apparel was
indeed magnificent, she was much pleased, and drew herself up proudly,
and was a picture of ecstatic vanity. Are the real queens as happy? When
they lay aside their royal robes for their grave clothes, will not the
pageantry which was the glory of their lives seem as vain as that of
this tinseled queen of the mad-house? Where is happiness, after all? Is
it in the circumstances, the external conditions? or, is it in the mind?
Such were the thoughts passing through my mind, when a man approached
with a violin. Every eye brightened, and the queen seemed to thrill with
pleasure in every nerve.

"This is the only way we can get some of them to take any exercise. The
music rouses them, and they will dance as long as they are permitted to
do so."

The fiddler struck up a lively tune, and the queen, with marvelous
lightness of step and ogling glances, ambled up to a tall, raw-boned
Methodist preacher, who had come with me, and invited him to dance with
her. The poor parson seemed sadly embarrassed, as her manner was very
pressing, but he awkwardly and confusedly declined, amid the titters of
all present. It was a singular spectacle, that dance of the mad-women.
The most striking figure on the floor was the queen. Her great size, her
brilliant apparel, her astonishing agility, the perfect time she kept,
the bows, the smiles and blandishments, she bestowed on an imaginary
partner, were indescribably ludicrous. Now and then, in her evolutions,
she would cast a momentary reproachful glance at the ungallant clergyman
who had refused to dance with feminine royalty, and who stood looking on
with a sheepish expression of face. He was a Kentuckian, and lack of
gallantry is not a Kentucky trait.

During the session of the Annual Conference at Stockton, in 1859 or
1860, the resident physician invited me to preach to the inmates of the
Asylum on Sunday afternoon. The novelty of the service, which was
announced in the daily papers, attracted a large number of visitors,
among them the greater part of the preachers. The day was one of those
bright, clear, beautiful October days, peculiar to California, that make
you think of heaven. I stood on the steps, and the hundreds of men and
Women stood below me, with their upturned faces. Among them were old men
crushed by sorrow, and old men ruined by vice; aged women with faces
that seemed to plead for pity, women that made you shrink from their
unwomanly gaze; lion-like young men, ma