"Do you think, Mrs. Packard, that your husband really believes you are an
insane person?"
I do not. I really believe he knows I am a sane person; and still, he is
struggling with all his might to make himself and others believe this
delusion, because his own conscience is accusing him constantly with this
lie against it. With all his accumulated testimonials that I am insane,
and all his sophistries and reasoning upon false premises to establish
this lie, he cannot silence this accusing monitor within himself,
testifying to the contrary. Either this is in reality the case, or he has
at last reached that point, where a person has made such a sinner of his
own conscience as to believe his own lies; or, in other words, he has so
perverted his conscience as to become _conscientiously wrong_. But it is
not for me to judge his heart, only from the standpoint of his own
actions, and from this basis, I give the above as my honest opinion on
this point.
Two facts alone may be sufficient to give some corroboration in support of
this opinion. After taking me from my asylum prison, and while his
prisoner at my own house, he asked me to sign a deed for the transfer of
some of his real estate in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and finding I could not be
induced to do it, without returning to me my note of six hundred dollars
he had robbed me of, and also some of my good clothing, he sought to
transfer it, as the law allows one to do, in case the needed witness is
legally incapacitated by insanity to give their signature; and for this
purpose he was obliged to take an _oath_ that I was insane. He did take
this oath that I was insane, and thereby outlawed as a legal witness. It
was administered by Justice Labrie. A few days after this, he called this
same Justice in to our house to witness my signing this deed, and used it
as a valid signature. Now to say under oath one thing one day, and to deny
it the next, is rather crooked business for a healthy Christian conscience
to sanction.
Another fact. When he was preparing to put me into an Insane Asylum, I
asked him why he was so very anxious to put the stigma of insanity upon
me, when he knew I was not insane? Said he, "I am doing it so that your
opinions need not be believed. I must protect the cause of Christ."
Cause of Christ! I felt like exclaiming, if _your_ cause of Christ needs
_such_ a defence, I think it must be in a sad condition. If it can't stand
before the opinions of a woman, I shouldn't think a man would attempt to
protect it! The truth is, the cause of Christ _to him_ is his creed--a set
of human opinions. While the real cause of Christ is _humanity_; and a
very important part of this cause of Christ to a true man, is the
protection of his own wife.