SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 183 



As he sat in the gallery with the superintendent, he 

 " watched the inmates solemnly walk through square dances." 

 Writing about it afterwards, he said : "A young man at the 

 piano attracted my attention on account of his firm touch 

 and excellent execution. ' He is an inmate,' said the superin- 

 tendent. ' He can play the music of the great composers quite 

 well and has composed several good waltzes. He is a graduate 

 of one of our minor colleges, yet he is an imbecile and suffers 

 from emotional insanity. A strong attendant sits by his side, 

 ever watchful to restrain him.' ' What is his heredity ? ' I 

 asked. ' That is the point,' answered the superintendent. ' His 

 mother is feeble-minded, and his father died in the Central 

 Insane Hospital. He had a sister in the idiot asylum.' " 

 Then Dr. Hurty adds : " Defective people curse the day 

 they were born, and this man curses his parents. Almost 

 every man you find with an hereditary infirmity curses the 

 day of his birth." 



In the United States alone we have 1 50,000 feeble-minded 

 persons. Some have intelligence enough to know they are 

 blighted, to know whence the blight comes, and to fling out 

 hatred and curses against their ancestors who doomed them. 

 These are called the feeble-minded. They have some intelli- 

 gence, some ability to think and to reason. But below them 

 in mental rank, unable either to think or to reason, unable so 

 much as to curse their fate and their ancestors, are the hopeless 

 ranks of imbeciles and idiots. 



Feeble-mindedness, imbecility, and idiocy — these are the 

 descending grades, although, in speaking, people do not always 

 keep them apart. And between the grades there is every 

 shade of mental weakness. 



In Vineland, New Jersey, 400 defective persons are 

 gathered in what is. called " a great human laboratory." 



