I HAVE always been of opinion that madmen
are by no means so mad as the world
usually supposes them—an idea which, if not
originally impressed, was strongly confirmed
on my mind by the conduct of a lunatic in a
certain Asylum, in which it was my chance
to be a rambler and a looker-on, at a period
when the visiting physician, was going his
rounds, with some five or six score of medical
students at his heels. Following this long
train of philanthropists through the wards, I
enjoyed (if so it could be called) an opportunity
of looking into many cells, thrown
open only to the medical attendants and their
pupils, upon the miserable tenants—victims

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of mania in every form—whose appearance
sometimes shocked, and always saddened, the
beholder.—Truly, we know nothing of the
extraordinary structure and tremendous energies
of the human mind, that grandest and
most amazing of created things, until we see
it in ruins.

A more agreeable—or to speak correctly,
less repulsive—spectacle, at least to me, was
twice or thrice presented in the persons of
lunatics whose malady was of such a harmless
character that they, instead of being confined
in cells, were allowed to ramble up and
down the wards as they pleased, talking with
the officers of the Asylum, sometimes even
assisting them in ministering to their fellow
maniacs, and, above all, enjoying themselves,
in conversation with such visiters as chance
threw in their way.

One of these unfortunates, seen on the present
occasion for the first time, was a young
man of spirited and humorous deportment,
who betrayed much satisfaction at the appearance
of the physician, shook him heartily by
the hand, gave him, without waiting to be asked,
his wrist to feel and his tongue to inspect,
and then demanded, with a very business-like
nod of the head, “Well now, Doctor, what

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do you think of me? Capital, eh? quite right
in the upper story?”

“Oh, certainly, John,” replied the physician—
“doing extremely well.” With which
he seemed disposed to pass on. But John
was not so easily satisfied.

“None of your quaker answers, if you
please, Doctor,” qouth he, with a knowing
grin; “answer to the point, like a gentleman,
and don't fob me off like one of your regular
madmen. I say, Doctor, what's your ideas
concerning the state of my cerebellum? Just
say the word—am I mad or not?”

“Mad? Oh, no, certainly,” said the physician,
smiling; “nobody could think such a
fine funny fellow as John mad.”

“I'll be hanged if you don't, though!” said
John, with the utmost coolness, “and I wonder
why you can't say so, like an honest fellow.
But I say, Doctor,” he continued, observing
the physician about to pass on a second
time, “just answer me another question
or two, before you go. All these young gentlemen
here are young doctors, a'n't they?”

To this the doctor replied in the affirmative;
whereupon John jumped upon a
chair, and looking round him with an air of
comical solicitude, exclaimed—“Well now,

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while there's so many of you present, all
doctors, just let's settle the question by vote.
I say, gentlemen,” he cried, “the Doctor
thinks I am mad, and I think I am not: Put
it to vote among you; for, being doctors, and
such a heap of you, you'll know all about it.—
Here I am, gentlemen, John Jones by name;—
mad, or not mad?”

To this demand several of the young men
answered smilingly, in the words of their preceptor,
by assuring John he was not mad.

“Gammon!” said John, “or why don't
you let me out? But I tell you what, my
gentlemen, you may think me as mad as you
please: all that I can say is, I think you just
as mad as myself, and—hang it—a great deal
madder; and, what's more, I can prove it.”

“Very well, John,” said the physician, who
seemed amused by the oddity of his patient,
and willing to humour him a little; “if you
can prove that, I shall clap them into the cells
forthwith, and make you their keeper.”

“It's a bargain,” said John, turning to the
students; whom he addressed in the following
terms, grinning all the time as if with the
triumph of anticipated victory.

“Here you are, a hundred or more ablebodied
young fellows, inhabitants of a

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country where labour and industry, always in
greater demand than professional science and
dignity, always secure the rewards which
science does not—the independence and
wealth, which are the great aims of every
American. I hold you mad, first, because
you have deserted the fields you would
have passed useful and happy lives in tilling,
to enter upon a professional career in which
you will, if you don't starve outright, remain
poor unlucky drones for life: secondly, because,
if you must have a profession, you have
chosen the worst of all professions in the
world—the poorest in emolument, the lowest
in influence, the least in dignity. Had you
chosen the law, you might have gabbled and
cheated your way to fortune, and to Congress
into the bargain; with divinity, you might
have married rich wives and preached bad
sermons, in religious contentment to your dying
days. Whereas, as doctors, supposing
you don't prove, from sheer incompetency,
public murderers, you will waste your days
in works of humanity, for which you are only
half paid, and not thanked at all; besides being
deprived of all those side means of making a
fortune, which belong to the other professions.
Thirdly and finally, you are mad, because, if

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you will be doctors, you yet go to the trouble
and expense of studying the art; when the
world, and the American world in particular,
would have liked you just as well, and, indeed,
a great deal better, if you had begun to slash
and physic, without any study or preparation
whatever. Men must be mad, indeed, who will
study physic, when they can make a fortune
three times as fast by quackery!”

With these words, delivered I knew not
whether most to the edification or diversion
of the young doctors, who straightway took
their departure in search of new patients,
honest John descended from his chair, and,
clapping his hands into his pockets, began to
saunter up and down the passage, whistling
Yankee Doodle with great vigour and execution.

I felt desirous of making the acquaintance
of a lunatic so very methodical in his madness,
and accordingly stepped up to honest
John, and assuring him that his oration had
quite convinced me of his sanity, and the
utter distraction of his scientific hearers,
begged to be informed to what cause he
owed his incarceration in that abode of the
crack-brained.

“Oh,” said John, grinning with delight,

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(for he was vastly flattered by my complimentary
address,) and looking volumes of
sagacity—“we have a mode of accounting
for it here among us. The world is composed
of wise men and madmen, the latter
being in the majority—ay, sir, hang it! a
hundred to one, undoubtedly. Well, sir, what
can a few wise people do among a myriad of
mad ones? In short, sir, the mad fellows
have got the upper hand of us, the wise ones,
and—here we are in Bedlam!”

“The explanation,” said I, “is both simple
and striking. But the mad fellows could not
have imprisoned you, unless under some
pretext.”

“True,” said John, touching his nose;
“leave madmen alone for that: every body
knows they are cunning. The pretext is, of
course, that I am mad. But the truth is,
they clapped me in here on account of my
philanthropy, as shown in my extraordinary
invention.”

I took the liberty to ask what that invention
was; a question that seemed greatly to
surprise worthy John, as indicating a very
extraordinary degree of ignorance upon my
part. But this ignorance he hastened to remove
by informing me, that, both as a

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philanthropist and patriot, he had been grieved by
the quarrel betwixt the abolitionists and
slave-owners, which appeared to him to
threaten the very existence of the republic.
“Besides,” said he, “I was somewhat of an
abolitionist myself, quite desirous to see the
poor blackies as free as blackbirds; but then,
I saw clear enough, they never could be liberated,
without ruining their masters, as well
as all the agricultural interests of the South,
unless some means could be devised for supplying
their loss, by finding substitutes for
them. The substitutes once found, I had no
doubt every body would come round to abolition
in a moment, the Southerners in particular,
who, the Lord knows, are sick of the
bother of their labourers. Well, sir,” quoth
John, “to find these substitutes became the
problem to be solved; and I solved it, sir, by
the invention of my patent niggers to be
worked by horse-power—yes, sir, by the invention
(and a grand one it was,) of patent
niggers—men, sir, not of perishing and suffering
flesh and blood, but of wood, iron,
leather and canvass, so constructed as (by
means of horse-power to put them in motion)
to be a great deal better than the real niggers;
because, sir, they were to do all kinds

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of work, except blacking shoes and feeding
the cattle, (upon my soul, sir, I could never
make them do that,) and never get tired, or
sick, or sulky—never die, or run away, or
rise in insurrection—never require feeding,
nor clothing, nor physicking—in short, sir,
the best and cheapest niggers that human
wit ever imagined! With these, sir, my glorious
invention, I expected to free the blackies,
and make my own fortune; and accordingly
carried my models to the Abolition
Society, to get their recommendation; when,
sir, instead of the rapture and triumph which
I looked for among the members, rage and
jealousy took possession of their souls.
They could not bear that they should lose the
honour, and glory, and profit of completing
the great work of emancipation—that I, who
was not actually a professed member of their
society—or that any body, save themselves,
should reap the splendid reward; and, accordingly,
they knocked my models to pieces,
maltreated myself, and ended by charging
me with madness, and bringing me to this
place in a strait-jacket. These, sir, are the
true causes of their strange behaviour—jealousy
and envy: but it must be remembered,
they belong to the majority—that is, to the

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madmen; and were hence incapable of seeing
that, in persecuting me, they were destroying
the negro's best friend.”

I expressed, as in civility and duty bound,
a great deal of surprise and indignation at
the hard and undeserved fate of honest John,
whose philanthropy was so poorly rewarded;
at which appearance of sympathy he was
vastly pleased, declared I was the clearestheaded
and sanest man he had ever known,
begged to swear eternal friendship with me,
and then, giving me to understand there were
many other wise and virtuous persons, the
victims of the world's malice or insanity,
confined like himself in the Asylum, proposed
to introduce me to their acquaintance; a proposal
to which—after having taken the advice
and secured the permission of the keepers—
I was glad to accede.

I was, accordingly, ushered into an enclosure
in the garden of the Asylum, where, it
appeared, such harmless persons as worthy
John were permitted to breathe the air, and
converse on such subjects as suited the tender
state of their intellects.

As I entered this place, of which the gate
was immediately locked behind me by a
keeper, who attended for the purpose, I

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perceived there were within it a dozen or more
men, some of whom sat on benches under the
trees, while others strolled to and fro along
the gravelled walks. The noise of our entrance,
and the appearance of honest John,
with whom all seemed to be perfectly well
acquainted, drew them about us; and they
were soon introduced to me by name—one
being the Honourable Timoleon Smash, an
ex-congressman, from Virginia; another, a
gentleman of the press, of which, he himself
informed me, he had been once a bright and
shining light; and others of other respectable
ranks and professions.

My friend, John Jones, having introduced
me, the ex-editor, Mr. Ticklum, for that was
his name, removing a pair of spectacles from
his nose, and crumpling into his pocket an old
newspaper which he had been reading,
begged to know if I was `a fellow in misfortune;
' a question I felt some little embarrassment
in replying to; when my friend John
removed the difficulty by declaring, “I was,
as he could bear witness, unfortunate like
themselves, in being in my senses among a
world of madmen; but had not yet been found
out by the world, and so had escaped being
made a prisoner; that I was a

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philanthropic personage and philosopher, who sympathized
with them in their sorrows, and
came to learn of them those proofs of the
folly and injustice of the world which all
were so well able to speak.”

“I can require,” said I, “no better proof of
this than has been furnished in the history of
my friend Mr. Jones; whose sufferings, considered
as a punishment inflicted upon him
on account of his philanthropy, I esteem as
extraordinary as they are unjust. Truly, it
seems to me not merely surprising, but incredible,
that men should punish a fellow
creature for practising a virtue they so universally
commend.”

“Surprising!” said Mr. Ticklum, with a
stare of melancholy astonishment, while all
the rest looked at me with pity and a groan;
“why, sir, that's their way; and you must be
younger than you seem, and less experienced
than we should have supposed, sir, from your
sensible appearance, if you are surprised at
the inconsistency. Virtue, sir, is a thing man
loves best in the abstract; the practice of it
interferes with too many of his interests to
allow him to be friendly to its professor.
Really, sir, we are afraid you do not understand
the world; you have not yet been

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wronged into knowledge. The virtues best
rewarded in the world are its vices: avarice
and ambition, impudence and deceit, truckling
and time-serving, will win favour, fortune,
and distinction, when generosity and modesty,
integrity and independence, are repaid
with neglect, contempt, imposition—nay,
with vindictive hate. It is a truth, sir, that
can't be denied, that—as the world now
wags—a man can practise no virtue safely:
he may write about it, he may talk about it,
and gain credit thereby; but the acting of it
will assuredly bring him into trouble. There
is not a person here present who cannot
furnish you good proof of this. Know, sir,
that all of us around you are examples of the
world's injustice—the martyrs of principle,
the victims of our several virtues. We were
too good for the world, sir, and therefore the
world has clapped us into a madhouse. Sir,
you would scarce suppose it of an editor, but
we—even WE, Daniel Ticklum, as we stand
here—are a living monument of the world's
injustice. In US you behold a victim of our
virtue!”

With that, Mr. Ticklum wiped his eyes;
and all the rest groaned, except the Hon.
Mr. Smash—a very stately young personage,

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with a sad and oratorical voice—who, stepping
forward, said,—“What my friend Ticklum
says is perfectly true. Man, a hypocrite
even to himself, and inconsistent alike in good
and evil, sets a bounty of praise on virtue,
which he fancies he desires, only to break the
bones of those who bring it to him! The
world has prated a long time of the excellency
of patriotism—a virtue which not lying
historians only, but the universal voice of society,
would seem to place among the highest,
purest, most honour-deserving of all virtues.
How much the world really likes patriotism
may be seen in my history; which, while my
friend Ticklum recovers his composure, I
shall be happy to relate for your edification.”

I expressed myself extremely desirous to
hear this curious relation, and Mr. Smash immediately
began his history in the following
terms.