Life at Ribe. 
and letting fly an imaginary arrow at it, exclaiming, 
There, moon ! " as if he had taken revenge upon the 
supposed author of his misery. We leave it to men 
of science to settle what connection there may or 
may not be between the moon and certain mental 
aberrations called lunacy ; we are now stating a simple 
fact. We did our best to calm down the wretched 
maniac's excitement. We offered him food and 
lodging, indulged his whims, assumed the stern and 
authoritative, indeed, exercised all our arts upon him, 
but to no purpose. We might have secured him by 
force, but we were unwilling to take such an extreme 
measure. He grew more and more boisterous. 
Finding an old tin can about the place, he beat away 
upon it most furiously, yelling, shrieking, and making 
the most frightful noises. After a while he ran off, 
when, hoping he had gone for good, we laid down to 
rest. Be it remembered that we were then living in 
a small house of corrugated iron sheeting. Well, 
we had no sooner dropped off to sleep than our friend 
returned. Armed with a large stick, he roused us by 
a tremendous attack upon the house, first thrashing 
it violently, and then rapidly drawing his stick back- 
ward and forwards over the corrugations, thereby 
creating a deafening din, which greatly delighted him, 
but which was anything but pleasant to us. Turning 
out again, we found him possessed by another idea. 
He now insisted upon sleeping with us. Nothing 
would suit him but our allowing him to share our 
hut mid bed. This fancy remained with him for a 
long time, and he was most pertinacious. So we were 
kept about through the greater part of the night. 
The situation can be better imagined than described. 
