. I now
fulfil the promise. The subject of the present one is an
insane man; his name is Matthew Gentry. He is three years
older than I, and when we were boys we went to school
together. He was rather a bright lad, and the son of the
rich man of a very poor neighborhood. At the age of
nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which
condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity.
When, as I told you in my other letter, I visited my old
home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in
this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood, I could not
forget the impression his case made upon me. Here is the
result:

But here's an object more of dread
Than aught the grave contains--
A human form with reason fled,
While wretched life remains.

When terror spread, and neighbors ran
Your dangerous strength to bind,
And soon, a howling, crazy man,
Your limbs were fast confined;

How then you strove and shrieked aloud,
Your bones and sinews bared;
And fiendish on the gazing crowd
With burning eyeballs glared;

And begged and swore, and wept and prayed,
With maniac laughter joined;
How fearful were these signs displayed
By pangs that killed the mind!

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose!

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone,
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

To drink its strains I've stole away,
All stealthily and still,
Ere yet the rising god of day
Had streaked the eastern hill.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.

But this is past, and naught remains