Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/19

Rh poor captives may fancy themselves in perfect freedom. There is also a beautiful museum of stuffed birds and other animals, with collections of shells and minerals, where the diseased mind may divert itself and derive instruction; occupation and amusement being the principal means employed for the improvement of these unfortunates. For this reason lectures are delivered two or three times a week in a large hall. They frequently meet for general amusement, as for concerts, dances, and so on, and the appliances for various kinds of games, such as billiards, chess, &c., are provided. I heard on all hands music in the house. Music is especially an effective means of cure. Many of the patients played on the piano remarkably well. They showed me an elderly lady, who had been brought hither in a state of perfect fatuity. They gave her a piano, and encouraged her to play some little simple pieces, such as she had played in her youth. By degrees, the memory of many of these early pieces re-awoke, until the whole of her childhood's music revived within her, and with it, as it seemed, the world of her childhood. She played to me, and went with visible delight from one little piece to another, whilst her countenance became as bright, and as innocently gay, as that of a happy child. She will probably never become perfectly well and strong in mind; but she spends here a happy, harmless life in the music of her early years. Many of the ladies, and in particular the younger ones, occupy themselves in making artificial flowers, some of which they gave me, and very well done they were. The men are much employed in field labour and gardening. A niece of the great Washington's was here: a handsome old lady, with features greatly resembling those of the President, and well-bred manners. She was very pale, and was said to be rather weak, than diseased, in mind. The number of beautiful flowers here, particularly of roses, was extraordinary; and even the incurables, if they