Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1855-08-11

'hN hSNt NiuhltOf anu Aht TIA " INV NNbAN
disturb and madden such an organization. Here
she wept.
"Wiil you tell ve truly whether you are guilty
OF the crime for which you are condemned p
What you may say shall not harm you in the
least
Her eyes assumed a wild expression.
mo, / am not guilty. These people we're good
to me- sometimes when others were uukind, they
were good to me. They came to me when | was
sick and sent their children to stay with me. i
never treated q human being ungratefully, MY
heart is q kind one. / have with my own hands
taken care Of rich people, and cooked up things
for tho poor, and have helped them as much as ]
could. Now these enemies who accuse me know
that I I'm not guilty-that | never dreamed OF poi
soning my friends. | don't know about 1t. (She
began to talk wildly.) | had been sick; | was
mad for a while, because--gave me something
that took away my senses. | try to think over a
great many things that happened. and | cant I'M
d~erstand them. | can't tell exactly how ] got here.
| know I'm q wicked woman, bet | did not do that
| am the victim of n conspiracy. A political par
ty wished to CT ush John G. Mather and Myron II.
Clark, and SO they cook me up. They could do it,
you lnow--1. a poor woman"
You have confessed everything to your priest"
ooh. yes, and he knows lm innocent; but he
tells me it is better for me to die, and so l will
die"
'Were you happily married. Arc you willing
to let me know all about your early life 2"
"Oh, yes. was married very young and to a
man ] could not love. He was a good man, but |
did not love him. and my first sin was in deserving
my family" Much that she here told me Of her
parentage and family, and her s%orrowful, often
tragical experiences, is not essential to this COM
municstion. am convinced she has no consecu-
tive memory Of the past. She thinks, she talks
coherently, when much of what she says is a mere
jargon. This mood of mind is entirely distinct
from her religious one the latter being a new one
and a very harmonious one in her present eSigen-
cy, enabling her to ignore the past and look calmly
into the brief space of life before her, revealing a
ncver-ending, blissful future. 1t seems rs if she
had arisen from n terrible chaos, and she breads
life lest she should again relapse into it.
Turbulent as has been her career with her stor-
my passions, she could not recall it without a shud-
der; and yet she laughed wildly and gesticulate in
an almost frantic manner more than once. AS 1t
regards the past, her whole mind is in fragments.
She remembers indeed "a mass Of things, but
naught distinctively."
She holds no definite relation to the external
world, and | much doubt if she ever could have
done so. | doubt if she ever could have been able
fully to realize the relations of life, and yet she
told me of suferings, mental and physical, fright
full to have been endured by any human creature.
case of deceit and perjury practised upon a
young girl, worthy only of a fand, and for which
a day of 1etribution must come if there is a God
experimenting the affairs of men, she told me-
The cruel deceiver was one to whom she stood in
Her memory seemed preternaturally
vivid in this case. She told me the pity she felt
for the innocent victim-her womanly pleading
the melancholy journey of the child to New York,
and her death in less than twenty-four h ours after
her arrival.
AS she recalled all this it became more and more
evident that these persons had madoened her. A
vivid imagination, never rising to the ideal, had
Toasted and Mortified itself amid its terrible expe-
riences till she was irretrievably mad, and that too
in a way that required the wisest discrimination
to be sure of the fact.
Many might suspect her assertion that she was
the victim Of a political conspiracy to be a sham a
mere piece of aifectation-and they might think
her violent paroxysms a Giddy mirth or mere freaks
of eccentricity; but she is insane, and probably
was 50 long before she committed this crime, if in
deed she did commit it. These people might not
have died of poison. Our scientific men are far
too ready to give this kind of testimony. Chemi-
cal tests are by no means reliable testimony. The
human system is a grand chemical labratory. We
cannot, indeed we dare not, affirm that several
causes may not call into action deadly chemical
agents. Who shall say that the stomach may not
generate fatal products; the liver secrets sugar,
and the brain starch. With these known scientific
Data, l know of no limit to be given to the score
tons either in a healthful or morbid point of view.
Before l left the prisoner she gave me a mes
sage for the Governor, begging me to deliver it to
him faithfully, which of course did not fail to
do:
"Tell him there is a political party wishing to
put him out of office. They wish to crush Myron
II. Clark and John,C. Mather; and if he commutes
my sentence they will make political capital out of
it; and | would rather die than be used as an in
strumeat to ruin a good man. Tell him to let me
die, asI wish"
The Prison, as l passed through, looked clean
and orderly, and the physician in attencance mod
est and attentive to his duty. One thing further |
must say-and the remark will hold good in other
cases. / have visited many women incarcerated
for crimes when they ought to have been sent to
hospitals; and | have felt the urgent need of dig
nifed matrons in our prisons. who alone should
have access to this Department. No man should
hold the keys to the prison-room of the guiltiest
woman in the world. No man should be allowed
to come and go at his pleasure. 1t is an indecen-
cy which must be rectiiied. Women-poor, mise
rable and guilty as they may be-always complain
of this to me, and more might, perhaps more
ought to be, said in this article in this relation; but
| forbear, in the hope that the humane mind may
be brought to a consideration Of the evil without
more deinate utterunce on my part.
Very respectfully yours,
>, L. CAKES SMITH.
t Troy, N. Y, July, 1855.