
 those fibres of the retina whose office is the perception of red light. 
 The basis of this theory is the mere hypothesis of an anatomical 
 defect or a pathological condition of which there is no proof ; and, 
 as is also observed by Dr. Hays, it " does not embrace all the de- 
 grees of the defect." 
 
 {c) Sir David Brewster first endeavored to explain the phenome- 
 non by supposing that the eye is insensible to the rays of light at 
 one (the most refracted) extreme of the spectrum, analogous to the 
 ear, which in some persons, as demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston, is not 
 affected by the notes at one extremity of the musical scale. This 
 theory would account for but a small part of the phenomena ob- 
 served in these cases. He subsequently promulgated another, less 
 satisfactory in our apprehension, than the foregoing, inasmuch as 
 (so far as I can comprehend it) it leaves off where it begins, mak- 
 ing the reason of the inability to distinguish colors the " blindness to 
 red light." 
 
 {d) Mr. Wardrop supposes the defect to arise from a greater sus- 
 ceptibility of the retina to the influence of the blue and yellow rays, 
 not so much, it would seem, from an abnormal condition of the 
 retina itself as from the refractive power of the humors by which 
 these rays are brought to a focus more perfectly than the others 
 upon this nervous tissue. 
 
 (e) M. Boys de Loury believes the defect a consequence of an 
 abnormal structure of the retina or the optic nerve, placing those 
 organs in a condition similar to atrophy. 
 
 Of all the foregoing theories, there is no one to which it may not 
 be objected either that it is merely hypothetical and entirely unsup- 
 
i845 359 
 
 ported by proofs or that it does not include all varieties of the 
 defect. Hence none is at all satisfactory. We now proceed to 
 those of the second class. 
 
 2 (a). "I am inclined to suspect," says Dugald Stewart, in the 
 third chapter of his " Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 
 Mind," " that the greater number of the instances of the supposed 
 defects of sight ought to be rather ascribed to a defect in the power 
 of conception, probably in consequence of some early habit of inat- 
 tention." 
 
 (In the foregoing letter from my brother a similar idea is advanced.) 
 
 (J)). "We have examined with some attention," says Sir John 
 W. F. Herschel, " a very eminent optician, whose eyes (or rather eye, 
 he having lost the sight of one by accident) have this peculiarity, 
 and have satisfied ourselves, contrary to received opinion, that all 
 the prismatic rays have the power of exciting and affecting them 
 with the sensation of light, and producing distinct vision, so that the 
 defect arises from no insensibility of the retina to rays of any par- 
 ticular refrangibility nor to any coloring matter in the humors of 
 the eye, preventing certain rays from reaching the retina (as has 
 been ingeniously supposed), but from a defect in the sensorium, by 
 which it is rendered incapable of appreciating exactly those differ- 
 ences between rays on which their color depends." Dr. Dunglison, 
 espousing the same doctrine, says, in his " Human Physiology," 
 "The nerve of sight is probably accurately impressed; and the 
 deficiency is in the part of the brain whither the impression is con- 
 veyed, and where perception is effected." 
 
 {c). Dr. Elliotson, a zealous disciple in phrenology of Drs. Gall 
 and Spurzheim, says : "In all the cases in which the point has been 
 examined, the part of the cranium under which, according to Gall, 
 the organ for judging of the harmony of colors is placed, is fiat or 
 depressed. I have seen several of these cases, and in all this was 
 the fact." Dr. Hays remarks that the case of Mary Bishop favors 
 the phrenological theory, "her affection having been the sequel to 
 an attack of cerebral disease." 
 
 (d). In the Annales Medico-psycJiologiques for January, 1844, 
 there is an article which says: "M. Chevreuil has shown that there 
 is a harmony and a system of laws in colors as well as in sounds ; 
 that there are false colors, as there are false notes, which shock deli- 
 cate natures, and colors which, like certain notes, cannot accompany 
 
360 DEGREES OF COLOR-BLIXDXESS 
 
 each other without profoundly wounding. It is not necessary, then, 
 to regard the incapacity for distinguishing colors as the constant 
 result of an alteration of the retina or the optic nerve, but as being 
 often the effect of a predisposition, natural or acquired." 
 
 The four theories placed in the second class are but modifications 
 of that of the phrenologists. However, there is sufficient difference 
 between them to justify placing them separately. Thus Dr. Elliot- 
 son believes the defect to arise from an insufficient development of 
 the " organ of color," while the theory last mentioned attributes it to 
 the peculiar combination of colors. 
 
 In the interesting report of the case of Mary Bishop, already men- 
 tioned, Dr. Isaac Hays, after an examination of all the detailed 
 cases upon record, arrives at the following conclusions : — 
 
 " I. As a natural defect, inability to distinguish colors may exist 
 in different degrees. 
 
 "2. In the worst degree the individual is able merely to distin- 
 guish shades : the perception of color is entirely absent. 
 
 "3. In the next degree the individual can distinguish only a 
 single color, and that color is always yellow. 
 
 " 4. We may consider as the next degree of this defect where the 
 individual can recognize two colors only, and these seem to be 
 always yellow and blue. This is the most common grade of the 
 defect. 
 
 "5. It seems probable that individuals who are able to recognize 
 accurately the three primitive colors can also distinguish the second- 
 ary ones. But persons whose perception of red is imperfect do not 
 accurately discriminate the secondary colors." 
 
 When Mary Bishop was recovering her power of appreciating 
 colors, she could first distinguish yellow alone, like those under the 
 second degree above mentioned. She soon afterwards became able 
 to perceive blue also, which advanced her to the third degree. 
 While in the latter condition, like those who are naturally affected to 
 the same degree, although she could accurately discriminate yellow 
 and blue, she could not detect green, which is a mixture of the two. 
 
 My observation thus far has revealed nothing that would lead me 
 to doubt the accuracy of these deductions by Dr. Hays. All the 
 cases which I have now for the first time published might be 
 arranged under the foregoing heads, most of them under the fourth. 
 It may be proper to mention in this connection that, in one young 
 
i845 361 
 
 man whose case T have given, the power of discriminating colors ap- 
 pears to be very variable. At times it would seem as if the functions 
 of the "organ of color"- — to use a phrase which presupposes the 
 truth of an undemonstrated theory — were performed with nearly as 
 great a degree of accuracy as in those who can make the most 
 delicate chromatic distinctions, while at others he makes the most 
 absurd mistakes. It was he who first discovered that sui generis 
 specimen in American ornithology (mentioned by neither Wilson, 
 Bonaparte, nor Audubon), the "yellow hen with a blue tail." It is 
 evident that the colors which he usually confounds appear to him by 
 candle-light much more nearly as they do to other people than by 
 daylight, which is equally true in some of my other cases. The 
 explanation of this may probably be found in the fact that our arti- 
 ficial light is much more yellow than that of the sun, and gives to the 
 colors usually unrecognized a certain degree of its own hue, which 
 is perceived by all who have the defect excepting those who come 
 under the "worst degree" of Dr. Hays. Dr. Elliotson remarks that 
 the defect in regard to color is found more frequently among men 
 than women. This is supported by the cases coming within my 
 personal knowledge. They are 31 in number, of which 28, or seven- 
 eighths of all, are of men. In the family of Buffum, represented 
 genealogically, there are 20 persons in whom the defect has existed; 
 and, of these, 18, or nine-tenths, are men. And this disparity 
 becomes greater if the proportion of each sex having the defect or 
 free from it is considered. 
 
 The defect is said to have been observed in both myopic and far- 
 seeing eyes, as well as in those with the focal point at the ordinary 
 distance ; but I recall no near-sighted person among those of my ac- 
 quaintance who have it. 
 
 V. Popular Fallacies in regard to Insanity. 
 
 (Written in 1885.) 
 Although it is impossible to demonstrate it as a fact, yet all the 
 known data bearing upon the subject very clearly lead to the infer- 
 ence that insanity in the United States is increasing, not merely 
 absolutely, in correspondence with the increase of population, but 
 relatively, as compared with the number of inhabitants. Fifty years 
 ago the writers upon the subject placed the ratio of the insane to 
 
362 POPULAR IGNORANCE OF INSANITY 
 
 the whole population in Massachusetts at i in 1,000. In the last 
 national census if is shown that in 18S0 there was i insane person 
 in each 343 of the population of the State. Had the ratio of fifty 
 years ago been derived from a census as carefully taken as that of 
 1880, it might be assumed as a demonstrated proposition that insan- 
 ity had increased nearly threefold within the last half-century. But 
 that first-mentioned ratio was a mere estimate, based upon very im- 
 perfect, insufficient, and, doubtless, often indefinite or inaccurate 
 data, and hence unworthy of reUance as a truthful standard for com- 
 parison. 
 
 But under existing circumstances even the present number of 
 the insane in the Commonwealth do not constitute a class suffi- 
 ciently large to enable the people to become acquainted with their 
 characters, peculiarities, habits, and propensities, both mental and 
 physical, as compared or contrasted with those of that portion of the 
 inhabitants who, by common consent, are regarded as sane. Nearly 
 three-fourths of them are in hospitals, and a large part of the re- 
 maining fourth in almshouses and other places of detention or sur- 
 veillance, where they are withdrawn from general observation. 
 Hence the present generation is probably less acquainted with their 
 characteristics than were the people of seventy-five years ago, before 
 the special institutions for their care had been called into existence, 
 and when they were allowed, to a much larger extent than at present, 
 to associate or to mingle with the general population. As a necessary 
 consequence of this state of things, the public mind is incapable of 
 so far comprehending the nature of mental disorder as to be able to 
 discriminate between the probable and the improbable in relation to 
 the conduct and the language of the insane or even the physical 
 peculiarities which have sometimes been attributed to them. The 
 disorder, — not to say "disease," inasmuch as disease implies the 
 possibility of death, — in its essential nature, and even in its relation 
 to the conduct and the practical ability of those who are afflicted 
 with it, is an ever-abundant and an inexplicable mystery to per- 
 sons who are constantly surrounded by it, and who are consequently 
 better informed than any others in regard to it. How much more 
 so must it be to those who have had little or no opportunity to 
 become acquainted, by personal observation, with its manifesta- 
 tions ! Still clinging to the traditional idea of a madhouse, which, 
 as far back as the time of Hogarth and probably very much farther. 
 
i88s 3^3 
 
 was derived from that class of patients who were the most insane 
 and the most demonstrative in both language and eccentricity or 
 violence of conduct, they couple with it the mistaken though per- 
 haps logical notion that all the insane are so distorted in mind and 
 perverted in body that they constitute a class of beings almost 
 as widely separated from the average of mankind as if they did 
 not belong to the same genus or race. With what faciUty, then, 
 may errors in regard to them find a place in the public mind ! 
 Having little or no positive knowledge of them, fancy, imagination, 
 and the love of the marvellous are left free to supply the place of 
 such knowledge. 
 
 I have been led into this train of reflection by the perusal of some 
 memoranda of popular errors entered in a commonplace book upon 
 my ofifice table, to which I shall give here a passing notice. It is 
 not proposed to enter at large upon the subject, to point out all the 
 contrasts between the popular impressions in regard to the insane 
 and those opinions which are the results of long intercourse with 
 them. Such a course would involve too much time and space. A 
 glance at a few of the most prominent alone can here be permitted. 
 
 Perhaps no one point in the general belief in regard to the in- 
 mates of the institutions for the insane is more widely prevalent than 
 that they are unhappy, wretched, miserable. In reference to a very 
 few and wholly exceptional cases, this is, to a certain extent, true. 
 But farther than that it is untrue. And the same may be said of 
 any class or collection of human beings, wherever situated and in 
 what mental condition soever they may be. It has been my lot to 
 be connected with each of five such institutions sufficiently long to 
 become acquainted with its patients ; and, judging from the experi- 
 ence thus obtained, and writing not thoughtlessly nor hastily, but 
 with all due deliberation, it is my opinion that, if a lasso were 
 thrown around the first four hundred and seventy-six adults who 
 might be met at any time upon the sidewalks of Northampton or 
 any other city, the amount of unhappiness drawn together in its coil 
 would be as great as exists among the four hundred and seventy-six 
 patients to-day, or the same number any other day, within the walls 
 of this Northampton Hospital. I do not forget, but am most free to 
 acknowledge, that the worst wards of a hospital of this kind present 
 a sad spectacle, even to persons familiarized with it, — a very sad 
 spectacle to any one to whom it is an unaccustomed sight. But this 
 
364 THE INSANE OFTEN SUFFER LITTLE 
 
 aspect is the consequence of mental impairment and bodily deterio- 
 ration, and is no evidence of unliappiness on the part of the pa- 
 tients. The observer derives his judgment from his own feelings 
 and emotions, not from the mental and moral condition of the per- 
 sons around him, which, particularly if he be a casual visitor, he 
 cannot accurately know. It is, indeed, true that among the inmates 
 of a hospital one may hear more expressions indicative of unhappi- 
 ness than among the same number of sane persons. The latter are 
 like boilers in which the steam is repressed, subjected to control, 
 and generally used only as dictated by prudence and good judg- 
 ment ; while the former, like the open, boiling pot, permit the gener- 
 ated steam to rise directly to the surface, in bubbles, and immedi- 
 ately pass away. There is a basis of truth for the old saying that 
 the only difference between a sane and an insane man is that the 
 latter speaks what he thinks, while the former does not. It is the 
 same, let it be remembered, in regard to feeling and emotion. The 
 insane permit them, untrammelled, at once to appear in expression : 
 the sane reduce them to restraint and condemn them to conceal- 
 ment, either temporary or perpetual. 
 
 Among the classes of the insane of which the subjects most pain- 
 fully and depressingly impress the inexperienced observer are the 
 melancholiacs, some of whom are continually uttering expressions 
 of self-condemnation for acts or " sins " of either commission or of 
 omission, and not infrequently of both. In language, in tone of 
 speech, in facial expression, and in general appearance, they some- 
 times seem to embody all that goes to make up the sum of the 
 extreme of human mental wretchedness and suffering. And yet, 
 with a no inconsiderable part of these, all this outside show of 
 misery is simply habit, to which anything like real feeling is an 
 utter stranger. No person could long survive the reality of their 
 apparently intense suffering. But their health is not impaired by it. 
 There are some who even thrive upon it. At meals they will stop 
 their meanings and complaints, and pay as ample a compliment as 
 any one to palatable food. At night they will retire, and sleep as 
 sound as the healthy but wearied laborer until morning. But, 
 when the meal is finished and the morning comes, they rise only to 
 return to their habitual utterances of apparent woe. I repeat that 
 all this external show of sorrow is, in many instances, nothing more 
 nor less than a morbid habit, which has become essentially auto- 
 
i885 365 
 
 matic, and is no more the indication of actual and profound affliction 
 than the word " eschec," uttered through a mechanical contrivance 
 by Maelzel's celebrated chess-player, was the indication and evidence 
 of an adequate intellectual comprehension, by that automaton, of the 
 signification of what it uttered. It is from cases like these that the 
 general character of the insane is too often judged. 
 
 It is a frequent remark that to an insane person his delusions are 
 realities. This is undeniably true, so far as his mental impression of 
 the subject, or object, of that delusion, and his belief in it, are con- 
 cerned. But the effect of that delusion upon the conduct and the 
 physical condition of him who has it is often far from being identical 
 with that which must necessarily be produced, could that subjective 
 delusion become an objective reality. The delusion, as a delusion, 
 is a reality ; but it has not the force of a substantive or absolute 
 reality. No proposition in Euclid is more positively demonstrated 
 than is this, by the cases just mentioned. The same holds good with 
 another class, one of which is the subject of the following sketch. 
 
 A female now in the hospital* often tells visitors that she has 
 millions and billions of children " up in the canopy," — an imaginary 
 apartment of the house, — and that persons are constantly engaged 
 in murdering them. This is with her a " fixed idea," a permanent 
 delusion. It had possession of her at the time of her admission in 
 1858, and probably some yrars before, as she was brought from 
 another hospital. Yet this woman is always quiet and gentle, makes 
 no outward show of grief or unhappiness, and never attempts to 
 force or find her way into the presence of her imaginary children. 
 She is a perfect pattern of industry, and has good judgment in her 
 work. For twenty-seven years she has been the best ironer of 
 starched linen in the laundry, and until recently has worked more 
 hours in the year than any other person in the house. It is needless 
 for me to attempt to depict the immediate effect, or the more remote 
 consequences, upon any sane mother who had positive knowledge 
 that her children were being murdered. 
 
 Even raving and destructive maniacs, how much soever their con- 
 dition is to be deplored, are not in themselves generally unhappy, 
 but, on the contrary, in many cases happier than in their normal 
 condition. Their very violence is the reflex of a mental exaltation 
 
 * From 1885 to 1S96 resident in a private family, being one of tlie first of those boarded out in 
 Massachusetts. 
 
366 POPULAR FALLACIES ABOUT INSANITY 
 
 very similar to, if not identical with, that which is produced by in- 
 toxicating drinks, opium, and other narcotic drugs, and the nitrous 
 oxide, or " laughing gas." * I was once very forcibly impressed by 
 a remark of a patient who for many years was subject to paroxysms 
 of the most violent mania, with intervals, sometimes long, of appar- 
 ently perfect mental health. He had just come out of one of these 
 paroxysms when I congratulated him upon his restoration. So far 
 from sympathizing with me in gladness, he looked up, with a very sad 
 expression of countenance, as he replied, " Ah, doctor, that is the 
 happiest part of my life." 
 
 The insane themselves have no special relish for the idea that they 
 are regarded as unhappy or " miserable." As a rule, they repel it. 
 When in charge of the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York, I one 
 day accompanied two ladies through some of the wards in the 
 department for females. One of them met each patient with a cheer- 
 ful smile, had a pleasant or agreeable remark for each, and, in short, 
 carried herself throughout as if she were unconscious that she was 
 not among the guests at a hotel. The other folded her arms, drew 
 down the corners of her mouth, assumed the measured step of a 
 procession, and walked straight forward, looking alternately to the 
 right and to the left as she passed the patients, speaking to no one, 
 but uttering, at intervals as formal and measured as her step, the ex- 
 pressive comment " P-o-o-r t-h-i-n-g-s ! p-o-o-r t-h-i-n-g-s ! " with the 
 solemn tone and continuity of the tolling of a funeral bell. She was 
 little aware that most of the patients were as able as ever to recog- 
 nize and appreciate her peculiar manner ; and doubtless she would 
 have been not only greatly surprised, but annoyed and mortified, 
 could she have heard their comments and criticisms after she left. 
 
 In conversation with a gentleman who called at the Northampton 
 Hospital, and who not infrequently had occasion to travel in some 
 of the Western States, he informed me that upon one of his journeys 
 he heard that no bald person becomes insane ; and, as an illustrative 
 proof of the fact, his informant asserted that in neither of the 
 hospitals for the insane in Michigan was there a bald man or 
 woman to be found among the patients. In reply the gentleman 
 was told that, howsoever it might be in the Peninsula State, it was 
 
 • Some forty years ago a Parisian physician (J. Moreau) published a book, the object of which 
 was to demonstrate the absolute identity of the mental condition in insanity and in dreams with the 
 delirium produced by narcotics and that whicli precedes death caused by heat, by cold, and by depri- 
 vation of food. 
 
i885 367 
 
 very doubtful that the rule was one of universal or of general appli- 
 cation. We would see if it was sustained by the testimony of the 
 Northampton Hospital. We went through the wards, and took a 
 census of twenty-seven patients who were largely bald, to say nothing 
 of a considerable number who had made a beginning in that direction, 
 one who wore a wig, and one who had only a slight fringe of hair, 
 something like a lady's narrow, standing, quilled ruff, so situated that 
 it might require a zoologist or a barber to decide whether it belonged 
 to the head or to the back of the neck. If Michigan wants some 
 specimens of baldness, say forty or fifty, merely for the sake of 
 novelty, Massachusetts will be happy to accommodate her. 
 
 It was reported about forty years ago that blind persons are never 
 subject to attacks of insanity. Although then in possession of 
 sufficient evidence of untruthfulness in the assertion, yet, as it was 
 a point of some interest, I made it a subject of inquiry at a consider- 
 able number of German institutions which I soon afterwards had 
 occasion to visit. Several of them either then had or previously had 
 patients who had lost their sight. In some instances it was lost be- 
 fore the invasion of the mental disorder, in others afterwards. Five 
 blind persons, three of whom were men and two women, have been 
 inmates of this hospital within the last twenty years. As at the 
 German institutions, in some of the cases, the blindness preceded 
 the insanity, and in others followed it. It is nol: impossible that we 
 may hereafter hear that deaf-mutes are exempt from the afifliction of 
 mental alienation. In order to forestall any public declaration to 
 that effect, it may not be amiss to state that two members of that 
 defective class are inmates of this institution at the present time, 
 1885. 
 
 Within the last two or three years a paragraph has gone the 
 rounds of the newspapers, assuring the public that the insane never 
 shed tears until after the commencement of convalescence, and that 
 weeping is a sure prognostic of recovery. I had never before either 
 seen or heard of a suggestion of the kind, and it is certainly con- 
 trary to the results of my observation. There are certain classes of 
 the insane, and among them those whose mental disorder or impair- 
 ment is a consequence of paralysis, in whom the emotional nature is 
 unnaturally sensitive. Some of these shed tears upon the most 
 trivial occasions. Hence it is to be apprehended that the paragraph 
 was written by some one who was not well informed upon the sub- 
 
368 FABLES CONCERNING THE INSANE 
 
 ject or who was willing to add one more fold to the veil of mystery 
 through which the subject of insanity is generally regarded. 
 
 In an interview not long ago with an intelligent gentleman from 
 one of the most populous cities of the Union the conversation 
 turned upon an institution for the insane within or near the limit of 
 that city. After commending it for its excellence, the gentleman 
 spoke of the well-merited popularity of its superintendent, and pro- 
 ceeded to relate the following anecdote as a proof of his remarkable 
 shrewdness, presence of mind, and readiness of expedient in the 
 management of the insane: "The superintendent," said he, "had 
 occasion to go to the summit of a tower in company with one of 
 his patients. While admiring the extensive and beautiful prospect 
 spread before them, the patient, with much excitement, suddenly 
 seized the superintendent by the arm, and pressed him towards the 
 edge of the tower, exclaiming, ' Let's jump down, and thus immortal- 
 ize ourselves ! ' The superintendent very coolly arrested the pa- 
 tient's attention, and replied : ' Jump down ! Why, any fool can do 
 that. Let's go down and jump up ! ' The proposition struck the 
 fancy of the patient, and thus the two were saved from their impend- 
 ing peril." 
 
 My informant did not say whether they did jump or not, but left 
 me upon that point wholly in the dark ; and, lest his satisfaction 
 should be marred, I refrained from telling him that the story, in its 
 essentials, is much older than the superintendent whom he had made 
 the hero of it ; that it was current, to my certain knowledge, not less 
 than sixty years ago, and then had the flavor of antiquity ; that it 
 undoubtedly is an old emigrant from England, and that, had it life 
 and the power of speech, it might not unreasonably claim to have 
 come over in the "Mayflower." 
 
 It is barely possible, but quite improbable, that the story had its 
 origin in some actual occurrence of the kind. While superintend- 
 ents are not habitually accustomed to take their excited or excitable 
 patients to the dangerous height of towers, yet some one might have 
 taken an unexcitable one to such a place ; and, as many a sane per- 
 son on the brink of a precipice has felt an impulse to leap from it, 
 and as there is reason for the belief that even the calmest and least 
 excitable insane man would be somewhat more liable to that impulse 
 than one who is not insane, it is not beyond the limits of possibility 
 that the tale is not wholly fictitious. It has a little, though not 
 
i885 369 
 
 much, greater claim upon the creduUty of mankind than that other 
 antique specimen of the history of gymnastics, — the tale of "the 
 cow that jumped over the moon." 
 
 Whether the writer of the following account expected or intended 
 it to be believed or not, there is no possible means of deciding ; but 
 it is nevertheless very certain that it has been published as truth : — 
 
 " A gentleman accompanying a party to inspect an asylum 
 chanced to be left behind in the kitchen, with a number of the 
 inmates who acted as cooks and scullions to the establishment. 
 There was a huge caldron of boiling water on the fire, into which 
 the madmen declared they must put him in order to boil him for 
 broth. They would fain have assisted him into the large pot ; and, 
 as they were laying hold of him, he reflected that in a personal strug- 
 gle he would have no chance with them. All he could do was to 
 gain time. So he said : ' Very well, gentlemen. I am sure I should 
 make good broth if you do not spoil it by boiling my clothes with 
 it.' ' Take off your clothes ! ' they cried out. And he began to take 
 off his clothes very slowly, crying out loudly the while : 'Now, gen- 
 tlemen, my coat is off. I shall soon be stripped. There goes my 
 waistcoat. I shall soon be ready,' and so on, till nothing remained 
 but his shirt. Fortunately, the keeper, attracted by his loud speak- 
 ing, hurried in just in time to save him." 
 
 To a person familiar with the inner life of an institution for the 
 insane, this morsel of pretended history is so permeated and invested 
 by improbabilities that the idea of its truthfulness appears to be not 
 only perfectly absurd, but supremely ridiculous. The insane are not 
 cannibals, even to the extent of the quality of their broth ; and the 
 medical officers of a hospital are to be credited with at least a suffi- 
 cient knowledge of their patients to know, so far as can be known, 
 whom among them can be safely trusted in performance of the work 
 of the kitchen. They would be very unUkely to send to that work 
 even one patient whose disease might instigate him to criminal acts, 
 and much less a whole group of them ; and if by possibility one 
 should be sent, and should attempt any outrage or violent act, all the 
 others would lend their assistance in opposing and securing him. 
 
 The insane form no cabals, no extensive conspiracies. They 
 have no confidence one in another. One patient of vigorous native 
 intellect and a strong will may indeed make a dupe, a tool, or a 
 cat's-paw of another who is less liberally endowed by nature. This 
 
37© NEWSPAPER INACCURACIES 
 
 is sometimes done within the walls of an asylum for the insane, as it 
 not infrequently is in the outside world ; but the concerted action 
 for evil, of several patients, is a thing comparatively, if not abso- 
 lutely, unknown. Practical jokes are likewise sometimes perpe- 
 trated by inmates of the institution mentioned ; and it is far less 
 difficult to believe the story on the supposition that this was one of 
 them than upon any other hypothesis whatsoever. At one of the 
 largest of American hospitals it was formerly customary on certain 
 days in the week to show visitors through the two or three halls for 
 either sex. Among the patients in one of the halls for females 
 there was a lady of brilUant intellect and large attainments, the wife 
 of a man of wealth and eminence. She was a shrewd and acute 
 observer, had learned much of human nature, and liked a little fun 
 withal. She knew, or thought she knew, that, of every fifty visitors 
 who passed through the hall, not less than forty-nine were stimulated 
 thereto by motives no higher than those which actuate the man who 
 goes to the menagerie to " see the lion dance " or who attends the 
 circus to witness the antics of the clown. She thought it a pity that 
 their curiosity should not be measurably gratified, and so she estab- 
 lished a series of entertainments for their special benefit and her 
 own particular enjoyment. Upon the entrance of a group of visitors 
 she would go through a medley of eccentric and grotesque dancing, 
 gesticulation, and speech, and wind up by sidling up to one of the 
 company, begging a cent, and folding, with both hands, the front 
 part of the skirt of her dress into a temporary pocket or contribution- 
 box for its reception. The visitors were highly gratified. Their 
 visit had not been made in vain. They doubtless went away with 
 a memory for a lifetime, little dreaming how completely — to use a 
 common but expressive term — they had been " sold." 
 
 From what has here been written, it may correctly be inferred 
 that writers who, with only that extent of information upon the 
 subject which generally prevails, attempt to delineate the peculiari- 
 ties of the insane, either by description or by the language and con- 
 duct of fictitious characters, as surely betray their ignorance as they 
 would if writing upon any other subject without sufficient knowl- 
 edge. They run more or less into the extremes of extravagance, 
 exaggeration, and caricature. Engaged upon a somewhat mysterious 
 subject, which may easily be treated sensationally, they appear to 
 think that, to be truthful, they must be sensational. Doubtless, 
 
i88s . 371 
 
 they are sometimes purposely so, with the intent of producing an 
 effect by appealing to the love of the marvellous in their readers. 
 
 The reporter of a newspaper once visited the Northampton Hos- 
 pital, went through the departments for patients, and was furnished 
 with all requested information in relation to the institution. Not 
 many days afterwards he published a long account of his visit in the 
 journal with which he was connected. In his description of the 
 place he was very accurate ; but, when he came to the indications, 
 characteristics, and manifestations of insanity, even as he was sup- 
 posed to have seen them, he was evidently in water of unaccustomed 
 depth, and floundered to such an extent that some of the patients 
 themselves detected his awkwardness. A bright, well-educated, in- 
 telligent, and intellectually acute patient in the female department 
 read the article, and was greatly^ incensed at its incongruities and 
 inaccuracies. It gave her the text for a discourse the like of which 
 the reporter had never heard, in college or in public hall of any 
 kind. It partook, perhaps, of the qualities of a sermon, a lecture, 
 and a justice's charge ; but, by a usurpation of the province of a 
 jury, it was brought to a close with the energetic announcement of 
 the verdict : " The little puppy ! He ought to be horsewhipped." 
 
 Nor are even the responsible writers for the public journals 
 always unwilling to cater to the popular idea of insanity and the 
 insane. Within the last twenty years the editor of one of the 
 newspapers of Western Massachusetts published an elaborate and 
 detailed article in relation to this hospital, drawn largely from his 
 personal observation. In this case, as in that of the reporter, the 
 descriptive part was scrupulously truthful ; and the same may be said 
 of its narrative. But, as if this wholesome dish might not prove 
 sufficiently palatable to the partakers of his intellectual feast, he 
 must needs throw in the spice of a paragraph of highly wrought 
 untruth. Of five other Massachusetts newspapers which at that 
 time regularly came to the office of the superintendent, no less than 
 three quoted from our editor's article. Every one of them extracted 
 the whole of the untruthful paragraph. Not one of them took even 
 a line or a fact from that which was true. 
 
372 THE PERSONAL EQUATION 
 
 VI. The Curability of Insanity (Dr. Earle's Last Paper.) 
 Fr07n Dr. D. H. Take's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine. 
 
 The endeavor to ascertain even the approximate curability of in- 
 sanity is accompanied by difficulties ; and the investigator is soon 
 thrown upon the results of its treatment at the special institutions, as 
 his chief resource in the search for truth. Nor are the difficulties 
 wholly overcome by the adoption of these results. In very many 
 cases, through the affection or the prejudices of friends or from 
 other causes, the patient is not removed to a hospital until the pros- 
 pect of recovery is either wholly or partially lost ; and for reasons 
 of a similar nature he is but too frequently removed therefrom with- 
 out a sufficient test of his curability. 
 
 Another obstacle to the discovery and definite expression of the 
 actual susceptibihty of cure of the disease is found in the tempera- 
 ments of the physicians by whom they are treated. There being no 
 test for insanity, there can be no general standard equally percepti- 
 ble by, and equally forcible to, the minds of all men. As a neces- 
 sary consequence, each physician adopts a standard of his own, and 
 counts his recoveries accordingly. 
 
 American hospitals furnish two remarkable instances of the effect 
 of this " personal equation." At the Worcester (Mass.) Hospital, 
 during the last three official years of the administration of Dr. 
 Bemis, the reported recoveries were 43.32 per cent, of the admis- 
 sions ; and during the first three entire years of his successor, Dr. 
 Eastman, they were only 22.16 per cent, of the admissions. At the 
 McLean Asylum, during the last seven years of the superintendence 
 of Dr. Tyler, the reported recoveries were 44.19 per cent, of the 
 admissions : whereas, during the first seven years of his successor, 
 Dr. Jelly, they were only 19.94 per cent. The proportion of Dr. 
 Tyler's recoveries was to those of Dr. Jelly as 221 to 100. In 
 neither of these instances was there any known agency which tended 
 to render insanity less curable in the second period than in the first. 
 
 The failure, formerly, in the reports of the lunatic hospitals, 
 clearly to discriminate between person and patients (or cases) was 
 the source of no inconsiderable error in the minds of the readers 
 of those reports. In cases of paroxysmal or recurrent insanity, a 
 
1S91 373 
 
 person is frequently both admitted to, and discharged recovered 
 from, a hospital more than once in the course of an official year. 
 In the numerical report of these recoveries there is no intimation 
 that the number of persons is not equal to that of recoveries. At 
 the Bloomingdale Asylum, New York, a Avoman was discharged 
 recovered six times, and one at the Worcester Hospital seven times 
 in one year ; and in neither instance was the reader informed that 
 the number of persons was not identical with that of cases recovered. 
 Recoveries were also multiplied by the reported cures of the same 
 person in more than one year. Thus the woman who, at Worcester, 
 made seven recoveries in one year, had been discharged recovered 
 nine times within the next two preceding years, making sixteen 
 recoveries in the three years ; and the woman who, at Blooming- 
 dale, recovered six times in one year, was reported recovered 
 forty-six times in the course of her life, and finally died, a raving 
 maniac, in the asylum. 
 
 At five American asylums forty persons were reported recovered 
 four hundred and eighty-four times, or a fraction more than ten re- 
 coveries for each person. The records of American hospitals contain 
 the medical history of three women who were admitted as patients an 
 aggregate of one hundred and eighteen times, and were discharged 
 recovered one hundred and two times ; and yet two of them died 
 insane, and the third, when last heard from, had found a home, 
 apparently for life, in an almshouse. 
 
 By new statistical tables, adopted in Massachusetts in 1879, and 
 by the British Medico-Psychological Society in 188 1, the true num- 
 ber of persons, as well as of cases, recovered is shown in each an- 
 nual report. Hitherto no American State, other than Massachusetts, 
 has adopted those tables. 
 
 The admission, at a large proportion of the institutions, of cases 
 of not only delirium tremens and the opium habit, but alcoholism, 
 and even tnere habitual inebriety, and, upon their discharge, report- 
 ing them as recovered, vitiates the statistics of those institutions to 
 an important extent, giving an apparent but fictitious curability to 
 insanity. The published statistics of the disease include thousands 
 of "recoveries " of this kind. 
 
 A few facts from medical history will show the method by which 
 the popular mind, particularly in America, heretofore, received the 
 impression that insanity is largely curable. 
 
374 FALLACIOUS STATISTICS 
 
 In the year 1820 Dr. George Man Burrows, of London, published 
 his " Inquiry into Certain Errors relative to Insanity," in which he 
 stated that, of all the cases (296) treated by him, the proportion of 
 recoveries was 81 in 100; of recent cases, 91 in 100; of old cases, 
 35 in 100. The appendix to the "Inquiry" contained the statistics 
 of the " Retreat" at York from 1796 to 1819. The ratio of recov- 
 eries of all those cases which were of less than three months' dura- 
 tion was 85.1 per cent. 
 
 The report for 1827 of the Retreat at Hartford, Conn., says : "Dur- 
 ing the last year there have been admitted twenty-three recent cases, 
 of which twenty-one recovered, a number equivalent to 91.3 per cent." 
 
 In January, 1833, Massachusetts opened her first State Hospital, 
 at Worcester, under the charge of Dr. Samuel B. Woodward, who 
 was one of the original directors of the Hartford Retreat. In his 
 second annual report, which was for the oflicial year 1833-34, he 
 states that the recoveries during that year were 82.25 per cent, of 
 all the recent cases discharged. He classed as recent cases all 
 whose origin was within one year prior to admission, and this 
 method was followed generally at the American hospitals. So, also, 
 was the practice of calculating the recoveries upon the number of 
 patients discharged. 
 
 When the Worcester Hospital was opened, there were but eight 
 other institutions in the United States specially devoted to the care 
 of the insane ; but within the ten succeeding years no less than 
 twelve new institutions were added to their number. With the 
 reported success of Dr. Woodward, and the other high ratios of re- 
 covery (already mentioned) before them, a generous rivalry to 
 show the largest percentage of cures was soon manifested among 
 the medical superintendents. For the official year 1840-41 Dr. 
 Woodward reported 90 per cent, of recoveries of recent cases dis- 
 charged, and in the next following year 91,42 per cent. In 1842, 
 Dr. Gait, of the Williamsburg (Virginia) Asylum, claimed the 
 recovery of twelve out of thirteen recent cases. This was a percent- 
 age of 92.3. One of the thirteen died, and of this the doctor very 
 naively says, " If we deduct this case from those under treatment, the 
 recoveries amount to 100 per cent." At length, in his report for 
 1843, Dr. Awl, of the Columbus (Ohio) Asylum, stated that the per- 
 centage of recoveries of recent cases discharged in that year was 100. 
 This was the ?ie plus ultra. The same year Dr. Luther V. Bell, of the 
 
i»9i 375 
 
 McLean Asylum, in reviewing all his cases — " somewhat exceeding 
 a thousand " — to that time, says that, of those cases whose duration 
 was less than six months, " certainly nine-tenths have recovered." 
 (The effect of fourteen years' additional experience upon Dr. Bell's 
 opinion is apparent from the fact that in 1857 he said to one of his 
 friends, " I have come to the conclusion that, when a man once 
 becomes insane, he is about used up for this world.") 
 
 The inevitable and obvious result of all these publications of high 
 ratios of recovery was to give the impression to the public mind that 
 mental disease is far more susceptible of cure than, from facts now 
 known, it is shown to be. Their influence was not without its effect 
 upon the British superintendents, as is indicated by the language of 
 Dr. W. A. F. Browne, who states that the American success "ex- 
 cited the envy and despair of my confreres and myself." Believing 
 that, with regard to the subject before us, the best method of show- 
 ing what can be done is to show what has been done, we proceed to 
 mention some of the most important and reliable statistics which 
 now illustrate the curability of insanity. 
 
 Dr. John Thurnam traced the history until death of 244 persons 
 treated at the York Retreat, and, generalizing from these data, 
 formulated the following rule : "In round numbers, of ten persons 
 attacked by insanity, five recover and five die, sooner or later, dur- 
 ing the attack. Of the five who recover, not more than two remain 
 well during the rest of their lives : the other three sustain subse- 
 quent attacks, during which at least two of them die." In 1858 the 
 number of persons admitted into the asylums of Scotland was 1,297. 
 Twelve years afterwards Sir Arthur Mitchell traced their history as 
 far as practicable, and in January, 1877, published the results in the 
 Joicrnal of Mental Science. Of 1,096 persons whose history was 
 traced, 454 had died insane, and 367 still lived insane, — total, 821 
 insane; while 78 had died not insane, and 197 still lived, not in- 
 sane, — total, 275 not insane (percentage of insane, 74.91; per- 
 centage not insane, 25.9). In general terms, three-fourths were in- 
 sane, and one-fourth not insane. The final results in regard to 
 these patients will probably very nearly agree with those of the 244 
 at the York Retreat.* 
 
 * Following the example of Sir Arthur Mitchell, I selected the first admissions to all the Massa- 
 chusetts hospitals in i88o (about 3,000), and placed them on a special list, for similar investigation, 
 which I kept up until leaving office as Inspector of Charities in INIassachusetts in November, iSSS. 
 My successors have failed to make the required investigation ; but the result is much as in Scotland 
 for those I investigated. (F. B. S.) 
 
376 IMAGINARY RECOVERIES 
 
 In 1843 Dr. Woodward published a list of 25 recent cases recov- 
 ered, contrasting the cost of their treatment with that of 25 chronic 
 cases then in the hospital. Thirty-six years afterwards, in 1879, 
 the present writer traced the history of those patients to that time, 
 and found the results somewhat more unfavorable than those of the 
 244 at York. Agreeably to Thurnam's rule, 10 of the 25 should 
 never have a second attack : the remaining 15 should have a second 
 attack, and perhaps more; and, of those 15, 10 should die insane. 
 The actual results were as follows : Only 7 of the patients did not 
 have a second attack; while 18 did have a second attack or more. 
 7 had died insane, while 2 others were in almshouses, having 
 long been incurably insane, — and will of course die so, — and i has 
 died at home who "was never well (sane) but a few months at a 
 time." 8 of the 25 were living in 1879, and there was more than 
 a mere probability that some of them would die insane. 
 
 In 1883 the present writer collated the cases of duration on ad- 
 mission of less than twelve months — the recent cases of Americans 
 — from the reports of several years of twenty-three British asylums. 
 The aggregate of admissions was 15,697 ; of recoveries, 7,465. Pro- 
 portion of recoveries, 47.49 per cent. 
 
 In the Jour?ial of Mental Science for July, 1884, Dr. T. A. Chap- 
 man, of the Hereford Asylum, published the collected statistics of 
 " forty-six English County and Borough Asylums, and the Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow Royal Asylum, for (in most instances) eleven years, — 
 1872 to 1882, inclusive." Here is a collocation of the remarkable 
 number of 93,443 cases of insanity, all of them classified as in Thur- 
 nam's table. The whole number of recoveries was 35,468, or 37.95 
 per cent, of the admissions. Of the cases of less than twelve 
 months' duration, there were 69,983, of which the recoveries were 
 32,569, or 46.52 per cent. The cases of first attack and of less 
 than three months' duration were 38,283, of which 18,654, or 48.72 
 per cent., recovered. 
 
 The 5 instances of remarkably high ratios of recovery, which were 
 so effective in producing a public impression of a large degree of 
 curability of insanity, those of Dr. Burrows, the York Retreat, the 
 Hartford Retreat, the Worcester Hospital, and the Williamsburg 
 (Virginia) Asylum, were all of them derived from the treatment of an 
 ^ggJ'sg^te of only 395 cases. In the light thrown upon the subject 
 by Chapman's 93,443 cases, those five high ratios most signally fail 
 as an authority from which to deduce a general rule of curability. 
 
1891 377 
 
 The following summary includes the results of some of the present 
 writer's statistical researches which have not been mentioned in this 
 aiticle : — 
 
 1 . Cases of first attack ; duration less than three months. — («) 
 Earle's 8,316 cases, at twenty-three British asylums; recoveries, 
 46.71 per cent.; {l>) Chapman's 38,283 cases, at forty-six British 
 asylums; recoveries, 48.72 per cent. 
 
 2. Cases of first attack; duration less than twelve months. — {a) 
 Earle's 10,929 cases, at twenty-three British asylums; recoveries, 
 44.06 per cent, {fi) Chapman's 50,409 cases at forty-six British asy- 
 lums ; recoveries, 43.79 per cent. 
 
 3. Not first attack ; duration less than twelve months. — {a) Earle's 
 4,768 cases at twenty-three British asylums; recoveries, 55.37 per 
 cent, ifi) Chapman's 19,574 cases, at forty-six -British asylums ; re- 
 coveries, 53.61 per cent. 
 
 4. All cases of duration less than twelve months. — {a) Earle's 
 15,697 cases, at twenty-three British asylums; recoveries, 47.49 per 
 cent, ib) Chapman's 69,983 cases, at forty-six British asylums ; re- 
 coveries, 46.52 per cent, (c) Earle's 8,063 cases, at fifteen Ameri- 
 can institutions ; recoveries, 38.59 per cent. 
 
 5. All recoveries; calculated on all admissions. — {a) Chapman's 
 93,443 cases, at forty-six British asylums; recoveries, 37.95 per 
 cent, ib) Earle's 33,318 cases, at thirty-nine American institutions; 
 recoveries, 29.15 per cent, (r) Earle's 23,052 cases, third period of 
 five years, 1880-1884, at twenty American institutions; recoveries, 
 29,91 per cent, {d^ Earle's 14,372 cases, in one year, at fifty-eight 
 American institutions; recoveries, 27.88 per cent. 
 
 It appears from these statistics that the reported recoveries at the 
 British institutions exceed those at the American by from 8 to 9 per 
 cent, of the admissions. 
 
378 LETTER OF ADMIRAL SMYTH 
 
 VII. The Artist Earles. 
 
 In the preparation of his Earle Genealogy Dr. Earle had come 
 upon odd histories of some branches of his family ; perhaps the 
 oddest Avas that which connects the Leicester Earles with Concord 
 Fight, the art studios of London, and the British navy. Ealph Earle 
 of Leicester, son of a captain in Washington's army, and a third 
 cousin of Dr. Earle (born 175 1, died 1801), had a turn for art, and 
 in 1775 made sketches of the fights at Lexington and Concord in 
 the preceding April, — four pictures of some merit that were badly 
 engraved by Amos Doolittle of New Haven, and widely circulated in 
 that form. Like a better artist, Trumbull, he afterwards studied 
 in London with West and got the title of R.A.; then returned to New 
 England and painted portraits and landscapes with success, — among 
 them several in Leicester which are preserved. Two of his family 
 were also artists of merit, — his brother James and his own son 
 Ralph. James had a brief career, dying in Charleston, S.C, of yel- 
 low fever in 1796, at the age of thirty-five. But he had married in 
 1789 the widow of an American Tory, whose only son by this first 
 marriage was the late Admiral Sir W. H. Smyth of the English navy. 
 In the year 1863 Sir William^ gave Dr. Earle this account of his 
 family : — 
 
 " My mother's maiden name was Caroline Georgiana Pilkington, 
 who married Joseph Brewer Palmer Smyth, of New Jersey, a de- 
 scendant of the celebrated Captain John Smith, of which marriage I 
 am now the sole remainder. The arms of the captain and additions 
 are worn by my family, and I enclose you an impression of my 
 book-plate. After my father's premature death his friend, Mr. 
 James Earle of Paxton, in Massachusetts, married the widow, by 
 whom he had three children, Clara, Phoebe, and Augustus, of whom 
 Phoebe alone remains. Mr. James Earle, whom I well remember, 
 was unfortunately cut off by a fever at Charleston, just as he was 
 preparing to return to England. There was a most friendly eulogy 
 of him in a Charleston paper of the time (about 1796), in which 
 they stated that he was equal to Copley, Savage, Trumbull, West, 
 and other American geniuses of the age, instancing his power of 
 giving 'life to the eye, and expression to every feature,' Upon this 
 
1S12-1833 379 
 
 point I can safely recommend you to consult my excellent former 
 friend, Professor Morse, himself so good an artist ; for I recollect 
 his opinion of the great merit of Mr. Earle's coloring." 
 
 It was not of James Earle, however, but of his son Augustus, that 
 Professor Morse had knowledge, not being born until 1791, and only 
 visiting England in 181 1. He wrote to Dr. Earle that in 1812-14 
 he was a student in the Royal Academy with Augustus Earle, C. R. 
 Leslie, and others, but referring him to Dunlap's " History of the 
 Arts of Design " for notices of both James and Augustus Earle. 
 Professor Morse adds: "When in London, in 1856, I passed the 
 evening at a party given to me by Mr. Leslie, where I met Sir Edwin 
 Landseer and other old friends, and among them a sister of 
 Augustus Earle, who was married a second time to a respectable 
 Scotch gentleman (Patrick Macintire). Her first husband was Mr. 
 D. Dighton, an artist. The mother of Mrs. Dighton was Mrs. Maxwell, 
 who was the widow of James Earle, if I rightly recollect. I have the 
 impression that Mrs. Maxwell was three times married, and that the 
 names of her several husbands were Sm}1:h, Earle, and Maxwell.* 
 A son by the first is one of the most distinguished admirals in the 
 British service, — a noble-hearted and highly cultivated man, — Sir 
 William Henry Smyth, who has written many valuable works." 
 
 By referring to Dunlap's gossiping volumes, I find that Ralph 
 Earle (whose father Ralph refused a captain's commission from the 
 Tory Governor Hutchinson) was himself a member of the " Gov- 
 ernor's Guard " of Connecticut (where he lived at intervals, and 
 where he died), and in that capacity, says Dunlap, "was marched 
 to Cambridge, and soon afterwards to Lexington, where he made 
 drawings of the scenery, and subsequently composed the first his- 
 torical pictures, perhaps, ever attempted in America, which were 
 engraved by his companion-in-arms, Mr. Amos Doolittle." This was 
 after the fights at Lexington and Concord; and the pictures were 
 four in number, — the encounter at Lexington Green, the British 
 officers reconnoitring Concord from the Burial Hill in that village, 
 the fight at Concord Bridge, and a fourth showing the redcoats in 
 retreat. The original paintings may have perished : a copy or two 
 from them exists ; and the four engravings, very badly executed by 
 Doolittle, are often found in old houses. Earle must have been on 
 
 * In a letter of Leslie to his sister in Philadelphia, May 12, 1812, he mentions a portrait he is 
 painting of Miss Smyth, a daughter of Mrs. Maxwell, who was governess in a family. She was 
 sister of the admiral. Professor Morse is right in saying the widow of James Earle married again. 
 
380 RALPH EARLE, ROVING PAINTER 
 
 the spot in Concord as well as Lexington, the scenery being fairly 
 well rendered by him. He does not seem to have remained in the 
 army so long as Trumbull did, but went back to New Haven, where, 
 says Dunlap, " I remember seeing two full-lengths of Rev. Timothy 
 Dwight and his wife, painted in 1777 in the manner of Copley, as 
 Earle thought. They showed some talent, but the shadows were ' 
 black as charcoal or ink. He studied in London, under the direc- 
 tion of Mr. West, immediately after 1783, and returned home in 
 1786. He painted many portraits in New York, and more in Con- 
 necticut. He had considerable merit, — a breadth of light and 
 shadow, facility of handling, and truth in likeness ; but he pre- 
 vented improvement and destroyed himself by habitual intemper- 
 ance." Tuckerman relates that in 1787 Alexander Hamilton, find- 
 ing him in prison for debt at New York, induced Mrs. Hamilton 
 and other ladies to sit to him in jail, whereby he earned enough to 
 pay his debt, and was discharged. He strolled as far as Niagara, 
 and painted a large canvas of the Falls, which was exhibited in 
 America and England, and was in existence in London about 1850. 
 He also painted a large landscape of the Denny farm-house, farm, 
 and hill, in the east part of Leicester, which still exists there, in the 
 Denny family; and in 1800 he painted his cousin Thomas Earle, 
 of Cherry Valley, Leicester, his fine house and sycamore-trees in 
 the background, of which portrait Dr. Earle gives a faint copy in 
 the Genealogy. He painted portraits of Springfield magnates and 
 of Governor Strong and his family of Northampton shortly before 
 his own death in 1801. His son Ralph E. Whittemore Earle, born 
 about 1780, studied in London in 1809-10, and afterwards practised 
 portrait painting at New Orleans and Nashville. There he came to 
 the notice of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of General Jackson, after- 
 wards President, and married one of her nieces. 
 
 James Earle was the brother of the first Ralph, uncle of the 
 second, and father of Augustus Earle, above-mentioned. He seems 
 to have lived in Paxton before going abroad, as did his brother 
 Clark Earle, who was the foster-father of Anthony Chase, brother-in- 
 law of Dr. Earle. How early James went abroad does not appear, 
 but probably soon after his brother Ralph. He married in London 
 about 1789, but came over to Charleston, S.C., between 1792 and 
 1795, where he was seen by Thomas Sully, the Philadelphia painter, 
 while living as a boy in Charleston. He seems to have been a 
 
1796-1836 3^1 
 
 better artist than the two Ralphs ; but after some success in Caro- 
 lina, the birthplace of Allston and the liberal patron of Jarvis and 
 Professor Morse, he died of yellow fever, just as he was going back 
 to his family in England. His will is on record at Charleston, dated 
 Aug. 16, 1796 ; and his death was but a few days later. 
 
 His son Augustus had more art education than any of the Earles ; 
 but his light, roving nature did not allow him to profit much by it. 
 He was associated in his studies with C. R. LesHe, Landseer, Pro- 
 fessor Morse, and others of note, knew Allston, Turner, Beechey, 
 etc., and went sketching with Leslie and Morse, who tell adventures 
 of his, and knew his family. 
 
 Augustus Earle, as Professor Morse intimates, had many eccen- 
 tricities ; but extreme reserve and modesty was not among them. 
 Like his uncle, Ralph, he was a rover, but. over a much wider 
 range of the earth's surface. Attaching himself to his half-brother, 
 then Captain Smyth, he sailed up the Mediterranean to Sicily, Malta, 
 and Algiers, rambled over Carthage and Cyrene, visiting Ptolemais, 
 the bishopric of Synesius, then took a turn (in 18 18) in the United 
 States, and next traversed South America, where he remained on one 
 coast or the other till 1824. Then he sailed for Calcutta, but was 
 left on shore at Tristan d' Acunha, whence, after six months' imprison- 
 ment, he went to Van Dieman's Land and Australia. Sailing for 
 Madras, he touched at the Carolines, the Ladrones, and Manilla, 
 in 1828 proceeded to Pondicherry, Mauritius, and several other out- 
 of-the-way places, and got back to England shortly before Admiral 
 Fitzroy's " Beagle," with Charles Darwin on board, was to sail on 
 her famous voyage round the world. As he said himself, in a 
 trumpery volume which he printed in 1832, "With a spirit not 
 at all depressed by the vicissitudes and perils he had gone through, 
 but with an increased and insatiable desire to visit climes which he 
 had read of, but never seen, he unhesitatingly accepted the situation 
 of draughtsman to his Majesty's ship ' Beagle ' on a voyage of dis- 
 covery." He got no farther than Montevideo, and died on shore 
 somewhere. His uncle, Ralph Earle, who also studied abroad, be- 
 came a portrait painter in America, had married a niece of General 
 Jackson, and painted his portrait as General and President. 
 
 Ralph E. W. Earle, married into General Jackson's family, is thus 
 described by Nicholas P. Trist, a well-known Virginian, who had 
 been Jackson's secretary for a time : — 
 
382 GENERAL JACKSON'S PAINTER 
 
 "Colonel Earl" (it seems he went by this title in Tennessee and 
 Washington) "had been an artist in Nashville, and there experi- 
 enced the kindness of Mrs. Jackson. This was enough. By Mrs. 
 Jackson's death this relation became sanctified for the General's 
 heart. Earle became forthwith his protege. From that time the 
 painter's home was under his roof, at Washington, in Tennessee, at 
 the President's house, as at the Hermitage, where he died in 1837. 
 And this treatment was amply repaid. Earle's devotion was more 
 untiring even than his brush ; and its steadiness would have proved 
 itself at any moment, by his cheerfully laying down his life in Jack- 
 son's service. If he had had a thousand lives, they would have 
 been laid down one after the other, with the same perseverance that 
 one canvas after another was lifted to his easel, there to keep its 
 place till it had received the General. In 1836 President Jackson 
 was generally accompanied in his afternoon walk by Colonel Earle." 
 The painter died at the Hermitage, near Nashville, the next year 
 (not at New Orleans, as Dr. Earle says) ; and this inscription was 
 placed on his gravestone, beside the Jackson tomb : — 
 
 " IN MEMORY OF R. E. W. EARL, 
 
 ARTIST, FRIEND, AND COMPANION 
 
 OF 
 
 GENERAL JACKSON, 
 
 Who died, September 16, 1837." 
 
 His age at death was less than sixty. He had painted portraits 
 of his friend for a dozen years. The likeness was easily recognized : 
 the art was rather hard and stiff. But his attachment to the old 
 chieftain was more pleasing than the art. 
 
I837-I838 383 
 
 VIII. Reminiscences by Dr. Earle (1889). 
 
 My last course of medical lectures at the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania was in the winter of 1836-37. In the expectation of going to 
 Europe, I succeeded in obtaining from the professors an early final 
 examination, which set me free from the school sooner than other- 
 wise would have occurred. As I had never previously visited Wash- 
 ington, I went to that city, and was present at the inauguration of 
 Martin Van Buren as President of the United States. I also ob- 
 tained an introduction to President Jackson at the White House, 
 when no one else was present excepting the famous editor, Amos 
 Kendall, who was widely known as a member of the so-called 
 " Kitchen Cabinet " of the President. I then returned to my home 
 in Leicester, and made preparations for a journey to Europe. I 
 again returned to Philadelphia, and while there attended the sittings 
 of the Yearly Meeting of Friends at the Arch Street Meeting-house. 
 
 On the 25th of the 4th month (April, 1837) I sailed from New 
 York for Liverpool. Among the passengers were Captain Richard 
 Stockton, of the United States Navy, and Joseph Sturge, one of the 
 most prominent philanthropic Friends in England. He was then on 
 his way homeward from the West Indies Islands, which he had 
 visited for the purpose of investigating the operation of the seven 
 years' apprenticeship law, which had been enacted for the British 
 colonies as a preliminary precaution to the final and complete eman- 
 cipation of the slaves- He had with him a bright young negro, 
 about twenty years of age, whom he was taking to England as a wit- 
 ness to the cruelties which were practised by the planters under the 
 law of apprenticeship, Joseph Sturge had been at home but a short 
 time before he began to agitate the subject of the abolition of the 
 law of apprenticeship by an exposition of the condition of things as 
 he had found them in the colonial islands. He prosecuted this with 
 great perseverance and zeal until he succeeded in his object through 
 the law of emancipation enacted by the British Parliament. 
 
 Pope says, "All partial evil is universal good." If the converse 
 of this proposition be true, then universal good must be accom- 
 panied or followed by some partial evil. The slaves of Jamaica and 
 the other British West Indies colonies obtained their freedom, but 
 one of the other results was the degeneracy of the young negro 
 
284 DR. EARLE'S societies 
 
 whom Joseph Sturge had used as a witness. He was so much 
 elated by the prominence and attention that were given him in Eng- 
 land by his being brought to testify before Parliamentary commit- 
 tees, and by being made a conspicuous personage in the mass meet- 
 ings at Exeter Hall and other places, and by the limitless opportuni- 
 ties thrown before him for the indulgence of his appetites, that he 
 fell into bad habits, assumed an undue self-importance, and so con- 
 ducted himself that it was found necessary to send him back to his 
 West Indies home. 
 
 I arrived in London on the evening next preceding the eighteenth 
 anniversary of the birth of the then Princess Victoria. I remained 
 there about six weeks, during which there were important changes 
 in the government of Great Britain. King William IV, died, and was 
 buried at Windsor. Victoria ascended the throne, and dissolved 
 Parhament. London was black with the emblems of mourning, 
 and committees of " condolence and congratulation " came from all 
 quarters of the island in manifestation of their loyalty to the new 
 
 sovereign. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Three of the prominent medical societies of the United States 
 came into existence during the time of my connection with the 
 Bloomingdale Asylum. These are the American Medical Associa- 
 tion, the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Insti- 
 tutions for the Insane, and the New York Academy of Medicine. I 
 was a member of the preliminary convention by which each of them 
 was founded, became a member of each, and was the author of the 
 first original paper read before the Academy of Medicine. It was a 
 brief history of institutions for the insane in the United States, and 
 was pubUshed in the first volume of the Transactions of that associa- 
 tion. In 1884 I was elected president of the Association of Medical 
 Superintendents of Institutions for the Insane. I was also an early 
 member and a vice-president of the American Social Science Asso- 
 ciation. Am now a member of the New England Historic-Genea- 
 logical Society, a Fellow of the New York College of Physicians and 
 Surgeons, a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and of 
 the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, a correspond- 
 ing member of the State Medical Society of Connecticut, of the 
 New York Medico-legal Society, and of the Medical Society of 
 Athens, Greece, and an honorary member of the British Medico- 
 Psychological Association. 
 
38s 
 
 Anecdotes of Leicester and Worcester. 
 
 Miss Lucy Chase wrote to her uncle Dr. Earle soon after George 
 Bancroft's death, who was the son of the Rev. Dr. Aaron Bancroft, 
 of Worcester, giving these particulars of the Earles, of Leicester, by 
 an Irishman who had worked for them : — 
 
 "We had a very interesting interview with Martin Callaghan a 
 few days ago, April, 1891. He said: ' I remember many words of 
 counsel which Pliny and William Earle both gave me, — we called 
 Dr. Earle PUny. They gave me a good deal of good advice, which 
 has been of great service to me. I think Aunt Patience w^as the 
 best woman and the most wonderful woman I ever knew. She was 
 always a queen. She would be sitting in the kitchen mixing some- 
 thing for the men, and talking great thoughts. I don't think any one 
 in the world can be her superior, even if one could be her equal. In 
 those days I felt convinced that the country would have to suffer for 
 its iniquity of slavery.' He seems to us to be the wholesome fruit of 
 Mulberry Grove training. . . . We made many calls in Leicester, and 
 saw Uncle William Earle at T. Southwick's. Uncle repeated to us 
 the following lines : — 
 
 ' Old age comes with sorrow, 
 
 With wrinkle and furrow, 
 
 No hope in to-morrow, 
 
 None sympathy spares. 
 
 But, unfit to rise up, 
 
 He looks to the skies up, 
 
 None close his old eyes up, 
 
 He dies ; and who cares ? " 
 
 " Martin drove us to Leicester, and took with him a photograph 
 of grandmother and one of Uncle William." 
 
 William Buffum Earle, an older brother of Dr. Earle, had long 
 been blind from an accident. He was most ingenious and inventive, 
 but in his later life unable to support himself, and was maintained 
 by Dr. Earle. He died in 1891. "Aunt Patience" and "grand- 
 mother" were the same noted person, the mother of Dr. Earle. 
 Miss Chase added concerning a contemporary of her Uncle William : 
 
 "George Bancroft visited his birthplace when he was eighty-nine, 
 and told John B. Pratt, whose mother owned the first spinet imported 
 
386 MR. may's reminiscences 
 
 from England into Worcester, that he should come to Worcester to 
 spend his ninetieth birthday, last October, in Mr. Pratt's house, 
 where he was born. But he was not well enough to do so. When 
 last here, he visited the Rural Cemetery ; and meeting there Waldo 
 Lincoln and his wife, a daughter of Dr. Chandler and Josephine 
 Rose, he kissed the children, and said, ' I should be glad to think 
 they would remember this.' Speaking of Mrs. Pratt, passers-by 
 used to leave their wagons and carriages, and stand by her win- 
 dow to hear her play the spinet. One day a farmer, who had en- 
 joyed her music, emptied his leathern purse upon the window-sill, 
 saying, ' This is all I have.' " 
 
 IX. Reminiscences of the Earle Family. 
 
 BY REV. SAMUEL MAY, OF LEICESTER. 
 
 Dr. Earle's father was not living when I came to Leicester in 
 1833. He had quite recently died. There had been five brothers, 
 sons of Robert Earle, namely: Pliny, father of Dr. Pliny; Jonah, 
 one of whose grandsons is Stephen C. Earle, the well-known archi- 
 tect of Worcester ; Silas ; Henry ; and Timothy, — all men of decided 
 mechanical ability, all engaged in the then new and curious manu- 
 facture of card-clothing and of the machines for that purpose, and 
 all members of the Society of Friends. Of these relatives Dr. Earle 
 has given this anecdote : — 
 
 " When I was five years of age, my uncle Timothy, then one of our 
 nearest neighbors, erected a saw and grist mill directly south of the 
 Friends' Cemetery, which was about one-third of a mile from our 
 house. When the nether millstone had been put in place, a group 
 of the young men and boys of the neighborhood were one morning 
 at the mill for the purpose of bathing. Among them was my cousin 
 Amos S. Earle, the subsequent father of the architect, Stephen C. 
 Earle, of Worcester. He took me by the two hands, lifted me with 
 my arms extended upward, one on each side of my head, and let 
 me down through the millstone into the low apartment below it. I 
 have never had much occasion to laud my own sagacity ; but, when 
 people have magnified that perspicacity which is implied by the abil- 
 ity to see through a millstone, I have ventured to remark that, if 
 such ability is a proof of intellectual acuteness, much more so is the 
 fact of having passed bodily through a millstone." 
 
I833-I840 ■ 387 
 
 They lived in the north-east part of the town, where there was a 
 Friends' meeting-house standing until within a few years, in the 
 midst of their burial-ground. In 1833 regular religious meetings 
 were held there every First and Fifth Day. But I believe not a single 
 Friend or Quaker now remains in the town. There were in 1833 
 many such families. 
 
 Dr. Earle's mother was then living. She was of a prominent 
 Friends' family. Patience Buffum, of Smithfield, R.I., and was known 
 generally as "Aunt Patience" to the time of her death in 1849. 
 When I first knew her, she was about sixty-three years of age, a 
 woman of tall and commanding figure. As I remember her, she was 
 of unusually large frame and rather masculine in appearance, quiet 
 in manner, slow in speech, and of winning voice. She was a greatly 
 respected and influential member of the local Society of Friends, 
 and also prominent in their monthly and quarterly meetings, which 
 were held with great regularity in Bolton, Northbridge, Uxbridge, 
 and Leicester, as well as in Rhode Island. She was probably the 
 leading figure in their society here at the time of which I speak. 
 
 Before as well as after the death of Pliny Earle, Sr., the house be- 
 came a boarding-school for girls, being by its size and situation well 
 adapted for such use. Two of the daughters, Sarah and Eliza, with 
 their mother in charge of the house, established the school. It be- 
 came widely known, and received a steady support, not from Friends 
 alone. Pupils came from the neighborhood, from Worcester, and 
 from places more remote. It was called the Mulberry Grove School, 
 and was continued by the sisters until their marriage, — Sarah to Mr. 
 Charles Hadwen, of Worcester, and Eliza to Mr. William E. Hacker, 
 of Philadelphia. 
 
 As I became acquainted with the family, I found them much in- 
 terested in the anti-slavery movement, and far in advance of the 
 community generally. " Aunt Patience's " brother, Arnold Buffum, 
 had been the first president of the New England Anti-slavery So- 
 ciety ; and that fact, doubtless, brought them to understand and be- 
 come interested in that movement. Three of the sons of Pliny and 
 Patience Earle took a very active part in it. John Milton Earle, who 
 w^as editor of the Worcester Spy, was a strong anti-slavery man as 
 editor and legislator. Thomas Earle, who had become a resident of 
 Philadelphia, was the Liberty party's candidate for the Vice-Presi- 
 dency. William Buffum Earle Avas an effective anti-slavery writer, 
 
388 DR. EARLE'S studies AND PRACTICE 
 
 and one of the leaders of the movement in Worcester County. I be- 
 lieve that Dr. Earle received aid from his brother John Milton Earle, 
 particularly in obtaining his education. 
 
 When I first knew Dr. Earle, he was principal of the Friends' 
 School at Providence, the school of which Mr. Whittier has written, 
 and which has a high reputation to the present day. In 1835 ^^ left 
 that position, and went to Philadelphia, to continue there the study 
 of medicine which he had begun while connected with the Friends' 
 School. He completed his preparatory studies at the medical school 
 of the University of Penns5dvania, was graduated from there in 
 March, 1837 ; and in April went to Europe for two years, 1837 
 to 1839. During those two years he was a correspondent of the 
 Worcester Spy. I well remember his full and careful letters, not 
 simply on the subjects to which he afterwards became so much de- 
 voted, but the letters of a traveller and close observer of all he saw. 
 They were valuable, and might well have been collected in book 
 form. 
 
 While in Europe at this time he gave special attention to the sub- 
 ject of insanity, and visited many asylums for the insane, so that, 
 when he came back to this country, he was appointed resident physi- 
 cian at the Friends' Asylum for the Insane at Frankford, near Phil- 
 adelphia. There he remained four years, and was then appointed 
 superintendent of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum in the city of 
 New York, — a responsible and difficult position. He filled it, I be- 
 lieve, with entire satisfaction and credit, remaining in it about five 
 years. I once visited him at Bloomingdale, and he showed me the 
 hospital and its methods. I saw then more intimately than I had 
 ever done before the arrangements of an insane asylum, and how 
 valuable were his precise methods and his exactness in all practical 
 matters. There was mechanical genius in that family, as I have 
 said; and this talent appeared in all his work. He was afterwards a 
 visiting physician of the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Black- 
 well's Island, and held the place for two years. Then his health be- 
 came impaired, and he came home to Leicester to rusticate and re- 
 cuperate. He had worked hard and persistently from the time 
 when he began his active life, and well he might need rest. Leices- 
 ter continued his home till 1864, though during that time he went 
 away twice to assist in the care of cases of insanity occurring among 
 United States soldiers and seamen at the Government Hospital for 
 
i8s5-i864 389 
 
 the Insane near Washington. With the exception of these intervals 
 he was here during the nine years from 1855 to 1864. He lived 
 during that time in a small house that his grandfather, Robert Earle, 
 had built and occupied, still in the family and now belonging to 
 Stephen C. Earle. It was called " the grandfather-house," and was 
 of but one story. There he rested, reading and perfecting himself 
 in his favorite studies during nine years. He also much enlarged 
 his fine collection of shells and minerals, which he afterwards gave 
 to Leicester Academy, enclosed in the handsome cases also fur- 
 nished by him. The collection is conspicuous at the Academy 
 and much prized. 
 
 It was inevitable that the town should desire his service as one of 
 its school committee ; and he so served for many years, doing a 
 very valuable work in raising the tone of the schools. He aroused 
 the spirit of both teachers and pupils wherever he went among the 
 schools. There had been, to his time, no member of the school 
 committee whose influence had been so important and marked as 
 his since I have known the schools of Leicester. 
 
 In the establishment of our public library his influence and help 
 were decisive. It was in March, 1861. The owners of an incorpo- 
 rated library of about 800 volumes (called the Leicester Social 
 Library) had proposed to give it to the town, to be held as a public 
 library for all the inhabitants, if the town would accept it. There 
 was doubt in the minds of some whether the town would take it, 
 with the responsibility of keeping it open and making annual appro- 
 priations for its support. But they did. And the credit of doing it 
 belongs in no small degree to Dr. Earle. When the question came 
 up in the town meeting of March, 1861, he quietly rose, and in an 
 impressive way made the motion that the town accept and hold the 
 library, as proposed by the proprietors, for the benefit of all the 
 inhabitants ; and the motion prevailed without a dissenting voice or 
 vote. I was much interested myself in the success of the library, 
 and well remember the incident. He was the constant friend of the 
 library all his life. 
 
 On the 2d of July, 1864, the trustees of the State Lunatic 
 Asylum of Northampton appointed him to the office of superintend- 
 ent of that institution ; and there he passed the rest of his life, a 
 period of nearly twenty-eight years. In all that time, whatever 
 reports of his professional work were published, he invariably sent 
 
39© DR. EARLE S BEQUESTS 
 
 a copy to the Leicester library. He was a little given to writing 
 poetry, and always sent us his publications. At his death, by his 
 will, he gave $6,000 to the town to help the erection of a library 
 building, which, as he phrased it, should be " worthy of the town." 
 He gave also a. portrait of himself to be placed in the library, — 
 an oil painting by Burleigh, a handsome and very good likeness. 
 Many miscellaneous volumes of his private library were given to 
 this library by his executors. 
 
 He came to Leicester each summer after he got through with his 
 work in Northampton, and spent several weeks in the vicinity of his 
 early home. While here, he effected a considerable improvement of 
 the Friends' burying-ground. He also, during these more leisurely 
 years, compiled and published his genealogy of the Earle family. 
 
 X. Portions of Dr. Earle's Will. 
 
 I, Pliny Earle of Northampton, in the county of Hampshire and 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Physician, being of sound and 
 disposing mind and memory, do make and publish this my last will 
 and testament, hereby revoking all former wills by me at any time 
 heretofore made. 
 
 I. After the payment of my funeral expenses and my debts which 
 I possibly may owe, although I am not in the habit of owing any- 
 thing, I direct my executors hereinafter named to set apart out of my 
 estate the sum of three thousand dollars. My said executors and 
 my friend Frank B. Sanborn of Concord, Massachusetts, shall 
 consult and advise with each other, and shall determine and decide 
 whether said three thousand dollars or part thereof shall be devoted 
 to preparing my biography, or to collecting, editing, and publishing 
 my writings on insanity or any of said writings. It is my opinion 
 that, if anything of this nature is done, it would be best to prepare a 
 brief account of my life, which may include a reference to the places 
 where my writings can be found ; but I leave the determination of 
 this question to Mr. Sanborn and my said executors. If they shall 
 decide that a brief biography of the testator is desirable, I wish Mr. 
 Sanborn to prepare it, and to have the entire charge and direction of 
 all duties of a literary nature pertaining thereto. For his labor and 
 services my executors are to pay the said Sanborn a liberal compen- 
 
1892 391 
 
 sation out of said sum so set apart. So much of said three thousand 
 dollars as shall not be expended in the manner above suggested shall 
 revert to my estate. 
 
 2. I give and bequeath to the City of Northampton one hundred 
 dollars in trust to pay for keeping my cemetery lot in order in the 
 future. 
 
 [Sections 3, 4, and 5 provide for legacies to his nephews and 
 nieces, generally of $3,000 each, though there were three of $4,000, 
 one of $5,000, and to a wealthy nephew and niece $100 each. These 
 legacies amounted to $41,250.] 
 
 My relations with all my nephews and nieces have been very 
 pleasant, and the sums hereinbefore given to them must not by any 
 means be considered as indicating the relative measure of my re- 
 gard. 
 
 6. To my cousin Ann V. Buffum I give and bequeath one thou- 
 sand dollars. 
 
 7. I give and bequeath unto the inhabitants of the city of North- 
 ampton fifty thousand dollars, to be securely invested until the same, 
 with the rest and residue of my estate hereinafter mentioned, shall 
 amount to at least sixty thousand dollars. Then this whole fund of 
 sixty thousand dollars or more shall be kept securely invested for- 
 ever. Said fund shall be designated as the " Pliny Earle Aid Fund " ; 
 and the income thereof shall be used in aid of the city of Northamp- 
 ton in defraying the necessary current expenses of the Forbes Li- 
 brary, when the same shall be ready for use. The words " neces- 
 sary current expenses " shall be construed to mean in this bequest 
 the payment of employees in and about said library, and the furnish- 
 ing of fuel and lights therefor, but shall not include the payment of 
 the salary of the librarian for said library, or any part of such sal- 
 ary or compensation. Although this fund is intended to be supple- 
 mentary to the " Aid Fund " established in his will by the late Hon. 
 Charles E. Forbes, the expenditure of the income of the fund 
 herein bequeathed shall be strictly confined and limited to the ob- 
 jects and purposes already specified and set forth in this section. 
 
 This bequest is made and is hereby subject to the following con- 
 ditions : first, that the city of Northampton shall forever keep the 
 corpus of the fund herein given intact to an amount as large as 
 sixty thousand dollars, and if, by reason of dishonesty, bad invest- 
 ments, incompetency, or casualty of any kind the principal shall 
 
392 BEQUESTS TO LIBRARIES, ETC. 
 
 fall below that sum, the City of Northampton shall within two years 
 thereafter make good the deficit, and make up the amount of in- 
 come lost by reason of such deficit ; and, second, that the City of 
 Northampton shall not expend or use any of income of said fund 
 for any other object and purpose than for the objects and purposes 
 hereinbefore specified and set forth. If the City of Northampton 
 shall fail to fairly observe and comply with these conditions or with 
 either of them, the bequest herein made to said city shall be thereby 
 revoked, annulled, void, and forfeited, and the entire fund aforesaid 
 shall vest in three trustees, residents of said Northampton, whom 
 the Judge of Probate for the county of Hampshire or his successor 
 shall appoint and designate under this will, to secure, collect, re- 
 cover, and receive said entire fund, with all accumulations rightfully 
 belonging to it, and said trustees shall apply and manage the same 
 in the establishment of a Home for Aged and Invalid Men. Said 
 Home shall be located in said Northampton, and shall be for the 
 benefit and comfort of aged and infirm men who are legal residents 
 of the city of Northampton or of any town in the county of Hamp- 
 shire, with full power and authority to said trustees to carry out 
 the purposes and spirit of this conditional bequest, and to have 
 entire charge and direction of all the details of the expenditures 
 necessary for properly establishing and managing said Home ac- 
 cording to their views, judgment, and discretion. I recommend 
 that, when said Home shall have been established in a manner satis- 
 factory to said trustees, it be incorporated in a manner similar to 
 the corporation of the Home for Aged and Invalid Women in 
 Northampton. 
 
 8. I give and bequeath six thousand dollars to the town of 
 Leicester, Massachusetts, to be used towards the erection of a sub- 
 stantial library building in said Leicester, worthy of the town, 
 
 9. To the Uxbridge Monthly Meeting of the society of Friends 
 I give and bequeath two thousand dollars on condition that within 
 two years after the time of my decease the society shall expend fif- 
 teen hundred dollars in grading the Friends' burial-ground in 
 Leicester, Massachusetts, in building the wall surrounding it, inputting 
 up an iron gate with granite posts, and in placing new gravestones 
 therein. I hereby direct my executors to deduct from the amount of 
 this bequest whatever money I have furnished or shall furnish 
 towards any or all of the specific objects set forth in this section. 
 
1892 393 
 
 10. To the Home for Aged and Invalid Women in Northampton 
 I give and bequeath two thousand dollars for the charitable objects 
 and purposes for which said Home was created and established, and 
 is designed to be continued and perpetuated. 
 
 11. To the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Children I give and bequeath one thousand dollars. 
 
 12. To the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Animals I give and bequeath one thousand dollars. 
 
 13. To the New England Historic Genealogical Society I give 
 and bequeath one thousand dollars. 
 
 14. I give and bequeath to my executors one thousand dollars 
 each in lieu of compensation for their services in that capacity. 
 
 15. I give and bequeath to my niece Frances C. Earle * my Gene- 
 vese watch with monograms, as a memento of our tour in Europe, in 
 the course of which it was purchased. [The tour was in 187 1.] 
 
 16. I give and bequeath to the trustees of the Forbes Librarj^ in 
 said Northampton, and for the uses of said library, the following 
 books, to wit : one hundred and twelve bound volumes of the American 
 Journal of the Medical Sciences, a. series of the Medical News bound 
 in seven volumes, the volumes in my library of Reports of the Board 
 of Education, of Reports of the Board of State Charities, a set of 
 twenty-two Reports of the Northampton Lunatic Hospital, bound in 
 two volumes, and covering the period from 1864 to 1885 inclusive, 
 and all the genealogical books in my library. 
 
 17. In no event shall any of the books belonging to my library, 
 or any of my wearing apparel, trinkets, articles of personal ornament 
 or for personal use, or pictures, or portraits, be sold for the procure- 
 ment of funds for the payment of legacies. They may be given to 
 my kindred, friends, or other persons, at the discretion of my execu- 
 tors. 
 
 18. All the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate, of whatsoever 
 kind and wherever situated, I give, devise, and bequeath unto the 
 inhabitants of the city of Northampton, to be added to and to be- 
 come and constitute part and parcel of the " Pliny Earle Fund " 
 bequeathed by Section 7 of this will, and to be used in all respects 
 for the objects and purposes and subject to the conditions, revoca- 
 tion, annulment, voidance and forfeiture, and subsequent disposition 
 more fully specified and set forth in said Section 7. 
 
 * On page 279 this name, " Frances" should be substituted for " Fanny." 
 
394 DR. EARLE S LAST WILL 
 
 19. I hereby constitute and appoint my nephew Charles A. Chase 
 of Worcester, Massachusetts, my niece Anne H. Southwick of said 
 Worcester, and my niece Sarah E. Hacker of Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
 vania, executors of this my last will and testament ; and I hereby em- 
 power and authorize them to sell and convey my real or personal estate, 
 and to do all acts, and make and execute all papers and documents, 
 which may be convenient or necessary for the prompt and efficient 
 performance of their duties in administering my estate. I also re- 
 quest that the Judge of Probate will not require any surety or sure- 
 ties on the bond of them, or either of them, as such executors or 
 as trustees, should any of the provisions of this will require their 
 appointment eo nomine as trustees. 
 
 In testimony whereof, I hereunto set my hand and sea), and in the 
 presence of the three witnesses named below declare this to be my 
 last will and testament, this eighth day of April in the year of our 
 Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two. 
 
 Pliny Earle. [Seal.] 
 
 Signed, sealed, published, and declared by the said Pliny Earle as 
 and for his last will and testament in presence of us, who in his 
 presence, in the presence of each other, and at his request hereto 
 subscribe our names as witnesses. 
 
 (Signed) Edward B. Nims. 
 
 Lewis F. Babbitt. 
 Timothy G. Spaulding. 
 
 Hampshire County, ss. 
 Registry of Probate. 
 
 A true copy. 
 
 Northampton, Mass., June 13, a.d. 1892. 
 Attest: Hubbard M. Abbot, Register. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 [In a volume so abounding in proper names of persons and places, a complete index would be 
 half as long as the book itself. The reader must, therefore, be content with the following, which 
 will be found almost all that he needs.] 
 
 Abbati, in Malta, 140. 
 
 Abb^, a young, 115. 
 
 Abbott, Dr. Benjamin, of Exeter, vii, 37. 
 
 Abhorrence of slavery in Europe, 107. 
 
 Abolition of slavery in America, 21, 24-26, 57, 
 108, 197, 202. 
 
 Abolition of slavery in European colonies, 82,87, 
 100, 106, 219. 
 
 Abolitionists, 21, 26, 58, loS, 196, 198, 227, 240, 
 258, 387. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, 248, 252, 260. 
 
 Abuse of the insane, vii, 96, 137, 155, 167, 174, 
 '78, 331- 
 
 Abuse of whipping in schools, 68. 
 
 Academy at Exeter, vii, 37; at Haverhill, N.H., 
 48 ; at Leicester, g, 10, 48, 346, 389 ; of Sci- 
 ences, Paris, 95. 
 
 Acamania, Greece, 135. 
 
 Achmet Aga, Greece, 124. 
 
 Ackworth School, England, 67, 73. 
 
 Acquisitiveness personified, 150. 
 
 Acropolis of Athens, in, 122, 143, 14S. 
 
 Acute insanity, 143, 155, 167, 169, 184. 
 
 Adam's sin imputed, 20. 
 
 Adams, John (President), 37, 44; (a color-blind), 
 251, 290. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 21, 108, 251, 289. 
 
 Address of Dr. Earle (to a Flower), 147 ; at Chi- 
 cago, xiv, 269, 277; at Boston, 159; at Pitts- 
 field, 169, 254; at Saratoga, 31 1-3 13. 
 
 Adoption of new tables, 267, 312, 373. 
 
 Adriatic Sea, 114, 117, 138. 
 
 Adroit reply, 16, 84. 
 
 .ffigean Sea, 131, 138. 
 
 ./Esculapius, 30, 100, 148. 
 
 Affair in the diligence, 115; in gondola, 117; 
 with guide, 125. 
 
 After-care of the insane, 168, 278. 
 
 Aggregations of the insane, 159, 180, 183, 276, 
 312. 
 
 Agora of Athens, 121, 128. 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, his lectures in Charleston, 192, 
 193, 196. 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson, 25, 30, 199, 293, 315. 
 
 Alderson, Dr., 64; Amelia !(Mrs. Opie), 61, 64, 
 69, 72-74- 
 
 Aldham, William (English Quaker), 87, 89. 
 
 Alienists mentioned, 94, 98, 154, 156, 158, 166, 
 etc. 
 
 Allen, Charles, 70. 
 
 Allen, William, of London, 61, 67, 76, 78. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 195, 381. 
 
 Almsgiving, 65, 130. 
 
 Almshouse at New York, 220; at Tewksbury, 
 137, 221, 265. 
 
 Almshouse, the Blockley (Philadelphia), 97. 
 
 Almy's Hotel, Havana, 202, 216. 
 
 Alps, crossed by Dr. Earle, 115; of the Tyrol, 
 176. 
 
 Alsace, asylums in, 179. 
 
 Altitude of mountains, 46, 115. 
 
 Alt-Scherbitz, asylum at, 164-166, 178, 275, 301. 
 
 Amelia Pottingen, 36. 
 
 Amelioration of insane treatment, ix-xiii, 95, 97, 
 165, 174, 27s, 278. 
 
 America and Europe, 13, 61, 79. 
 
 American alienists, viii-xiv. 
 
 American ancestors of Dr. Earle, 1-4. 
 
 American architecture, 53, 226. 
 
 American Association of Medical Superintend- 
 ents, 259, 269, 2S0, 298, 311, 384. 
 
 American asylum (Hartford), 29, 51, 52. 
 
 American asylums for the insane, viii, x-xii, 52, 
 So, 137, 146, 151, 154-162, 166, 175, 176, 186, 
 188, 223, 236, 239, 241, 245, 246, 252, 254-257, 
 259-279, 362. 
 
 American colleges: Ann Arbor, 255; Bowdoin, 
 45; Brown, 34-36; Dartmouth, 48; Harvard, 
 35; Jefferson Medical, 56, 144; South Caro- 
 lina, 192, 196. 
 
 American commanders in Civil War, 239, 241, 
 242-248, 250, 256, 259. 
 
 American Journal 0/ Medical Sciences, 154, 
 161, 187, 296, 319, 349. 
 
 American Journal 0/ Insafiity, 186, 280, 293, 
 294, 296, 318. 
 
 American missionaries, 79; at Athens, 121, 128; 
 in Turkey, 133, i34- 
 
396 
 
 A jnericano, ii6. 
 
 American party (" Know-nothings"), 224, 231. 
 American physicians: their practice, 101; bleed 
 freely, 144, iSg. 
 
 American Presidents inaugurated, sg, 235 ; their 
 levees, 223, 232, 24S-250, 255, 260. 
 
 American Quakers, 3, 49, 58, 75 ; divide doctri- 
 nally, 17, 24, 75; their attitude towards slav- 
 eO', 25, 57, 196, 19S, 225, 387 ; towards schools, 
 30, 49 ; maintain an insane asylum, 146, 388. 
 
 American Social Science Association, 320, 384. 
 
 American slaver)', 25, 57, 77, 105-107, 190-195, 
 198, 219, 240, 257, 25S. 
 
 American statistics of insanity, xi, 154, 158, 161, 
 1S2, 187, 265, 267, 271, 313, 372. 
 
 Amsterdam visited, in, 1S3. 
 
 Anatolia (Asia Minor) visited, 130, 136, 138. 
 
 Ancestry of Dr. Earle, 1-3 ; of the artist Earles, 
 319, 378-382. 
 
 Andemach, Germany, 167. 
 
 Andrews, American consul, 143. 
 
 Anecdote of Dr. Brigham, 221 ; of Elias Hicks, 
 17-19; of Isaac Hopper, 17; of W. B. Earle, 
 385. 
 
 Anemones in Greece, 127, 147. 
 
 Angelina Grimk^ (Mrs. Weld), 25, 83, 86, 198, 
 201. 
 
 Ann, Cape, 43. 
 
 Anne Knight (English Quakeress), 84, 100, 108, 
 no, 282. 
 
 Ajtti-Jacobhi, quoted, 39, 115. 
 
 Anti-masonry, 21. 
 
 Anti-slavery, 21, 24-26, 56, 57, 196, 198, 219, 258; 
 in England, 77, 82, 87, 109; in France, 100, 106. 
 
 Aphorism6s in Greece, 125, 127. 
 
 Appearance of a paretic, 161, 189. 
 
 Appendix (Dr. Earle's writings, etc.), 320-394. 
 
 Appointment of Dr. Earle at Bloomingdale, 151, 
 j6i; at Blackwell's Island, 16S; at North- 
 ampton, 260; at Washington, 241. 
 
 Area of German States (Appendix), 334-339- 
 
 Areopagus of Athens, 127, 147. 
 
 Aristocracy of England, 63, 78, 91, 100. 
 
 Arnold, Miss Elizabeth, 89, no, 286. 
 
 Arnold family of New Bedford, 89, in; of 
 Rhode Island, 29; of Wales, 14. 
 
 Arnold, James, in. 
 
 Artlmr, Captain, 33. 
 
 Artists, 32, 33, 390; in the Earle family, 379-3S2. 
 
 Asat Yakoob (a convert), 70. 
 
 Asia Minor, 130, 136, 137. 
 
 Asnebumskit (a hill), 2, 14, 119, 125, 214. 
 
 Aspersion of Dr. Earle, 267, 274. 
 
 Astor, John Jacob, 38. 
 
 Astrology and astronomy, 132, 257. 
 
 Asylum for the deaf, 29, 51, 279. 
 
 Asylums for the insane: in America (see Ameri- 
 can asylums); in Europe, vii, xv, 95-98, 163- 
 186, 325,— viz., in Austria, i73-'77. >8i; in 
 
 Baden, 171; in Bavaria, 177, 178, 337; in Bel- 
 gium, 163, 271, 275, 317; in Berlin, 170; in 
 Constantinople, 136, 330; in England, 303, 
 321; in France, 95-98, 18S, 324; in Holland, 
 no, 182, 322; in Germany, 163-186, 334: in 
 Italy, 329; in Malta, 148; in Nassau, 168; in 
 Prussia, 166, 169, 330, 335; in Saxony, 165, 
 170, 178, 334; in Turkey, 333. 
 
 Athenian adventures, 123, 128. 
 
 Athens approached, 120; brigands in, 124; 
 schools in, 125 ; visited, 121-128; university of, 
 128; in 1832, 122; in 1S96, 121. 
 
 Attraction of travel, 29, iSS, 202, 292. 
 
 Atticus, Herodes: his Attic estates, 121, 125. 
 
 Attitude of alienists towards curability, xi, 270, 
 311. 
 
 Audiences at Charleston, 192, 193; at Chicago, 
 269; at insane asylums, 155, 298; at Pittsfield, 
 254. 
 
 August on Mt. Washington, 46. 
 
 Augusta (Me.), hospital at, 272. 
 
 Augustus Earle, 319, 379, 381. 
 
 Austria visited by Dr. Earle, 173 ; by Mr. San- 
 bom, 175, iSi. 
 
 Authors read, 14, in, 113, 141, 288. 
 
 Authorship, 147, 149, 163, 186, 255, 264, 283, 317. 
 
 Available labor of patients, 143, 160, 166, 168, 
 177, 179, 263, 2S4, 298, 299. 
 
 Avienus (Festus Rufus), quoted, 2S7. 
 
 Babel-Tower (Vienna), 174. 
 
 Babies taught to read, 6. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, mentioned, 95, 156. 
 
 Backhouse family, England, 62, 64, 70, 86, 87, 
 
 90, 105. 
 Baden, Grand-duchy of, 184. 
 Bairam, feast of, 136. 
 Baird, Robert, in Paris, 104. 
 Balls at Charieston, 192-195; in Cuba, 210; in 
 
 Dresden, 291; at Eagleswood, 200 ; at Leubus, 
 
 291; in Washington, 231, 238. 
 Bancroft, Aaron, 385 ; George (son of Rev. Dr. 
 
 Aaron), 279, 385; Dr. J. P., x, 280. 
 Banks, N. P., 223, 224, 229, 231. 
 Baptists in Providence, 34. 
 Barber, Dr. (phrenologist), 150. 
 Barber, Richard, English epileptic, 221. 
 Barber in Cuba (Dr. Earle), 211. 
 Barclay of Uri, his descendants, 17, 64, 71. 
 Bartlett, Dr. Elisha, 40, 94, 356. 
 Bath, N.H., 47. 
 
 Bathing in asylums, g6, 169, 323, 328. 
 Battle of Marathon, 126; with Attic brigands, 
 
 124. 
 Battles of the Civil War, 242, 245, 247, 259. 
 Bavaria, its asylums, 178. 
 Bay of Matanzas, 214; of Havana, 202; of St. 
 
 Paul, Malta, 141. 
 Bears in New Hampshire, 45. 
 
397 
 
 Beasts of burden, 41, 207, 351. 
 
 Beck, Edward, 70, 79, 85 ; Richard, 69. 
 
 Bedford (afterwards New Bedford), 31, 32, no. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 254. 
 
 Beggars in Europe, 130. 
 
 Belief of the Friends, 20, 2S7. 
 
 "Bell at Edmonton," 79, 81. 
 
 Bell, Catherine, ancestress of the Gurneys, 64. 
 
 Bell, Dr. Luther V. (American alienist), x, 145, 
 
 158, 271, 303, 375 ; his change of view, 273. 
 Belles of Charleston, 192, 195; of Cuba, 203, 
 
 217; of Washington, 226, 238. 
 Benevolence of Quakers, 65, 76, 281. 
 Benjamin, Rev. N. (missionary), 121. 
 Berean (Quaker periodical), 19. 
 Bergmann (German alienist), 169, 337. 
 Berlin visited, 169, 275. 
 Berri, Duchess of, 96. 
 "Betsy Fry" (the philanthropist), 74, 89. 
 Bible in Quaker families, 7, 65, 67, 105, 150, 281. 
 Bible Society, mentioned, 19, 105. 
 Bicetre (French insane asylum), 95, 97, 137, 
 
 323, 324-326- 
 Binney, Horace, ig. 
 Birmingham, England, 61, 77. 
 Bimey, James G., Presidential candidate, 198, 
 
 199. 
 Bishops of the Anglican Church, 38, 63, 65, 66. 
 Blackwell's Island Asylum, 162, 220, 388. 
 Bleeding in medicine, 144, 155, 171, 189, 318. 
 Blindness to colors, 342-361. 
 Bloomingdale Asylum, New York, 151, 154-162, 
 
 18S, 356, 388. 
 Blue Room, Washington, 233, 249. 
 Boarding out the insane, xv, 278. 
 Boarding-school at Ackworth, 68, 75 ; at Croy- 
 don, 71. 
 Board of Charities (Massachusetts), xii, 260, 262, 
 
 267. 
 Board of Lunacy and Charity, 267, 375. 
 Board of Lunacy, Scotland, 275, 308. 
 Board of Trustees, Northampton, 279. 
 Bodily disease and insanity, 281. 
 Bonn, Germany, 164, 166. 
 Borderland of insanity, ix, 175, 221. 
 Bosphorus visited, 137. 
 Boston, mentioned, 39, 41, 43, 48, 58, 59, 105, 
 
 116, 142, 159, 185, 261. 
 Botanical studies, 23, 31, 128, 139, 259, 350. 
 Bowdoin College, 43. 
 Boyce, Mrs. Ann, 69, 74. 
 Boyhood of Dr. Earle, 6-13, 386. 
 Boys at English schools, 67, 71 ; at Hartford, 51 ; 
 
 at London, 2S6 ; at Providence, 42, 49. 
 Bozzaris, Marco (the man), 32; the poem, 32; 
 
 the steamer, 31, 32. 
 Brace, Julia (deaf, dumb, and blind), 51. 
 Braithwaites, English Quakers, 62, 77, 86, 90. 
 Brattleboro Asylum, x, 176. 
 
 Brethren in the profession, x, 280. 
 
 Brigands in Attica, 124, 125. 
 
 Brigham, Dr. A. (of Utica), 158, 221, 293-295. 
 
 Bright, John, English statesman, 6g, 99, 301. 
 
 (Brighthelmstone), Brighton, Eng., 71. 
 
 Bristed, Rev. John, 38. 
 
 Bristol, R.I., 38. 
 
 Britain, Great, visited by Dr. Earle, 61-91 ; re- 
 visited, 274, 285. 
 
 British girls, 88. 
 
 British traits, 78-80. 
 
 Brochure of a Quaker wit, 88; of Dr. Tuke, 183. 
 
 Brooks, Preston S. (assailant of Sumner), 230. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 86, 109. 
 
 Brown family of Providence, 35. 
 
 Brown, John, of Kansas, 200, 238. 
 
 Brown, Moses, 35, 22S. 
 
 Brown, Postmaster-general, 237. 
 
 Brown University, 34, 35; professors of, 36. 
 
 Browne, Dr. W. F. A., 375. 
 
 Brownell, George, of Lowell, 39. 
 
 Bryant, W. C, the poet, 126. 
 
 Buchanan, James, President (1857-61), 224, 230, 
 232, 234, 235, 251. 
 
 Bufifington, James, M.C., 231, 253. 
 
 Buffum, Arnold, 21, 30, 41, 44, 49, 63, 199, 340, 
 387- 
 
 Buffum, David, 49, 356. 
 
 Buffum, Elizabeth (Mrs. Chace), 30, 41. 
 
 Buffum family, color-blindness of, 349-350, 356, 
 361. 
 
 Buffum, Lavinia, 15. 
 
 Buffum, Patience (Dr. Earle's mother), i, 6, 9, 
 14-16, 24, 42, 152, 187, 299, 385, 387. 
 
 Buffum, Rebecca, (wife of Arnold), 199. 
 
 Buffum, Rebecca (Mrs. Marcus Spring), 30, 
 41, 42, 8r, 190-194. 199. 313. 
 
 Buffum, Thomas, 29, 356. 
 
 Buffum, William, 29, 356. 
 
 Bumside, Gen. A. E., 243, 244. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 66, 157. 
 
 Butler, A. P. (South Carolina senator), 230. 
 
 Butler, B. F., of Massachusetts, 24, 245. 
 
 Butler, Cyrus, of Providence, 307. 
 
 Butler, Fanny Kemble, quoted, 57. 
 
 Butler Hospital, 308. 
 
 Butler, John S. (alienist), x, 159. 
 
 Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 61-65, 72, 83, 86, 87. 
 
 Byron, Lady, mentioned, 71, 124. 
 
 Byron, Lord, quoted, 113, 129, 139, 150; men- 
 tioned, 126, 133-135. 
 
 Cage for lunatics, viii, 174, 331. 
 
 Calhoun, J. C, of Carolina, 106, 195. 
 
 Calmeil (French alienist), 198. 
 
 Calvinism among the Quakers, 16, 20, 24, 76, 228. 
 
 Calypso and her islands, 139. 
 
 Camisoles (strait jackets), 165, 167, 324. 
 
 Canada, 56, 107. 
 
398 
 
 Canals of Venice, iiS. 
 Canaris (Greek admiral), 33. 
 Candidates for medical degrees, 56, 1S5. 
 Candidates for the Presidency, 37, 107, 216, 224, 
 
 230, 236, 251. 
 Candles in churches, 129, 138, 204. 
 Candor of Dr. Earle, 60, 163, 256, 313. 
 Cane-fields in Cuba, 208, 214. 
 Canning, George, quoted, 36, 135. 
 Captains of Greek vessels, 33 ; of whale-ships, 
 
 33- 
 Capuchins in Malta, 140. 
 Cardenas in Cuba, 209-213. 
 Care of the insane in asylums, viii-xiv, 96, 143, 
 
 145. 15s. 159. 161. 166. 167-172. 175. i77> 178- 
 
 182, 245, 246, 254, 261-265, 275, 277, 309, 314, 
 
 321-333, 363-371- 
 Care of the insane in families, xiv, 275, 278. 
 Carolina, South, visited, 190-195. 
 Caroline (Canadian steamer), 107. 
 Card-making by the Earie famiij', 2, 5, 9, 11-13, 
 
 3S6. 
 Card-playing, 255, 2S5. 
 Carriages in America, 11, 29; in Cuba, 203, 210 ; 
 
 in England, 70, 78; in France, 78, loi ; in the 
 
 Alps, 115. 
 Cases and persons in recoveries, 267, 302, 313, 
 
 373- 
 Cass, Lewis (American statesman), 37, loi, 107, 
 
 119, 225. 
 Catholic abbe, 115. 
 Catholic ceremonies, 204, 211. 
 Catholics at Christmas, 54 ; at Paris, 84 ; at 
 
 Malta, 13S. 
 Causes of insanity, 154, 297 ; of death, 145, 160 ; 
 
 of recovery, 313. 
 Ceiba, a tropical tree, 208. 
 Chace, Mrs. E. B., 30, 42. 
 Chaining the insane, 95, 97, 133, 137, 324, 331. 
 Chalons, France, 119. 
 
 Chamber of Deputies, Paris, 106; of the Ameri- 
 can .Senate, 226, 229, 230. 
 Champs iSlysees, Paris, 106. 
 Channing, EUerj' (Concord poet), quoted, 11. 
 Channing, Walter (father of Ellery), 58. 
 Channing, William Ellery, D.D. (brother of 
 
 Walter), 58, 59, 283. 
 Chaptal, French chemist, 97, 98, loi. 
 Charborough, English seat of the Earles, i. 
 Charenton asylum, 97, 1S8, 327. 
 Charitd, French hospital, 119 ; in Berlin, 169. 
 Charities, Board of, xii, 260, 262, 267, 375. 
 Charities, Conference of, xiv, 278, 309, 320. 
 Charities of Paris, 97, 109. 
 Charles I. of England, i, 2. 
 Charleston, S.C, 25, 190, 195, 198, 378-381. 
 Charlestown, W. Va., 196. 
 Chase, Anthony (brother-in-law of Dr. Earle), 
 
 21, 380. 
 
 Chase, Charles A. (son of Anthony), 391-394. 
 
 Chase, Lucy and Sarah, 3S5. 
 
 Chase, Pliny Earle (son of Anthony), 238. 
 
 Chase, Salmon Portland (statesman), 252. 
 
 Chasing a Greek, 123. 
 
 Chastisement of the insane, vii, ix, 96, 177, 178, 
 
 327- 
 Chateau of Chillon, 114. 
 Cheating the insane, 146, 277. 
 Chemical restraint, 160, 167, 171. 
 Chenda (Richenda Gumey, sister of Mrs. Frj'), 
 
 73- 
 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, 58. 
 Chillon, 114. 
 
 " Childe Harold," quoted, 113, 117, 129, 139. 
 Children of Pliny Earle, Sr., 4, 6, 21, 26, 313. 
 Children of Israel, loS, 132. 
 Chimerical theories of curability, 270-273. 
 Chios (Scio), 131, 138. 
 Choate, Dr.;G. C. S. (alienist), x, 255. 
 Choice of profession, 21, 27, 314. 
 Cholmondeley (an English famil}'), 66. 
 Chorophylakes, 125. 
 
 Christ Jesus, mentioned, 17, 18, 129, 326. 
 Christianity, 130, 157, 225, 228, 281, 287. 
 Christmas in Philadelphia, 54 ; in Europe, 136. 
 Churches in Cuba, 204, 210; in Greece, 129; in 
 
 Washington, 225, 227, 229. 
 Cicero, mentioned, 301. 
 Ciconium }naculatum, tried, 155. 
 Cigars in Cuba, 202 ; in England, So. 
 Circus (Stadium) of Herodes Atticus, 121. 
 Citadel of Athens, 122; of Malta, 142. 
 Citadhie (a French cab), 103 . 
 Citizens of Athens, 121-123; of Cuba, 203; of 
 
 Paris, 99 ; of London, 63 ; of Philadelphia, 
 
 55. 228. 
 City of Havana, 203 ; of Washington, 223-237. 
 Civility of Spaniards, 216. 
 Civilization in America, 13, 56, 195 ; in England, 
 
 So. 
 Civil War in -'Vmerica (1S61-1865), 197, 238, 240, 
 
 244, 247, 251-253, 25s. 256, 259, 260. 
 Civil War in Cuba, 219; in Hungary, 181. 
 Clinical instruction in asylums, 169, 184, 185, 
 
 253. 
 Coaching in England in 1837, 61, 78.! 
 Coat of the Quakers, 16, 80, 81, 353. 
 Cock-fight in Cuba, 211. 
 Cocoa palms, Cuba, 206. 
 Coeducation of Quaker children, 36, 49, 67, 68, 
 
 71. 75- 
 Coffee, how grown in Cuba, 209 ; how made in 
 
 Europe, 142. 
 Cognomen of Yankees (Jonathan Doolittle), 41, 
 
 79- 
 Collection of European plants, 128, 143, 147. 
 Colonel Trumbull (historical painter), 53, 378, 
 
 380. 
 
399 
 
 Colonial life in Cuba, 210-21S. 
 
 Colonization of the insane, 276, 277. 
 
 Colony of Gheel, 163, 275, 317. 
 
 Columbia, District of, 223. 
 
 Columbus, his burial, 204, 205 ; epitaph, 204. 
 
 Comet of 1834, 52- 
 
 Comitat of Buda, iSi. 
 
 Commissions of Lunacy, 275, 27S, 375. 
 
 Commission, Sanitary, 23S, 255. 
 
 Committee of the Conference of Charities, 27S. 
 
 Communication in war time, 248. 
 
 Community-asylum of Gheel, 317. 
 
 Concord CMass.), 11, 156, 225, 245, 378-580; Con- 
 cord (N.H.), 48. 
 
 Conference of Charities, xiv, 27S, 309, 320. 
 
 Conferences in Paris, 83, 104, no. 
 
 Congress in session, 218, 223, 225, 229, 238, 244, 
 250. 
 
 Congressmen, 195, 216, 223, 236, 23S, 245, 251, 
 252, 258. 
 
 Connecticut, the river, 47; the State, 51, 52, 
 246, 379. 
 
 Connection between asylums and hospitals, 159, 
 162, 165, 169, 17s, 183, 1S4, 239, 241, 245, 277. 
 
 Constantinople, 113, 133, 137, 142, 178, 194, 308, 
 330. 
 
 Conway, Martin F. (in Congress from Kansas), 
 245. 
 
 Conway, Moncure Daniel, 225, 227. 
 
 Co-operation in care of the insane, 303, 309. 
 
 Cooper River in Carolina, 191. 
 
 Copenhagen, 171. 
 
 Copley (American artist), 378, 380. 
 
 Corfu, scenes in, 129, 130. 
 
 Corinth, 120. 
 
 Coronation of Victoria, 91, 384. 
 
 Corn-fields in Cuba, 208. 
 
 Cotton in Carolina, 195 ; cotton manufacture, 
 5, 12. 
 
 Count of Paris, 106, 112. 
 
 Counts Orsoni and Ugoni (Italians), 103. 
 
 Coiu^-house scene, 221. 
 
 Cousins of Dr. Earle, 30, 42, 49, Si, 94, no, 
 313. 349> 356, 391- 
 
 Cousins of the Gumeys of Earlham, 64, 72, 74, 
 86, 88, 105, 282. 
 
 Co\\'per, quoted, 79. 
 
 Coxe, Sir James, 275. 
 
 Crackers of Georgia, 197. 
 
 Crag of Mount Hope, 31; of Mount Washing- 
 ton, 46. 
 
 Crawford family of the White Mountains, 44-47. 
 
 " Crazy doctors," 145, 260, 270. 
 
 Creation and miracle, 287. 
 
 Creature-comforts of Friends, 80, 85, log. 
 
 Crisis of the Civil War, 242-250. 
 
 Critical writings of Dr. Earle, 145, 189, 317-320. 
 
 Crockett, David, 116. 
 
 Crops in Cuba, 206-210. 
 
 Cross and Crescent, 135. 
 
 Crowding of insane hospitals, 159, 181. 
 
 Crowds at the White House, 223, 232, 249. 
 
 Croydon, school at, 71. 
 
 Cruel vivisection, 92, 1 19. 
 
 Cruel treatment of the insane, vii, 95-97, 137, 
 
 155, 174, 177, 33'- 
 Crying of the insane, 365. 
 Cuba, a colony of Spain, 202-219, 292. 
 Cuba and Fanny Martini, 292. 
 Cuba and the slave-trade, 218. 
 Cuban amusements, 205, 206, 210-213, 2i5- 
 Cuban army in 1852, 210; Cuban churches, 204, 
 
 2io; their worshippers, 204, 211. 
 Cuban bull-fight, 212. 
 
 Cuban climate, 203, 208; country life, 207-211. 
 Cuban festivals, 210-215; furniture, 217. 
 Cuban houses, 207, 208; in Havana, 203 ; their 
 
 inmates, 215, 217. 
 Cuban indolence, 218; its causes, 218. 
 Cuban insurrection, 210, 219; cultivated crops, 
 
 203, 208, 2IO. 
 
 Cuban landscape, 202, 208, 214. 
 Cuban machetes, 208 ; their use, 209. 
 Cuban manners, 202, 206, 211, 214, 216, 217. 
 Cuban negligence, 208; negroes, 206, 209, 211, 
 
 218. 
 Cuban plantations, 207; of coffee, 210; and of 
 
 sugar, 208. 
 Cuban roads, 210; rebels, 210. 
 Cuban sugar-making, 209. 
 Cuban surrender to the United States, 219. 
 Curability of the insane, xi, 166, 175, 182, 187, 
 
 262, 281, 302, 312, 318, 372. 
 Curability of Insanity (the volume), 318. 
 Cures, how recorded, 272; often repeated, 3761 
 Cures reported diminishing, 182. 
 Cursory view of recoveries for 60 years, 374-377. 
 Curtis, Judge B. R., 229. 
 Custody of the insane, xiv. 
 Customs of the English, 78 ; of the French, 78, 
 
 99; of the Greeks, 120; of the Turks, 136. 
 Cyclades, 138. 
 Cypresses in Turkey, 137. 
 
 Daily routine of asylums, 254, 298, 299. 
 
 Dalton, Dr., color-blind, 344, 358. 
 
 Damascus, mentioned, 140. 
 
 Damerow, Dr. (German alienist), 164, 165, 180, 
 
 295. 
 Daniels (a journalist), 21. 
 Daniel Webster (American statesman), 37, 195, 
 
 216. 
 Dan Jenkins, 7. 
 
 "Dante" (French steamer), 131. 
 Danube, 18 1. 
 Danvers Hospital, exxessive cost of, 268, 311, 
 
 312. 
 
 Danvers Hospital, recoveries at, 312. 
 
400 
 
 Dartmouth (a town), 2 ; a college, 37, 48, 356. 
 
 Dam-in, Erasmus, 74; Charles, 319, 381. 
 
 Davis, Mrs. P. W., igq, 200. 
 
 Days of the week, Quaker style, 40, 387- 
 
 Deaf children, 29, 51, 279, 367. 
 
 Dean Swift, mentioned, 112. 
 
 Death and Mind, 281, 287, 362. 
 
 Death of Dr. Earle, 315; of Mary Earle, 314; of 
 Patience Earle, 187 j of Sarah Earle, 42. 
 
 Death-rate of the insane, 265, 266. 
 
 Deaths at Blackwell's Island, 162, 220; atTewks- 
 bury, 220. 
 
 Deceiving the insane, 146. 
 
 Deceptive statistics, 187, 271, 374. 
 
 Deerfield, N.H., 24. 
 
 Demoniac possession, viii. 
 
 Descent of the American Earles, 1-3, 37S. 
 
 Despondency, 187, 274. 
 
 Detention of the insane, xiv, 278. 
 
 De Wolf family, 31, 37. 
 
 Dialogues with patients, 8i, 87, 96, 323, 329. 
 
 Diaries of Dr. Earle, 29-34, 36-39, 48-53, 69-72, 
 76, 77, 85-89, 95, 100, 107, no, 199, 202-21S, 
 223-227, 232-236, 240, 244-255, 257-260. 
 
 Dickens, Charles (novelist), 61, 289, 291. 
 
 Dickinson, Miss Anna, her speech, 256. 
 
 Diligence (French coach), 78; Italian coach, 115. 
 
 Dinners in Europe, 102, 104, 142; in Washing- 
 ton, 237, 243, 247. 
 
 Dionyso in Attica, 125. 
 
 "Dipper," the constellation, 198. 
 
 Discord among the Quakers, 17-20, 228, 286. 
 
 Dispute over Curability, xi, 270, 302, 312. 
 
 Dissipation in Charleston, 192-195; in Cuba, 
 211-214; in Washington, 226, 237. 
 
 Distribution of the insane, 220, 264, 265, 278. 
 
 District asylums, 276. 
 
 Dix, Miss Dorothea L., xii, xv, 246, 250, 256, 261, 
 262; her mission, 305-307, 309, 314; her limita- 
 tions, 306, 308 ; friendship for Dr. Earle, 305, 
 309. 3'o- 
 
 Doctors of medicine, mentioned: Bancroft, J. P., 
 x; Bartlett, E., 40, 94, 356; Bates, 272; Bell, 
 L. v., 145, 273, 303; Hergmann, i6g; Brigham, 
 158, 221, 293-295; Brown, D. T., 235; Browne, 
 W. F. A., 375; Butler, J. S., 159; Calmeil, 
 188; Chandler, G., x, 386; Channing: 
 Walter, Sr., 58; Damerow, 164, 165, 180; 
 Esquirol, 327; P'errier, Miss, 100; Fer- 
 rus, 95; Flemming, 171; Flint, of North- 
 hampton, 40 ; Focke, 167; Forel, 253; Fother- 
 gill, 74; Gall, 59; Gait, 27.; Godding, W. W., 
 254-256, 300; Griscom, 49; Hare, 54; Hol- 
 brook, 196; Holmes, O. W., 10, 94, 185; 
 Howe, S. G., xiv, 59, 98, 238, 305; Idcler, 
 169; Jacob!, 164, 166, 170; Jarvis, Edward, x, 
 156; Jcsscn, 171; Julius, 303; Kirkbride, x; 
 Klotz, 170; Laehr, 164, 180, 294; Leuret, 95; 
 Martini, 164, 171-173, 290; Millingen, Julius, 
 
 '33) 136; Mitchell, A., 275, 375; Nichols, 223, 
 ei seq.; Nims, 266, 279; Nugent, 301; 
 Paetz, 165, 179; Pienitz, 171, 172; Pinel, 
 96, 324; Ranney, M., 220; Ray, x, xi, 145, 
 158, 221, 303; Riedel, 170, 176; Rockwell, 
 176; Roederer, 180; Roeser, 123 ; Roller, 171; 
 Rush, B., viii, 144; Sawj'er, 300; Snell, 167, 
 301; Spurzheim (alienist), 164; Spurzheim 
 (phrenologist), 59 ; Stevens, 255 ; Symmachus 
 (Roman physician), 185; Thumam, J., ix, 
 302, 304; Todd, 159; Tschallener, 176; Tuke, 
 D. H., 300-302; Van Deventer, 183; Viz- 
 sanik, 173-175; Walker, C, x; Warren, 
 Mason, 91: Williams, C. H., 304; Wise, 
 P. M., 162; Woodward, R., 356; Woodward, 
 S., ix, X, 154, 166, 310; Worthington, 300; 
 Zeller, 179. 
 
 Doctrine of easy curability, xi, 270; refuted by 
 Dr. Earle, xiv, 302. 
 
 Domestic industry, 10 ; suited to the insane, 284. 
 
 Domo d' Ossola, 115. 
 
 "Dorothy, the Hermitess," 307. 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A. (statesman), 229, 251. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, freedman and orator, 208. 
 
 Drinking wine in England, 80, 85 ; in Greece, 
 127. 
 
 Drunkenness, reported as insanity, 175, 373. 
 
 Dublin visited, 81, 83. 
 
 Duchess of Berri, 96; of Orleans, 106, 112. 
 
 Duchy of Baden, 171, 184; of Nassau, 16S. 
 
 Earle ancestry, 1-4. 
 
 Earle artists, 319, 378-382. 
 
 Earle, Eliza (sister of Dr. Earle), 23, 26, 35, 39, 
 
 50, 68, iiS. 
 Earle, Frances, 6, 279, 393. 
 Earle, Joan, i. 
 Earle, John Milton (brother of Dr. Earle), 2, 25, 
 
 59. "o. 279, 387- 
 Earle, Jonah, uncle of Dr. E., 12, 152; 
 
 (brother), 152, 153, 293. 
 Earle, Lucy (sister of Dr. Earle), 21, 26, 34, 146, 
 
 190, 236, 285, 293. 
 Earle, Mary (cousin of Dr. Earle), 313. 
 Earle, Patience (mother of Dr. Earle), i, 6, 14, 
 
 16, 28, 42, 59, 144, 152, 153, 187, 313, 385, 387- 
 Earle, Pliny, Sr., i, 2, 4-6, 7-14, 16, 28, 59, 313, 
 
 386. 
 Earle, Pliny, M.D. (b. Dec. 31, 1809; d. May, 
 
 17, 1892), his ancestry, 1-4; childhood and 
 schooling, 6-10; studies and teaches at Provi- 
 dence, 17, 22, 23, 26, 36-39; begins travelling, 
 29-34; trip to White Mountains, 42-48; studies 
 medicine, 50-58 ; takes degree at Philadelphia, 
 March, 1S37, 591 sa'ls for England, 59-61; 
 introduced in Quaker society, 61-72; explores 
 Great Britain and Ireland, 77-83 ; describes 
 York Retreat, 303; crosses to Paris, 83; re- 
 visits England (1838), 84-89; life at Paris, 95- 
 
40I 
 
 lis; visits Belgium and Holland, in; ill in 
 Belgium and Paris, 111-113; visits Switzer- 
 land, 113; and Italy, 116; sails from Venice 
 for Greece, iiS; incident at Patras, 120; ad- 
 ventures in Attica, 121-12S; sails for Smyrna 
 and the Bosphorus, 130; incidents in Asia and 
 Constantinople, 133-137. 320; voyage in the 
 Archipelago, 131; interview with a Jewish 
 astrologer, 132; inspects Malta, 13S; quaran- 
 tined there, 140; visits Naples, Rome, and 
 Florence, iiS; sails for home, 119; practises 
 in Philadelphia, 144; appointed physician at 
 the Frankford Retreat, 146; and superintend- 
 ent at Bloomingdale, N.Y., 151; his early 
 methods of treatment, 155 ; labors at Bloom- 
 ingdale (1844-49), i57-i62; revisits Europe, 
 163; inspects the European asylums, 163-186; 
 reports on those of Germany, 166-1S3 ; returns 
 to New York, 1S7 ; but soon removes to 
 Leicester, 1S7 ; practice and lectures in New 
 York, 188, 189; visits South Carolina (1852), 
 190-197; travels in Cuba, 202-219; meets the 
 reformers at Eagleswood, N.J., 19S-201 ; in 
 New York and Washington (1853-61), 220- 
 238 ; service at Washington in the Civil War, 
 239-260; superintendent of the Northampton 
 Hospital for Insane (1864-85), 261-279 ; 
 general view of his life and character, 280- 
 315 ; his treatise on " Curability of the Insane," 
 269-273, 311, 318; his writings, early and late, 
 317-376; his death, 315; his tribute to Miss 
 Dix, 310. 
 
 Earle, Ralph (first American Earle), i, 2 ; the 
 second Ralph, 2 ; third, 2-4. 
 
 Earle, Ralph, the artist, 378. 
 
 Earle, Robert, 3, 4; Robert, Jr., 4. 
 
 Earle, Sarah (Mrs. Hadwen), 26, 34, 35, 39-42 ; 
 dies (1834), 42 ; mentioned, 77, 387. 
 
 Earle, Silas (uncle of Dr. E.), 12, 30. 
 
 Earle, Thomas (brother of Dr. E.), 12, 17-20, 
 59. 144. 387. 
 
 Earle, William Buff urn (brother of Dr. E.), 17, 
 21, 293, 385. 388. 
 
 Earle family, color-blindness in, 349, 354. 
 
 Earlham (home of the Gumeys), 64, 74. 
 
 Early treatment of insane, vii-ix, 66, 95, 137, 145, 
 174, 182, 261, 271, 304, 307, 32I-33.'?. 362- 
 
 Earnings of the insane, 170, 177, iSo, 263. 
 
 Eastern travels of Dr. Earle, 120-143, 330-333. 
 
 East Room of the White House, 232, 250. 
 
 Eberbach in Germany, 167, 168. 
 
 Ecclesiastical treatment of the insane, vii, 317. 
 
 Economy in hospital management, 160, 172, 263, 
 269, 275, 29S, 311. 
 
 Economy of life, ii, 13, 99, 187. 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, mentioned, 13. 
 
 Editors of medical journals, 161, 165, 167, iSo, 
 1S2, 187, 255, 280, 293-297, 302, 319, 320, 342, 
 346. 359-361. 372- 
 
 Editors of newspapers, 21, 25, 59, 225, 238, 27S, 
 
 310, 371, 386. 
 Education of Dr. Earle, 6-10, 22, 50, 56, 59, 95, 
 
 382. 
 Education, medical, in America, 56, 94, 144, 184- 
 
 i86, 253, 306; in Germany, 165, 1S4. 
 Educative statistics, 158, 161, 182, 190, 267, 302, 
 
 312, 372-377- 
 Election of Presidents, 59, 107, 216, 224, 230, 
 
 236, 244, 251, 260, 383. 
 Elevation of sentiment, 282, 286-288. 
 Elias Hicks (Quaker minister), 16-20, 76, 228. 
 Elmore, Andrew E. (of Wisconsin), 276. 
 Elys^es, Champs (Paris), 106. 
 Emancipation in America, 25, 90, 108, 197, 202, 
 219, 240, 252, 254, 258, 263 ; in Cuba, 202, 219; 
 in England, 78, 87, 90, 383, 109; in France, 
 100, 106, 108. 
 Emerson, Edward, mentioned, 77 ; R. W., 
 
 quoted, 77, 137. 
 Employment of the insane, 143, 160, 166, 170, 
 
 177, 179, 184, 263, 284, 2S8, 298. 
 Encyclopedic dinners, 102-104. 
 England and America compared, 68, 80, 85. 
 England and France, 103, 105, 109, 112, 119, 164. 
 England in 1837, 61-71 ; in 1838, 84-91, in 1849, 
 
 2S9; in 1871, 274-276; in 1873, 297. 
 England, revisited, 274, 289. 
 English customs, 70, 73, 78, 85, 99, 286, 381. 
 English life, 79-82, 85, 87, 91, 286. 
 Englishmen, 38, 61, 66, 69, 75, 78, 86, 90, 103, 
 109, 112, 115, 124, 133, 135, 140, 150, 157, 161, 
 164, 174, 182, 225, 270, 272, 280, 289, 292. 
 English Quakers, 61-64, 80, 85, 87, 282, 2S6 ; at 
 school, 68, 71; in Paris, 83, 84, 104-106, 108- 
 iio, 119, 282. 
 Englishwomen, 47, 61-63, 65, 69-74, 79. 84, 86, 
 87, 90, 91-100, 104-106, 109, 124, 282, 289, 322. 
 Entertainments at asylums, 146, 155, 177, 246, 
 
 254, 285, 294, 298, 314. 
 Entertainments in England, 69, 70, 72, 80, 85-90 ; 
 in Paris, 100, 102-108, no; in South Carolina, 
 192-195; in Washington, 223, 230, 231, 233, 
 236-238, 248-251, 258. 
 Epidaurus in Greece, 147. 
 Epigrams of Charles Lamb, 66; of Martial, 185 ; 
 
 of Samuel Rogers, 290 ; of Wordsworth, 306. 
 Epileptic insanity, 221. 
 
 Epitaph of Columbus, 204; of Ralph Earle, 382. 
 Esquirol (French alienist), 97, 327-329. 
 Estimate of curability, xi, 158, 161, i65, 169, 172, 
 175, 182, 187, 220, 262, 267, 270-273, 302, 311, 
 372-377- 
 Eubcea, mentioned, 124, 126. 
 European tour of Dr. Earle in 1S37-39, 59, 61- 
 143. 308, 321-333; in 1849, 163-184, 2S5, 289; 
 in 1 87 1, 274-276. 
 Examples of good asylums, 52, 154, 165, 170, 
 172, 179, 275. 
 
402 
 
 Expert evidence, 171, 190, 221, 222, 314. 
 Extravagance in hospital building, 268, 269, 277, 
 
 284, 309, 311. 
 Eyes and color-blindness, 299, 319, 320, 342-361. 
 
 F., Dr. (German alienist), 167. 
 
 Family care for the insane, 275-278, 299, 317. 
 
 Family of the Earles, 1-16, 21, 26-30, 35, 39-42, 
 
 110, 144, 152, 1S7, 220, 313, 346, 349-356, 361, 
 
 378-386. 
 Faro of Italy, 1 18. 
 Feast of Bairam, 136, 330. 
 Feasting in Charleston, 192, 194; in Cuba, 211- 
 
 215; in Eagleswood, 200. 
 Ferrier, Miss (homoeopathist), 100. 
 Fetters on the insane, viii, 95, 137, 174, 331. 
 Finlay, George, 121. 
 Fitzjames, Lady, 100. 
 Florence, Italy, gg, iig. 
 Forel, Dr. Auguste, 253, 275. 
 Forster, Anne (English Quaker), 91-93 ; Josiah, 
 
 76, 8g; Robert, 76, 83, 90; William E. (Eng- 
 lish statesman), 87, 89, gi, g3. 
 Fothergill, Dr., ix, 66, 74, 75. 
 Fox, Anna Maria, 84, 86, 90; Caroline, 84, 86, 
 
 90, log; George, 64, 77, 225, 288. 
 France visited, 83, 94-no, 112, 119, 275, 324- 
 
 329- 
 Frankford, Pa. (Friends' Retreat), 146, 149, 151. 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main, 163, 168. 
 Franklin, Dr., mentioned, viii, 58, 66, 75, 117. 
 Fredericksburg, Va., 242. 
 French characters, 54, 92, 94, 96, 98, 102, 106, 
 
 119, 208, 241, 324,327, 347. 
 French, D. C. (sculptor), 52. 
 French physicians, 94-98, loi, 323, 328, 358-359, 
 
 366. 
 Friends (Quakers), 24, 26, 30, 40, 49, 61-77, 80, 
 
 84, 86>-go, 104-109, 146, 149, 199, 228, 281, 286, 
 
 290, 299, 302-304, 313, 347, 353, 383, 387, 392. 
 Friends' Boarding-school, 10, 17, 22, 34, 42, 46- 
 
 50, 71, 231, 255, 388. 
 Fry, Joseph (husband of Mr3. Fry), 64, 72, 76, 
 
 83, 84. 
 
 Fry, Mrs. Elizabeth, 62, 63, 65, 70-74, 76, 78, 83, 
 
 84, 86, 89, 100, 104-106, loS-iii, 119. 
 
 Gales, Joseph, 225. 
 
 Galignani (newspaper), 113, 125, 127. 
 
 Gall, Dr. (phrenologist), 59, 359. 
 
 Gallaudet, T. H., 52. 
 
 Garrison, W. L., 90, 108, 293. 
 
 General paralysis, 161, 168, 178, 181. 
 
 Geneva visited, 113, 114. 
 
 "Genius and Degeneration" (Dr. Hirsch), 
 
 quoted, viii. 
 George I., King of Greece, 33. 
 German asylums, xiii, 161-186, 318, 319, 334-341. 
 Gheel in Belgium, viii, 163, 275, 317, 319, 367. 
 
 Girls in Greece, 128; in the White House, 233. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., mentioned, 301. 
 
 Godding, Dr. W. W., 254-256, 300. 
 
 Godfrey, Dr., 109. 
 
 Goodell, Rev. W., 133, 134. 
 
 Governors of Massachusetts, 16, 185, 379. 
 
 Gozo, the island, 139. 
 
 Grasmere, N.H., insane asylum, 137. 
 
 Grecian ruins, 122, 126. 
 
 Greece visited, 120-130, 147, 194. 
 
 Greek brigands, 124, 125. 
 
 Greek character, 123, 135. 
 
 Greene, Thomas (New Bedford), no. 
 
 Grimkd sisters, 25, 26, 83, 199, 200. 
 
 Griscom, Dr. John (a Quaker), 49, 53, 54, 58, 
 
 107. 
 Griswold, Bishop, 38. 
 Guines in Cuba, 207, 213. 
 Gummere, Samuel, 42, 48. 
 
 Gumey, Elizabeth (Mrs. Fry), (see under Fry). 
 Gumey, John, 64; Joseph John, 34, 5i, 62, 69, 
 
 70, 74-76, 228. 
 Gumey, Louisa, 65. 
 Gumey, Samuel, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 74-76, 83, 
 
 86-87. 
 Gumey, the family, 61-65, 68, 72-74, 78, 104, 228. 
 Guraeyites, 228. 
 
 Hacker, Sarah E., 394; William, 387. 
 Hadwen, Charles, 23, 39-41; Sarah Earle, 21, 
 
 26, 34, 35. 39. 42. 153. 
 Hale, John Parker (statesman), 225, 226, 229, 
 
 238. 
 Hall in Austria, 176, 177. 
 Halleck, Fitz-Greene (poet), 32. 
 Ham House, England, 70-74, 86. 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 380. 
 Hanover, N.H., 48. 
 Hare, A. J. H., 104. 
 Hare, Robert, 54. 
 Hastings, Seth, M.C., 22. 
 Hayne, R. Y., 17. 
 Hays, Catharine (Irish singer), 191. 
 Hays, Dr. Isaac, 346, 360, 361. 
 Heber, Bishop, 63-66. 
 Hebrew charlatan, 132, 133. 
 Hermitage of Gen. Jackson, 382. 
 Hicks, Elias (Quaker), 16-20, 75, 76. 
 Hill, Dr., at Athens, 121, 128. 
 Holland visited, in, 182, 183, 322. 
 Holmes, O. W., 10, 52, 94, 185. 
 Homoeopathy, 100, 186. 
 Hooker, Gen. Joseph, 240, 243, 244, 247, 248, 
 
 259. 
 Howe, S. G. (philanthropist) xiv, xv, 33, 208, 
 
 238. 305- 
 Hospitals at Augusta, Me., 272: at Berlin, 169; 
 
 at Bloomingdale, 152, 155, 157-162; at Charen- 
 
 ton, 97, 327; at Constantinople, 136, 308,330; 
 
403 
 
 at Danvers, 268, 276, 311; at Northampton, 
 160, 253, 25s, 261-267, 273, 277, 279; the Penn- 
 sylvania, ix; at Vienna, 173-175; in Washing- 
 ton, 223, 236, 239, 241, 245, 246, 254-256, 258. 
 
 Hudson, 149. 
 
 Humor of Dr. Earle, 31, 36, 45, 51, 56, 142, 212. 
 
 Hutchinson, Thomas, Tory governor, 379. 
 
 Hydra (Greek island), 33. 
 
 Hymettus, 122, 147. 
 
 Ideal and Real, 289. 
 
 Ideler, Dr., of Berlin, 169, 185. 
 
 Idols, 156, 306. 
 
 Ignorance of early care-takers of insane, vii, ix, 
 
 164, 306, 374. 
 Illenau, asylum at, 165, 171. 
 Imagination, function of, 289. 
 Inner Light, 281, 287, 315. 
 Insane, care of, vii-xiii, 143, 146, 154-162, 164- 
 
 190, 246, 254, 262-266, 275-279, 281, 2S2, 298, 
 
 304, 309, 363-370- 
 Insanity, curability of, xi, 158, 161, 166, 182, 186, 
 
 262, 267, 270-273, 302, 311, 312, 318, 372-379- 
 Insanity increasing, xi, 297, 361. 
 Insanity little understood, viii-xi, 362, 364, 367. 
 Insanity, mistakes about, xiv, 363, 366, 368, 370, 
 
 372, 376- 
 Instruction to medical students, 171, 184-186. 
 Ireland visited, 81, S2. 
 Italian language, 116-118, 329. 
 Italy visited, 113, 115, 117, 119, 197, 383- 
 
 Jackson, General Andrew, 107, 235, 383. 
 Jacobi (German alienist), 164, 166, 170, 297, 334. 
 Jamaica, 61, 384. 
 James I. of England, 24. 
 Jar\'is, Edward, M.D., ix, 166. 
 Jesus Christ mentioned, 92, 129, 227, 282, 287. 
 Jewish rabbi, 132. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew (American President), 236, 252. 
 Journal of Insanity, xii, 186, 255, 280, 294-296, 
 
 318. 
 Journal 0/ Mental Sciences, 154, 161, 187, 317, 
 
 346, 375. 376. 
 Journal 0/ Psychiatry (German), 165. 
 Jourtial 0/ Social Science, 320. 
 Jullien de Paris, 102-104. 
 
 Kalamata, 135. 
 
 Kalymnos, sponge-fishery at, 141. 
 
 Kanaris (Greek admiral), 33. 
 
 Kansas, State of, 225, 226, 229, 233, 245. 
 
 Kapheneion (Greek caf^), 127. 
 
 Keith, George, early Quaker, 17. 
 
 Kendal, England, 86. 
 
 Kentucky, 128, 156. 
 
 Kephissia (Greek village), 124, 125, 127, 134. 
 
 Keswick, England, 64. 
 
 Kirkbride, Eliza 63 ; Kirkbride, Dr., x. 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, 147, 149. 
 
 Knight, Anne (English Quakeress), 100, loi, 108, 
 
 no, 282. 
 Knights of Malta, 141. 
 Know-nothing party, 224, 231. 
 Koraki, Kotroni, etc. (Greek mountains), 126. 
 
 Labor in asylums, 159, 160, 166, 168, 170, 172, 
 177; 179, 184, 263, 265, 329, 365. 
 
 Laehr, Dr. Heinrich (German alienist), 164, 180, 
 294. 295i 318, 340- 
 
 Lady Bethune, 100; Lady Byron, 71, 124; Lady 
 Fitzjames, 100 ; Lady Spencer, 139. 
 
 Lafayette, Gen., 15, 16. 
 
 Lakes of England and Scotland, 82, 122. 
 
 Lamartine (French statesman), 106. 
 
 Landor, W. S., quoted, 293. 
 
 Landseer, Sir Edwin, 379, 381. 
 
 Lane, Miss Harriet, 235, 238. 
 
 Latin fable, vii ; verse of Avienus, 287. 
 
 Lausanne, 144. 
 
 "Lavengro" of Borrow, cited, 74. 
 
 Leicester, Mass., 1-5, 9, 13, 20, 23, 26-28, 29, 33, 
 39> 48. 50) 55. 59. 125, 144, 152, 187, 190, 220, 
 253. 293, 315. 346, 381-390, 39»- 
 
 Leipzig, mentioned, 165. 
 
 Leman, Lake, 113. 
 
 Leslie, C. R., quoted, 379, 381. 
 
 Letters: of Dr. E. Bartlett, 94; of Dr. A. Brig- 
 ham, 294, 295; of Arnold Buffum, 21 ; of Re- 
 becca Buffum (Spring), 313; of Miss D. L. 
 Dix, 261, 309; of J. Milton Earle, 25; of Mrs. 
 Patience Earle, 152; of Dr. Pliny Earle, 27, 
 48, 50, 54, 58, 81-83, 118, 146, 190, 136, 238, 
 285, 303 ; of Sarah Earle (Hadwen), 34, 35, 
 39-42; of Thomas Earle, 17, 19; of W. B. 
 Earle, 354; of Anne Forster, 91-93 ; of Dr. E. 
 Jarvis, 156; of Mrs. Fanny Kemble, 57; of 
 Anne Knight, 282 ; of Dr. H. Laehr, 295 ; of 
 Dr. M, Martini, 172 ; of Miss Fanny Martini, 
 290, 292; of Prof. S. F. B. Morse, 380; of 
 Mrs. Amelia Opie, 72-74 ; of E. A. Poe, 147 ; 
 of Admiral Smyth, 380 ; of Henry Thoreau, 
 198; of Dr. J. Thumam, 302; of Mrs. Dr. 
 Thurnam, 304; of Dr. D. H. Tuke, 297, 300; 
 of Samuel Tuke, 296; of Miss X., 286, 288. 
 
 Leubus, in Silesia, 172, 290, 335. 
 
 Leuret (French alienist), 95, 96, 319. 
 
 Levant, tour in the, 33, 118, 143. 
 
 Lexington, battle of, 319, 379. 
 
 Leyden, mentioned, 99. 
 
 "Life Harrud," 142. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham (American President), 219, 
 
 240, 244, 248-250, 251, 252, 254, 257-260. 
 Lincoln, Levi (Governor of Massachusetts), 16. 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Mary Anne, 248, 249. 
 Lincoln, Waldo, of Worcester, 386. 
 Lindpaintner, Kerr (founder of After Care), 168. 
 Lister, J. J. (English scientist), 69, 72, 76, 87. 
 
404 
 
 Lister (English surgeon), 91. 
 
 Lloyd, quoted, xiii. 
 
 Lobetinz, in Germany, 173. 
 
 Localities in Greece, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 
 
 214; in Leicester, 3, 4, 24, 50, 125, 153, 187, 
 
 315, 350. 351. 386-388. 
 Lombard Street, London, 65, 72. 
 London in 1837, 1S38, 62, 67, 70, 72-74, 76, 77, 
 
 79, 81, 85, 88, 91 ; in 1849, 289, 290. 
 London Quakers, 63-66, 76, 77, 79, 83, 85, 88, 90, 
 
 104-106. 
 London University, 85, 91. 
 Louis (French physician), 94, 95, loi, 119. 
 Louis Albert (Count of Paris), 112. 
 Louis Philippe, King of France, 106. 
 Love among Quakers, 41, 69, 90, 231, 286, 290, 
 
 291, 293. 
 Lowell, Mass., visited, 39. 
 Lyman, B. S., quoted, 58. 
 Lynn, Mass., visited, 41 ; mentioned, 43. 
 Lyric verse of Dr. Earle, 126, 147, 149. 
 
 Machine-cards, how made, 5, 9, 11. 
 
 Macintire, Mrs., 379. 
 
 Maelzel, chess-player, 365. 
 
 Magendie (French vivisector), 92, 94, 119. 
 
 Mahdi of Africa, 33. 
 
 Mahmoud (Turkish Sultan), 133, 136, 332. 
 
 Mahomet, 131, 330, 332. 
 
 Mahometans, 130, 136, 333. 
 
 Malta visited by Dr. Earle, 118, 120, 138-143; 
 
 by G. Sandys, 140. 
 Maltese insane, 143 ; language, 140. 
 Management of the insane by Dr. Earle, 276, 298. 
 Manchester, Eng., 82; Manchester, N.H., 137. 
 Mania, how treated, ix, 145. 
 Mann, Horace, American reformer, x. 
 "IMarathon, and Other Poems," 126, 147, 317. 
 Marathon visited, 124, 125-127, 134, 214. 
 Mario, Signor, and Jessie White, 201. 
 Marseilles visited, 119. 
 Martial's epigram on physicians, 185. 
 Massachusetts Boards of Charity and Lunacy, 
 
 xii, 260, 262, 278, 312, 375. 
 Massachusetts hospitals, x, iii, 154, 160, 166, 
 
 •85, 253. 255, 260, 261, 262-279, 3"> 362, 372- 
 
 376. 
 Massachusetts newspapers, 278, 310, 370, 371. 
 Maury family of Washington, 224, 231, 236, 237. 
 Mavrocordato, Alexander (Greek statesman), 
 
 '35- 
 Maxwell (Mrs., widow of James Earle), 379. 
 May, Rev. S. J., 25; Rev. Samuel, of Leicester, 
 
 XV, 24, 293, 384, 390. 
 Mazzini, Giuseppe (Italian revolutionist), 201. 
 McClelland, Governor (cabinet minister), 226, 
 
 230. 
 McLean Asylum, ix, 261, 271, 303, 372-375. 
 
 McLean, Judge 229, 230. 
 
 Medical societies, 141, 159, 259, 269,301, 384. 
 
 Medical trade-union, xii. 
 
 Medicine-giving in America and Europe, 100, 
 
 loi, 145, 160. 
 Melancholy in the Earle family, 187, 220, 314, 
 
 3Ss. 
 Metaphysical studies, 281, 286-2S9. 
 Miaulis fGreek admiral), 33. 
 Milan asylum, ra, 329. 
 Milan visited, 116. 
 Millingen, Dr. Julius, 133-136, 333. 
 Mind incapable of disease, 151, 281, 362. 
 Missionary work of JNIiss Dix, 307 ; of Pinel in 
 
 1793, 324. 
 Missolonghi mentioned, 32, 135. 
 Mitchell, Sir Arthur (Scotch alienist), 275, 375. 
 Morse, Prof. S. F. B., 379, 381. 
 Mott, Dr., 119. 
 Mountains in England, 83 ; in Greece, 122, 125, 
 
 127, 131; in New Hampshire, 44-48. 
 Mount Hope (King Philip's seat), 30, 31. 
 Mount Pentelicus in Greece, 126, 134, 147, 148. 
 Mount Pleasant in Leicester, 50, 51. 
 Mount Vesuvius ascended, 118. 
 Mount Washington climbed, 44-46; scenery 
 
 around, 47. 
 Movement for family care of the insane, xiv, 
 
 27s, 277- 
 Mulberry Grove (the Earle place in Leicester), 
 
 4, 26, 39, 125, 152, 387-390- 
 Muleteers in Cuba, 207. 
 
 Mummeries at Cardenas and Matanzas, 213, 214. 
 Munich visited by Dr. Earle, 177 ; by ISIr. San- 
 bom, 178. 
 Murray, John (publisher), letter to, 57. 
 Museum, British, mentioned, 85 ; at Charleston, 
 
 193- 
 Music of the Cuban slaves, 205 ; of Quakers, 32. 
 Musical ear defective in the color-blind, 352, 
 
 353- 
 Musical soiree at Charleston, 194. 
 Mutes at school, 29, 51. 
 Myopia and color-blindness, 361. 
 Mysteries of mesmerism, 58, 59, 289. 
 Mystical Quakerism, 90, 286-2S8. 
 
 Nantucket visited, 32-34. 
 
 Napoleon mentioned, 98, 208, 329. 
 
 Narrenthurm of Vienna, 173-175. 
 
 Nassau, duchy of, xv, 167, 168, 338. 
 
 National characteristics, 55, 78, 80, 99, 127, 132, 
 
 140, 184, 206, 217. 
 National Conference of Charities, 276, 278, 309, 
 
 3.8. 
 Navarino, in Greece, 135. 
 Navy of England, 378, 381 ; of the United States, 
 
 383. 
 
405 
 
 Nestor of alienists, 278. 
 
 Netherlands visited by Dr. Earle, no, in, 182, 
 322, 323 ; by Dr. Tuke, 183. 
 
 New Bedford mentioned, 2, 31, 8g, no. 
 
 Newbury in Whittier's verse, 25. 
 
 New England mentioned, viii, 7, 10, 11, 27, 29, 
 37. 49, S3. 54. 59, 76. i57, 198, 202, 283, 307, 
 
 ■ 310, 319. 
 
 Newenhara, Dr., 112. 
 
 Newgate prison, 62, 65, 71, 104. 
 
 New Hampshire visited by Dr. Earle, 42-48 ; 
 mentioned, vii, x, 24, 37, 107, 176, 195, 223, 225. 
 
 New Haven visited, 52, 53 ; mentioned, 378, 380. 
 
 New Jersey mentioned, 198, 221, 378. 
 
 New Orleans, 380, 3S2. 
 
 Newport, R.I., 60. 
 
 New York (the State), 121, 133, 163, 1S8, 221; 
 the city, 6, 38, 49, 53, 59, 160, 161, 162, 187, 
 188-190, 200, 220, 314, 373, 380. 
 
 Niagara mentioned, 380. 
 
 Nichols, Dr. Charles H., 223, 225, 226, 231, 232, 
 236, 239, 241, 248, 250, 253, 255. 
 
 Niedermann, Dr. (Hungarian alienist), 181. 
 
 Nietleben, Saxon asylum, 165, 334. 
 
 " Night Thoughts" of Young, 14. 
 
 Nims, Dr. Edward B. (successor of Dr. Earle), 
 266, 279. 
 
 Noel, Edward, English resident in Greece, 124; 
 Francis, 124 ; Roden, 292. 
 
 Nordau, Max, viii. 
 
 Northampton (the town), 260, 279, 390, 391-393 ; 
 (the hospital), 8, 160, 253, 255, 260-279, 298, 
 299, 3°i, 305, 309, 363, 365, 370, 388. 
 
 North Carolina mentioned, 17, 224. 
 
 Northern armies in the Civil War, 239, 241, 242- 
 248, 253, 254, 257, 259. 
 
 Notes of travel in New England, 29-53 ; in Eng- 
 land, 70, 72, 76-91; in France, 95-113; in 
 Central Europe, 113-116, 166-180; in Greece, 
 120-130; in Turkey, 130-137; in Malta, 138- 
 143; in Italy, 116-119; in Carolina, 190-198; 
 in Cuba, 202-218. 
 
 Nugent, Dr. (Irish alienist), 301. 
 
 Nimiber of recoveries of the insane, 158, 166, 
 182, 220, 271, 312, 372-377. 
 
 O'Beme, Dr., quoted, 92. 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 86, 112. 
 
 "Octogenarian's Soliloquy," 147. 
 
 Oddities among Quakers, 18, 71, 74, 79, 149, 378. 
 
 Odeon, Place de la (Paris), 99, loi, 112, 119. 
 
 Olmsted, Prof., 52, 53. 
 
 Olympus, Jupiter of, 121. 
 
 Odysseus (Greek chieftain), 197. 
 
 Opie, Mrs., 61, 63, 69, 72-74. 
 
 Orford, N.H.,48. 
 
 Orthodox Quakers, 16, 19, 20, 75, 228, 2S7. 
 
 Ossian, quoted, 131. 
 
 Otho (King of Greece), 122, 141. 
 Ottoman customs, 136, 137, 333. 
 Overend & Gumey, 65, 72, 74. 
 
 Pacific Ocean, 33, 381. 
 
 Paetz, Dr., 164, 165, 179, 301. 
 
 Paradise, Mahometan, 136, 352. 
 
 Paralysis, general, 161, 188. 
 
 Paresis, 161, 168, 178, 181, 188. 
 
 Paris visited by Dr. Earle, 20, 76, 94-99, 1 18. 
 
 Parkers of Washington, 236, 237. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 225. 
 
 Parliament, i, 82, 87, 109. 
 
 Parsons and insanity, viii. 
 
 Parsons, Dr. Usher, 10, 50. 
 
 Patients in asylums, ix, xi, xiv; Chaps. IV., etc., 
 
 passhn. 
 Patients classified in Massachusetts, 264. 
 Patras, 120, 125, 129. 
 
 Pauper laws, 265 ; pauper palaces, 268, 277, 311. 
 Paxton, Mass., 2, 125, 37S, 380. 
 Peale, Rembrandt, 42. 
 Pear-trees at Leicester, 8. 
 Pease family of England, 68, 83, 86, 90. 
 Penn Magaziiie, 148. 
 Penn, William, 3, 14, 17, 54. 71, ^46- 
 Pentelicus, Mount, 125, 126, 134, 147, 148. 
 Philadelphia, 3, 12, 13, 36, 54, 57, 59, 97, 144, 
 
 146-151, 199, 228, 254, 317, 383. 
 Philanthropists, xv, 58, 63, 74, 198, 308, 315. 
 Philip, King, 30. 
 Phillips Academy, vii, 37. 
 Philosophical Society, 58. 
 Phrenology, xi, 59, 149-151, 164, 359. 
 Physiologists, xiv, 193, 281, 297, 342. 
 Pickpocket in Washington, 235. 
 Pienitz, Dr., 171, 172. 
 Pierce, Franklin (President, 1853-57), 216, 223, 
 
 232, 234-236, 251. 
 Pikermi (in Greece), 124. 
 
 Pinel, Philippe, ix, 95, 97, 137, 164, 171, 323-327- 
 Pinel the younger, 95, 323, 324. 
 Pine Street Quaker meeting, 18, 199. 
 Pinkham, Lieutenant, 33. 
 Pittsfield, Mass., 160, 253, 257. 
 Plaistow (Eng.), 70, 72, 76. 
 Plymouth Colony, i, 2, 37. 
 Pnyx of Athens, 122. 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 147, 148. 
 Poems of Patience Earle, 14, 15 ; of Pliny Earle, 
 
 23, 126, 147, 149, 317, 390. 
 Polycarp, the martyr, 130. 
 Pope, Alexander, 14, 287, 357. 
 Population of towns, 32, 33. 
 Portland visited by Dr. Earle, 43, 44, 74. 
 Portrait-painters named Earle, 378-382. 
 Potomac, the river, 223, 227, 239, 241. 
 Practice of blood-letting, 144, 145, 15s, 189, 318. 
 
4o6 
 
 Preachers, mentioned, 15-ig, 25. 
 
 Prince, Dr., of Northampton, 261. 
 
 Professors in colleges, 36, 52. 
 
 Providence, R.I., g, 10, 22, 30, 36, 37, 42, 49, 55, 
 
 58, III, 300. 
 Prussian blue, 344. 
 Prussian asylums, 166, 172, 334, 335. 
 Psychiatry, viii, 165,^167, 180, 184. 
 Psychologic associations, 301, 313, 373. 
 Psychologic medicine, 160; Dictionary of, 300, 
 
 320, 372. 
 Psychology of Feuchtersleben, 288. 
 Publications of Dr. Earle, 317-320. 
 Public care of the insane, ix-xi, 95-97, in, 137, 
 
 143, 14s, 15s, 157, 159-162, 165-186, 223, 241, 
 
 254-256, 261-266, 268-272, 275, 276-278, 298, 
 
 299, 304, 306-309, 312, 368, 375. 
 Public libraries, 314, 389, 390, 391, 393. 
 Public spirit of the Earle family, 1-3, 21, 157, 387. 
 Publishing essays on Insanity, 154, 165, 180, 187, 
 
 267, 270, 276, 293-296. 
 Pumphrey, Thomas, 68. 
 
 " Punishing" the insane, ix, 96, 155, 326, 327. 
 Puritans mentioned, viii, 2, 24, 54. 
 Puzzling result of statistics, 373, 376. 
 
 Quaker asylums at Frankford and York, 146-15 1, 
 270, 296, 303, 324, 388. 
 
 Quaker coats, 16, 81, 286, 353. 
 
 Quakeresses, 34, 62, 66, 6g, 86, 89, 100, no, 282, 
 286-289, 291. 
 
 Quaker feuds, 16-20, 24, 76, 88, 228, 286. 
 
 Quaker ministers, 15, 347, 353. 
 
 Quaker spirituality, 286, 288. 
 
 Quaker tourist, 29, 143, 285. 
 
 Quakers in England, 13, 17, 61-77, 80, 85-93, 
 303, 304, 383- 
 
 Quakers in France, 84, 90, 100, 104-106, 108-110, 
 282. 
 
 Quakers in Leicester, Philadelphia, etc., 2-16, 
 17, 21, 24-27, 34-41, 44, 49, 149, 199. 228. 255. 
 313, 387. 
 
 " Quality" (a sort of binding), 353. 
 
 Quarantine at Malta, 121, 140, 141. 
 
 "Queen Esther" Maud, 66. 
 
 Queen of France, 106; of Spain, 210. 
 
 Queen of William IV., gi. 
 
 Queen Victoria, 82, gi, 321, 384. 
 
 Questionable recoveries, 158, 166, 175, 182, 220, 
 267, 270-273, 373-376. 
 
 Questions of color-blindness, 343, 351. 
 
 Quinnihtiquot (Connecticut), 51. 
 
 Quotations (poetic) from Avienus, 287 ; Byron, 
 113, 117, 129, 139, 150; Canning, 36, 115; 
 Cowper, 45, 79; Emerson, 77, 137; Milton, 
 55> 233, 310, 353; John Neal, 44; Martial, 
 185; Pope, 357; Scott, 83; Shakespeare, 31; 
 Tennyson, 306; Whittier, 25, 31, 208; Words- 
 worth, 306. 
 
 Rabbi, Jewish (an alchemist), 132. 
 
 Rainbow, how viewed by Whittier, 352. 
 
 Ralph Earle, portrait-painter, 319, 378,379; his 
 
 son Ralph, 380, 382. 
 Ramla in Malta, 139. 
 Ramon de la Sagra, in. 
 Ranney, Dr. Moses, 220. 
 Rappahannock River, 242. 
 Raritan Bay Phalanstery, 199. 
 Rates of death and cure, 175, 220, 265, 266, 375, 
 
 377- 
 Ray, Dr. Isaac (American alienist), x, xi, 271, 
 
 273. 294, 303. 
 Rays of light in color-blindness, 357-359. 
 Reading at Eagleswood, 201. 
 Real fact of curability, 269, 273. 
 Rebecca, Cousin (Mrs. Spring), 30, 41, 81, 191, 
 
 199, 212, 313- 
 Recent cases of insanity, 271, 274, 374, 377. 
 Recoveries from insanity dubious, 273, 313, 376. 
 Reil (German alienist), 184. 
 Religion of Dr. Earle, 21, 227, 281, 287, 302, 315. 
 Reminiscences of Dr. Earle, 7-13,383,384; of 
 M. Callaghan, 385 ; of Rev. Samuel May, 24, 
 386-390. 
 Resolutions of the Northampton Trustees, 1885, 
 
 279. 
 Retirement in Leicester, 187, 220, 388; at North- 
 ampton, 279. 
 " Retreats" for the insane; at Hartford, ix, 270; 
 at Frankford, Pa., 146, 388; at York, Eng., 80, 
 303, 297, 375- 
 Rhamnus in Greece, 126. 
 Rhetorical Briton, 150; defects, 283. 
 Rhode Island, i, 2, 22, 34, 41, 49, 58, 387. 
 Rhythm of Dr. Earle, 126, 147; of Pope, 14, 2S7; 
 
 of Whittier, 300, 352. 
 Richardson, John, 10 ; Thomas, 74. 
 Richenda (Gumey), Cunningham, 73. 
 Richmond, Va., 218, 242, 246-248, 258, 259. 
 Riding up Mount Washington, 45 ; under Pen- 
 
 telicus, 125, 134. 
 Riedel, Dr. (German alienist), 170, 176. 
 Rockwell, Dr. (American alienist), x, 176. 
 Rocky Mountain Indians, 253. 
 Roeser, Dr. (physician in Athens), 121, 123, 141. 
 Rogers, Samuel, the banker-poet, 289, 290. 
 Roller, Dr. (German alienist), 164, 171, 337. 
 Rush, Dr. (American alienist), viii, ix, 144, 189. 
 Rutland, Mass., 12. 
 Rutledge family of Carolina, 196. 
 
 Sabbath ("First Day ") among Quakers, 24, 40, 
 
 72, 86 ; among Shakers, 48. 
 " Sacred bitters " of Miss Dix, 262. 
 Sadness not common among the insane, 363, 365. 
 Sailing for Europe (April 25, 1837), xvi, 59, 61. 
 Salamis, 122. 
 .Salzberg Alps, 176. 
 
407 
 
 Sanbom, F. B., in Austria, 175; in Bavaria, 177; 
 in Greece, 124 ; in Holland, 183 ; in London, 
 
 301 ; in Northampton, 260, 305 ; investigates 
 the Danvers Hospital-building (1877), 311; 
 investigates the Tewksbury Almshouse (1876), 
 220; named as Dr. Earle's biographer, 390; 
 reviews the care of the insane, historically, 
 vii-xv; serves as Chairman of the Board of 
 State Charities (1874-76) and Inspector of Mas- 
 sachusetts Charities (1S79-88), 260, 267; tes- 
 tifies to Dr. Earle's success, 299; translates 
 Avienus and Martial's epigram, 185, 287. 
 
 Sandys, George (brother of Sir Edwin Sandys), 
 his account of Malta, 140. 
 
 Santo Domingo mentioned, 204, 208. 
 
 Saxon alienists, 165, 170, 171, 179, 301. 
 
 Saxon asylums, 164, 165, 170, 178, 334. 
 
 Saxony mentioned, 165 ; Dr. Martini in, 172 ; 
 Fanny Martini writes from, 292 ; Thackeray in 
 (Dresden), 292. 
 
 Scenery of Carolina, 191 ; of Cuba, 207, 209, 213, 
 214; of Greece, 122, 125-127; of Scio, 131; of 
 Scutari, 137; of Switzerland, 114; of the White 
 Mountains, 46. 
 
 Schools, Medical, 56, 160, 184, 253, 257, 383. 
 
 Schools of Leicester, 7, 9, 26, 387 ; for patients 
 in asylums, 155 ; for Quaker children, 68, 71. 
 
 Scotch system for the insane, 275, 277, 375. 
 
 Scotland visited, 82, 163, 275 ; Miss DLx in, 308. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 23, 83, 126 ; Scott, a color- 
 blind, 344. 
 
 Seat of King Philip, 31; of the Gumeys at 
 Upton, 70-74. 
 
 Secretary Chase, 252; Dobbin, 224; Guthrie, 
 232 ; McClelland, 226 ; Thompson, 237 ; Toucey, 
 237 ; Usher, 252. 
 
 Semelaigne (kinsman of Pinel), 324. 
 
 Senator Calhoun, 195 ; Clay, 195 ; Douglas, 228, 
 230; Hale, 225, 226, 229, 230; Houston, 225, 
 234; Jones, 223; Seward, 225; Sumner, 225, 
 229, 230, 289 ; Toombs, 226 ; Trumbull, 229 ; 
 Webster, 37, 107, 195, 216; Wilson (Henry), 
 225, 238. 
 
 Senators at Washington, 195, 230, 234, 258. 
 
 Separation of the curable and incurable insane 
 in Germany, 169, 183; in United States, 277; 
 at Westborough, 276. 
 
 Seri'ices for the insane, of Miss Dix, xv, 275, 
 306-310; of Dr. Earle, xv, 154, 157, i6i, 166, 
 184, 187, 263, 264, 267, 269, 273, 278, 279, 284, 
 302 ; of Dr. S. G. Hows, xiv, xv. 
 
 Settlement laws of Massachusetts, 264, 265. 
 
 Seward, W. H., defends an insane homicide, 
 221 ; in Washington, 225, 252. 
 
 Shakers, 48; Gen. Bumside a great Shaker, 244. 
 
 Siegburg, in Germany, 164, 166, 182, 183, 334. 
 
 Siege of Navarino, 133, 135. 
 
 Significance of relapsed recoveries, 373, 376. 
 
 Sigoumey, Mrs. L. H., 52, 128. 
 
 Silesia, 172, 173, 290. 
 
 Silliman, Prof., 52, 53. 
 
 Slater, Samuel, 5. 
 
 Slaveholders, 195, 251. 
 
 Slavery in Carolina, 191, 198; in Cuba, 205, 208, 
 
 218; in Leicester, 14; in the United States, 57, 
 
 108, 240. 
 Slave-trade, 87, 202, 218. 
 Slow progress of the Civil War, 244, 247. 
 Smith, Sydney (the wit), quoted, vii ; Sir Sydney, 
 
 105. 
 Smyrna visited, 130, 131, 136, 194. 
 Smyth, Admiral W. H., 319, 378, 381. 
 Smyth, Miss, sister of the Admiral, 379. 
 Snell, Dr. (German alienist), 167, 168, 301, 338. 
 "Sociable" explained, 36. 
 Societies, Dr. Earle's membership in, 269, 301, 
 
 384. 
 Socrates, prison of, 122. 
 Soldier, French, unchained by Pinel, 325. 
 Soldiers in hospital, 238, 241, 245, 246, 247, 254, 
 
 259. 
 Somebody, Rev. Mr., ig. 
 Somerset, Eng., i. 
 Sonnenstein, Germany, 170, 171, 337. 
 South America, 381. 
 
 South Carolina, 190-192, 195-197, 378, 381. 
 Southern Europe, 1 17-143. 
 Southwick family, 4, 385, 394. 
 Spaulding, T. G., 394. 
 Spurzheim, Dr. (alienist), 164, 336. 
 Spurzheira, Dr. (phrenologist), 59, 164, 359. 
 State Boards, xiv, 260, 262, 267, 278, 375, 393. 
 State Hospitals (see Hospitals). 
 Statistics (American), 190, 220, 265, 266, 312, 372- 
 
 377 i (French) 303; (German) 334-341. 
 Stedman, Dr. H. R. (American alienist), 278. 
 Stewart, Dugald, 344, 359. 
 Strong, Gov. Caleb, 380. 
 Sturge, Joseph, 61, 82, 383, 384. 
 Sugar-making in Cuba, 209. 
 Suicides, 177. 
 
 Sullivan's Island, S.C., 194, ig6. 
 Sully, T. (artist), 380. 
 Sumner, Charles (statesman), 119, 225, 229, 230, 
 
 250, 289; George, 289; Gen. E. V., 250. 
 Superintendent and patient (anecdotes), 150, 314, 
 
 368. 
 Syramachus (Roman physician), 185. 
 Synesius, Greek author, 381. 
 Syphilis, mentioned, 181. 
 
 Table for " encyclopedic dinner," 103 ; for Wash- 
 ington dinner, 237; in Cuba, 203. 
 Tables of statistics, 220, 334, 377. 
 Tachygraphy, 39. 
 
 Tacitus, quoted, 281 ; Terence, quoted, 285. 
 Tacon Theatre in Havana, 206. 
 Tact of Miss Dix, 305 ; of Mrs. Fry, 105. 
 
4o8 
 
 Taft family of Charleston, 190-194. 
 
 Taft, H. W., 279. 
 
 Tailor, anecdote of, 346, 347. 
 
 Tewksbury State Almshouse, 137, 220, 265. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 292. 
 
 Thanksgi\'ing Day, 54. 
 
 Thayer, Rev. Dr., 40 ; Rev. C. T., 40. 
 
 Thompson, Miss (artist), 32. 
 
 Thoreau, Henry, quoted, 198, 199. 
 
 Thumam, Dr. John, mentioned, 270, 302, 304 ; 
 
 quoted, 303, 375. 
 Thumam, Mrs. Dr., 304. 
 
 Timar-hane (asylum), 137, 178, 220, 308, 332, 333. 
 Times of negro slavery, 57, 195, 200, 218, 229, 
 
 240. 
 Tobacco used by the Earles, 24, 256 ; by Cubans, 
 
 202. 
 Todd, Dr. (of Hartford), ix, x, 271, 374. 
 Tombazis (Greek admiral), 33. 
 Tories in England, 79, 86; in America, 197, 319, 
 
 378. 
 Tottenham, Eng., 77, 84, 90. 
 Trade in slaves, 87, 193, 218. 
 Tranquillizing chair, ix, 178. 
 Trelawny, E. J. (friend of Shelley), 134, 197. 
 Trist, N. P., quoted, 372. 
 Trumbull, J. (artist), 53, 378, 380. 
 Tschallener, Dr., of the Tyrol, 176. 
 Tuke, Dr. D. H., ix, 182, 295, 296-302, 323, 372. 
 Tuke, James (brother of Dr. T.), 88, 303. 
 Tuke, Samuel, 88, 303; William, 66, 164, 302, 
 
 323- 
 Turks in Greece, 122, 124, 132, 134; in Turkey, 
 
 133, 136. 137. 17S. 
 Tyler, John (President), mentioned, 236. 
 Tyrol, the, visited, 176, 177. 
 
 Unitarians, 20, 227. 
 
 United States, insanity in, viii-xv, 271-273, 361, 
 
 374- 
 Universities: Athens, 128; Brown, 34, 35, 36; 
 
 Pennsylvania, 11, 56, 383; Michigan, 257. 
 Ursa Major, 198. 
 Ute Indians, 253. 
 Utica, N.Y., 186, 221, 293, 318. 
 Utrecht Asylum, 322. 
 Uxbridge mentioned, 392. 
 
 Vale of Yumuri, Cuba, 214. 
 Valetta, in Malta, 138, 143. 
 Van Buren, John, 221, 222; President, 54, 59, 77, 
 
 235. 25'. 383- 
 Van Deventer (Dutch alienist), 183. 
 Velpeau, French surgeon, 45, 94, 97, 1 19. 
 Venice visited, 117, 120. 
 Vesuvius, 118. 
 
 Victoria, Queen of England, 82, 91, 321, 384. 
 Vienna visited, 173, 176. 
 
 Villa of Luke Howard, 67; of Voltaire, iij. 
 
 Villeneuve, Switzerland, 114. 
 
 Vipers in Malta, 138. 
 
 Virginia mentioned, 34, 76, 200, 230, 240, 271, 
 
 374. 381. 
 "Virginian" (the packet), 59. (Sailed April 25, 
 
 1837.) 
 Virginians (M. D. Conway), 225, 227; (N. P. 
 
 Trist), 3S1. 
 Visits to Europe, 61, 166, 274, 289, 383. 
 Vizsanik, Dr., 173, 175. 
 Von Bodelschwingh, viii. 
 Voyage in the Archipelago, 13 r, 138. 
 
 Waldron, Major Richard, 25. 
 
 Washburn, Judge Emory, 5, 156. 
 
 Washington visited, 59, 223 ; residence of Dr. 
 
 Earle in, 225-238, 241-260. 
 Wayland, Dr. Francis, 34, 36, 307. 
 Weare, N.H., 48. 
 Webb, J. W., 225, 231- 
 
 Webster, Daniel (statesman), 37, 195, 216, 227. 
 Weld, Theodore, 198, 201. 
 West, Benjamin (artist), 378, 380. 
 Westmoreland, Eng., 66, 79. 
 White, Andrew D., 208; J. M. (a Congressman), 
 
 103, 104; Jessie (Signora l\Iario), 201. 
 White House (of the President), 223, 230, 232, 
 
 238, 248, 251, 260, 383. 
 Whitman, Walt, 241. 
 Whitney, Eli, 53. 
 
 Whittier, J. G. (poet), 208, 209, 299, 300, 351, 352. 
 Willey house, 45. 
 William IV., 91, 384. 
 Williams, Dr. C. H., 304; Roger, 307. 
 Williamsburg (Va.) asylum, 258, 271, 374. 
 Wilson, Henry, Senator and Vice-President, 225. 
 Windows in Cuba, 217; in Stephansfeld, 179; in 
 
 Turkey, 331. 
 Wiunenthal, Germany, 179, 183, 337. 
 Winslow family, 43, 44. 
 Wisconsin system of State care, 276. 
 Wisdom of the ancients, viii, 164, 189, 271, 374. 
 Wise, Henry A. (of Virginia), 227. 
 Wise, Dr. P. M., 162. 
 Woman's lot in life, 26, 35, 99, 291, 292. 
 Women among the Quakers, 16, 25, 46, 65-68, 
 
 84. 
 Women recovered and relapsed, 373, 376. 
 Wood, Dr., 224. 
 Woodward, Dr. Rufus, 356. 
 Woodward, Dr. S. B. (American alienist), ix, x, 
 
 xii, 154, 166, 310, 374, 376. 
 Worcester, Mass., mentioned, ix, xvi, i, 25, 29, 
 
 32, 39, 42, 44, 52, 144, 154, 186, 206, 217, 261, 
 
 264, 276, 310, 372, 374, 385-387. 394- 
 Wordsworth, quoted, 306. 
 Worthington, Dr. (American alienist), 300. 
 
Wright, T. and J. Turnpenny, 149. 
 
 Wrong theories of medical treatment, 145, 167, 
 
 iSg, 267, 270, 277, 2S4, 302, 311, 374. 
 Wyman, Dr. (American alienist), ix. 
 
 X., Mr. (paretic), 1S8. 
 
 X., Miss, her letters, 2S6, 289. 
 
 Xenodocheion in Attica, 126, 127. 
 
 Yale College, 52, 53. 
 
 Yams in Charleston, 191 ; in Cuba, 203. 
 
 Yankee farmers, 11, 51, 208, 351. 
 
 Yankee phrases, 36, 45, 51, 142, 211, 216, 224, 
 
 257- 
 Yeardley family of England, 90. 
 
 EX 409 
 
 Yearly meeting of Quakers (America), 10, j8, 
 
 22S, 292, 3S3. 
 Yearly meeting of Quakers (England), 17, 66, 76, 
 
 80, 85, 88. 
 Years of waiting, 186, 187, 220, 315. 
 York, England, retreat at. So, 270, 297, 302-304, 
 
 324. 374> 375- 
 Young, Dr. Edward, 14, 15. 
 Youthful recollections of Dr. Earle, 7-16. 
 Yumuri in Cuba, 214. 
 
 Zeitschriftfnr Psychiatrie, 167, 180. 
 Zeller, Dr. (German alienist), 179, 337. 
 Zurich, asylum at (Burgholzli), 253, 275, 276. 
 Z'wa7igst!M ("tranquillizing chair"), ix, 167, 
 178. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 On page 59, for " 25th of March " read April ; for " March 27 " read April 27. 
 
 Page 61, for " March " read April. 
 
 Page 278, line 12 from the top, read convalescence. 
 
 Page 279, for " Fanny " Earle read Frances. 
 
 Page 3S0, Clarke Earle of Paxton was the step-i2X\iQx of Anthony Chase. 
 
BIOGRAPHIES BY F. B. SANBORN, 
 OF CONCORD, MASS. 
 
 In order of their date of Publication. 
 
 Henry David Thoreau. In the Series of "American Men of 
 Letters." pp. viii, 317. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1882. 
 
 Life and Letters of John Brown, of Kansas and Virginia. 
 
 pp. viii, 645. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1885. 
 
 New Connecticut. An Autobiographical Poem by A. Bronson 
 Alcott. Edited by F. B. Sanborn, pp. xxvi, 247. Boston: 
 Littie, Brown & Co. 1887. 
 
 Life of Dr. S. G. Howe. In the Series of "American Re- 
 formers." pp. viii, 370. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1891. 
 
 A. Bronson Alcott, his Life and Philosophy. By F. B. San- 
 born and W. T. Harris, pp. vii, 679 (up to p. 543 by F. B. San- 
 born). Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1893. 
 
 Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau. Edited, with an 
 Introduction and Notes, by F. B. Sanborn. (A New Biography.) 
 pp. xii, 483. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1894. 
 
 Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D. With Selections from his 
 Diaries, Letters, and Professional Writings, pp. xvi, 409. Bos- 
 ton: Damrell & Upham. 1898. 
 
 Damrell & Upham also publish : — 
 
 The Curability of Insanity. By Pliny Earle, M.D. 
 
 In addition to the above works, Mr. Sanborn has edited : — 
 
 The Genius and Character of Emerson. Lectures at the Con- 
 cord School of Philosophy, pp. xxii, 447. Boston : Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. 1885. 
 
 The Life and Genius of Goethe. Lectures at the Concord 
 
 School of Philosophy, pp. xxv, 454. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co. 1886. (Out of print.) 
 
 Prayers by Theodore Parker. A New Edition, with a Preface 
 by Louisa M. Alcott and a Memoir by F. B. Sanborn, pp. xxi, 
 200. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1882, 
 
 Sonnets and Canzonets. By A. Bronson Alcott. With an In- 
 troduction by F. B. Sanborn, pp. iv, 151. Boston: Little, Brown 
 & Co. 1882. 
 
 Poems of Nature. Selected and Edited by Henry S. Salt and 
 F. B. Sanborn, pp. xix, 122. London: John Lane. Boston: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1895. 
 
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