“There was something cold and sneering in the tone, manner, and expression of Mr. Paralette that completely broke me down.  I saw, in an instant, that my case was hopeless, at least for the time.  I was a lone, weak woman, and during an absence of eight years from my native city, I had grown up from a slender girl into a tall woman, and had, from suffering and privation, been greatly changed, and my countenance marred even since I had attained the age of womanhood.  Under these circumstances, with my father changed so that no one could recognize him, I felt that to make my strange story believed would be impossible.  From the presence of Mr. Paralette I retired, and went back to the hotel, feeling as if my heart would break.  Oh, it was dreadful to be thus repulsed, and at home, too I tried only twice more to make my story believed; failing in these efforts, I turned all my thoughts toward the restoration of my father to mental health, believing that, when this was done, he, as a man, could resume his own place and his true position.  I had over six thousand dollars of the money I had taken from my father’s pocket-book, and which I had always kept so completely concealed about my person, that no one had the least suspicion of it.  Five thousand of this I deposited on interest, and with the residue took a small house in the suburbs of the city, which I furnished plainly, and removed into it with my father.  I then employed two of the most skillful physicians in the city, and placed him in their hands, studiously concealing from them our real names and history.  For eighteen months he was under medical treatment, and for at least six months of that time in a private insane hospital.  But all to no effect.  Severe or lenient treatment all ended in the same result.  He continued a simple, harmless old man, fond of me as a child is of his mother, and looking up to and confiding in me for every thing.

“At the end of the period I have indicated, I found my means had become reduced to about three thousand dollars.  This awoke in my bosom a new cause of anxiety.  If my father should not recover his reason in two or three years, I would have nothing upon which to support him, and be compelled to see him taken to some public institution for the insane, there to be treated without that tenderness and regard which a daughter can exercise toward her parent.  This fear haunted me terribly.

“It was near the end of the period I have named, that I met with an account of the Massachusetts Insane Hospital, situated in Charlestown in this State.  I was pleased with the manner in which patients were represented to be treated, and found that, by investing in Boston the balance of my little property, the income would be sufficient to pay for my father’s maintenance there.  As for myself, I had no fear but that with my needle, or in some other way, I could easily earn enough to supply my own limited wants.  A long conference with one of the physicians who had attended my father, raised my hopes greatly as to the benefits which might result from his being placed in an institution so well conducted.