Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/256

258 her husband and myself. She laid the whole day on my lap, but had some dreadful fits of insanityy. [sic] She took my bonnet off my head and put it down in the bottom of the carriage for a spit box, while I had to go on to Columbus bonnetless.

On reaching Columbus we put up at the Neil House, and after taking her to a room, I left her to get some things out of the carriage; I had not been gone but a few moments when I heard the woman screaming for me at the top of her voice. I ran up the stairs and found her taking down all the pictures and the mirror from the wall. I succeeded, in my old way, in quieting her again, and got her laid gently on the bed. In her worst fits I could quiet her by singing.

While, laying in the bed she said to me, "Iangy, I am not mad now, I am only crazy; when I get in my mad fits don't let me hurt you." She sometimes was very ferocious, and gave me some severe blows.

She now gave me a short history of her life and what made her crazyy. [sic] She said she was a native of Maine and married this gentleman against her parents wish, he took her to a hotel in New York and she was there for some time, until his friends thought he was making too much of a lady of her. They kept talking to him until he at length went to housekeeping, and then two or three of his family came and lived with her, and were very ugly to her, even in her own house. Then her husband got to staying out at night. Often, while she would be at the window looking out for him, her hair was wet through with the dew of night. She also told me if she ever got married again she would never have an old maid or a widow living with her; for one day, having finished her dinner