JAUNTING TO CANADA
To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8
o'clock P.M., June 3, on a first-class sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley
(North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly,
and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrived
at 8, morning, and had a bounteous breakfast. I must say I never put
in such a good night on any railroad track--smooth, firm, the minimum
of jolting, and all the swiftness compatible with safety. So without
change to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, where we arrived early
afternoon; then on to London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less than
twenty-two hours altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable house of
my friends Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden and
lawns of the asylum.
SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE
_June 6_.--Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) main Insane
asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story. Plain boards,
whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all
scrupulously clean and sweet. Some three hundred persons present,
mostly patients. Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm,
orotund voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying,
or suggesting, _that audience_, deeply impress'd me. I was furnish'd
with an arm-chair near the pulpit, and sat facing the motley, yet
perfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation. The quaint dresses
and bonnets of some of the women, several very old and gray, here and
there like the heads in old pictures.
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