I was afterwards told that this appalling thing had come into the asylum, not long before, a fine, strong, healthy-looking youth, good at tennis and all games.Įarly every morning, several very hideous and insane patients came in under the charge of a keeper, and, with some poles and apparatus kept for the purpose, started to frotter the floor to the tune of insane growls and deep, hollow, maniac laughter. I had just noticed that the stranger's shoulders were particularly square, and that he held himself straight and well, when he turned quickly towards his left, sprang off the ground into the air, and was gone, almost as if he had flown in pieces.Īmongst those that slept at night in my dormitory were my former companion, the murderer, and also a shrivelled-up, sightless, half-skinned mummy that looked as if it might once have been that of a young lad.
The first thing I thought was that I was in some sort of sacred precincts attached to some sort of idol-temple, where a number of old, semi-petrified, but still living teraphim or images, representing some sort of worship, were kept alive and fed. He laughed also, and we thought no more of the incident, but went and had our lunch.įor the first time in my life, I saw a number of beings who, from their poor, mis-shapen bodies or distorted countenances, seemed hardly human. I could not help laughing and remarking that the whole picture of a huge dead tree, with gaunt and whitened branches and a hollow trunk blasted by lightning, standing by itself amongst the reeds and oozy mud at the margin of a desolate swamp, and a large and deadly snake lying quivering in death across its gnarled and withered roots was peculiarly weird, almost Satanic. I was not quite certain at the time whether I was fully inside my body, or like a sort of atmosphere standing out about a quarter of an inch outside it.
To begin with, I thought it was no use making a new start in life unless I began it with a really good hat.
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