I became well acquainted with two jovial and witty Irishmen.  They were common laborers.  One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow.  When he arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward, though his “violence” consisted of nothing more than an annoying sort of irresponsibility.  He irritated the attendants by persistently doing certain trivial things after they had been forbidden.  The attendants made no allowance for his condition of mind.  His repetition of a forbidden act was interpreted as deliberate disobedience.  He was physically powerful, and they determined to cow him.  Of the master assault by which they attempted to do this I was not an eyewitness.  But I was an ear witness.  It was committed behind a closed door; and I heard the dull thuds of the blows, and I heard the cries for mercy until there was no breath left in the man with which he could beg even for his life.  For days, that wrecked Hercules dragged himself about the ward moaning pitifully.  He complained of pain in his side and had difficulty in breathing, which would seem to indicate that some of his ribs had been fractured.  This man was often punished, frequently for complaining of the torture already inflicted.  But later, when he began to return to the normal, his good-humor and native wit won for him an increasing degree of good treatment.

The other patient’s arch offence—­a symptom of his disease—­was that he gabbled incessantly.  He could no more stop talking than he could right his reason on command.  Yet his failure to become silent at a word was the signal for punishment.  On one occasion an attendant ordered him to stop talking and take a seat at the further end of the corridor, about forty feet distant.  He was doing his best to obey, even running to keep ahead of the attendant at his heels.  As they passed the spot where I was sitting, the attendant felled him with a blow behind the ear; and, in falling, the patient’s head barely missed the wall.

Addressing me, the attendant said, “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I’ll not forget it.”

“Be sure to report it to the doctor,” he said, which remark showed his contempt, not only for me, but for those in authority.

The man who had so terribly beaten me was particularly flagrant in ignoring the claims of age.  On more than one occasion he viciously attacked a man of over fifty, who, however, seemed much older.  He was a Yankee sailing-master, who in his prime could have thrashed his tormentor with ease.  But now he was helpless and could only submit.  However, he was not utterly abandoned by his old world.  His wife called often to see him; and, because of his condition, she was permitted to visit him in his room.  Once she arrived a few hours after he had been cruelly beaten.  Naturally she asked the attendants how he had come by the hurts—­the blackened eye and bruised head.  True to the code, they lied.  The good wife, perhaps herself a Yankee,