Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/92

90 trained, makes the evenings pass very pleasantly in hall 7. They sing and dance. Often the doctors come up and dance with the patients.

One day when we went down to dinner we heard a weak little cry in the basement. Every one seemed to notice it, and it was not long until we knew there was a baby down there. Yes, a baby. Think of it—a little, innocent babe born in such a chamber of horrors! I can imagine nothing more terrible.

A visitor who came one day brought in her arms her babe. A mother who had been separated from her five little children asked permission to hold it. When the visitor wanted to leave, the woman’s grief was uncontrollable, as she begged to keep the babe which she imagined was her own. It excited more patients than I had ever seen excited before at one time.

The only amusement, if so it may be called, given the patients outside, is a ride once a week, if the weather permits, on the “merry-go-round.” It is a change, and so they accept it with some show of pleasure.

A scrub-brush factory, a mat factory, and the laundry are where the mild patients work. They get no recompense for it, but they get hungry over it.

day Pauline Moser was brought to the asylum we heard the most horrible screams, and an Irish girl, only partly dressed, came staggering like a drunken person up the hall, yelling, “Hurrah! Three cheers! I have killed the divil! Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer,” and so on, over and over again. Then she would pull a handful of hair out, while she exultingly cried, “How I deceived the divils. They always said God made hell, but he didn’t.”