INSANITY. 329 



on whom we vent our contumely, our scorn and wrath to 

 show how good we are how great our repugnance to evil ? 

 Such a tale I could tell. Social victims I could muster and 

 classify; proving my case by simple expedients of logic. How- 

 ever, this may not be. 



Truth is a shining light. We affect to love its glow; but 

 even as owls and bats, we mostly fear to look at it. 



The world's social victims Heaven save the mark ! are 

 mostly taboo to print, and well-nigh to talk about. 



One class of them, however, comes prominently to hand, 

 and the specialty of its members is not of a kind to repel 

 investigation. The special class to which my mind reverts is 

 the one of which Mr. Calcraft, of stage celebrity, is typical. 

 I wonder if there be anybody who will not agree without 

 demur, that it is a base, a shabby, a heartless thing, to first 

 decree an act necessary to be done, then, finding somebody 

 to do it, make him an outcast a moral leper for the doing. 



Nobody demurs of course not; but then, applying the 

 general proposition to a special case, do we not see that the 

 baseness, the shabbiness, the heartlessness, are precisely those 

 of which the public executioner might justly complain, were 

 he not steeled to circumstances ? 



It may do some of us good if we calmly call to mind what 

 certain newspaper scribes, to show their gentle-tnindedness, 

 permitted themselves to write about the London executioner. 

 * That shambling old man,' who came ' cringing forward' to do 

 his ' ghastly office.' 



Shame upon ye, scribes ! More unworthy are you than 

 he ! The sheriff is meaner than Mr. Calcraft ; and, optimist 

 believers in the improvability of human nature, I farther 

 say, if your theory be made manifest by time, the day will 

 come for the truth of this teaching to be also exemplified. 



Obiter dicta this. To what point do I aim? whither do 

 we drift ? Simply to the treatment of insanity. 



When the circumstance is narrated (and it is sober un- 



