make friends with Power — and inviting all the
sensible maniacs who had been tanked, to assist
or inspect, she bared her own statuesque arms,
and, ably aided, soon plunged the offenders
screaming, crying, and whining, like spaniel
bitches whipped, under the dirty water. They
swallowed some, and appreciated their own acts.
Then she forced them to walk twice round the
yard with their wet clothes clinging to them,
hooted by the late victims.

"There," said Alfred, "let that teach you men
will not own hyænas in petticoats for women."

Poor Alfred took all the credit of this performance;
but in fact, when the Archbold invited
him to bear a hand, he showed the white
feather.

"I won't touch the blackguardesses," said he,
haughtily, turning it off on the score of
contempt. "You give it them! Again! again!
Brava!"

Mosaic retribution completed, Mrs. Archbold
told the nurses if ever "tanking" recurred she
would bundle the whole female staff into the
street, and then have them indicted by the
Commissioners.

These virtuous acts did Edith Archbold for
love for a young man. Whether mad women
or sane women pregnant, or the reverse, were
tanked or not, she cared at heart no more than
whether sheep were washed or no in Ettrick's
distant dale. She was retiring with a tender look
at Alfred, and her pulse secretly unaccelerated
by sheep-washing of she-wolves, when her
grateful favourite appealed to her again:
"Dear Mrs. Archbold, shall we punish and not
comfort? This poor Mrs. Dale!"

The Archbold could have boxed his ears.
"Dear boy," she murmured tenderly, "you
teach us all our duty." She visited the tanked
one, found her in a cold room after it, shivering
like ague, and her teeth chattering. Mrs. Archbold
had her to the fire, and got her warm
clothes, and a pint of wine, and probably saved
her life and her child's—for love of a young man.

Why I think Mrs. Dale would otherwise have
left this shifting scene, Mrs. Carey, the last
woman in her condition they tanked and then
turned into a flagged cell that only wanted one frog
of a grotto, was found soon after moribund; on
which they bundled her out of the asylum to die.
She did die next day, at home, but murdered by
the asylum; and they told the Commissioners she
died through her friends taking her away from
the asylum too soon. The Commissioners had
nothing to do but believe this, and did believe it.
Inspectors, who visit a temple of darkness, lies,
cunning, and hypocrisy, four times a year, know
mighty little of what goes on there the odd three
hundred and sixty-one days, five hours, forty-eight
minutes, and fifty-seven seconds.*
* Arithmetic of my boyhood. I hear the world
revolves some minutes quicker now.
"Now Alfred," said Mrs. Archbold, "I can't
be everywhere, or know everything; so you come
to me when anything grieves you; and let me be
the agent of your humanity."

She said this so charmingly he was surprised
into kissing her fair hand; then blushed, and
thanked her warmly. Thus she established a
chain between them. When he let too long
elapse without appealing to her, she would ask
his advice about the welfare of this or that
patient; and so she cajoled him by the two
foibles she had discerned in him— his vanity
and his humanity.

Besides Alfred, there were two patients in
Drayton House who had never been insane; a
young man, and an old woman; of whom anon.
There were also three ladies and one gentleman,
who had been deranged, but had recovered years
ago. This little incident, Recovery, is followed
in a public asylum by instant discharge; but, in
a private one, Money, not Sanity, is apt to settle
the question of egress. The gentleman's case
was scarce credible in the nineteenth century:
years ago, being undeniably cracked, he had done
what Dr. Wycherley told Alfred was a sure sign
of sanity; i.e. he had declared himself insane:
and had even been so reasonable as to sign his own
order and certificates, and so imprison himself
illegally, but with perfect ease; no remonstrance
against that illegality from the guardians of the
law! When he got what plain men call sane, he
naturally wanted to be free, and happening to
remember he alone had signed the order of
imprisonment, and the imaginary doctor's
certificates, he claimed his discharge from illegal
confinement. Answer: "First obtain a legal order
for your discharge." On this he signed an order
for his discharge. "That is not a legal order."
"It is as legal as the order on which l am here."
Granted; but, legally or not, the asylum has
got you; the open air has not got you. Possession
is ninety-nine points of Lunacy law. Die
your own illegal prisoner, and let your kinsfolk
eat your land, and drink your consols, and bury
you in a pauper's shroud. All that Alfred could
do for these victims was to promise to try and
get them out some day, D.V. But there was a
weak-minded youth, Francis Beverley, who had
the honour to be under the protection of the Lord
Chancellor. Now a lunatic or a Softy protected
by that functionary is literally a lamb protected
by a wolf, and that wolf ex-officio the cruelest
cunningest old mangler and fleecer of innocents
in Christendom. Chancery lunatics are the
richest class, yet numbers of them are flung
among pauper and even criminal lunatics, at a
few pounds a year, while their committees bag
four-fifths of the money that has been assigned
to keep the patient in comfort.

Unfortunately the protection of the Chancellor
extends to Life and Reason, as well as Fleece;
with the following result:

In public asylums about forty per cent are said
to be cured.

In private ones twenty-five per cent at least;
most of them poorish.

Of Chancery Lunatics not five per cent.