JOHN’S ADVENTURES WITH A CRAZY MAN.
HADDINGTON Hospital had its “characters,” as every place has. I formed
ties and associations during the spring of my stay there, which can
never be forgotten. Nearly all who were there at the time, I remember
with pleasure. There was “Chris.” Miller, whose leg was amputated below
the knee, and who walked splendidly on his “Palmer leg,” when he got it.
If there was one of the boys there whom I liked better than any other,
it was “Chris.” He was a jovial fellow, humorous and witty, and the boys
were never at a loss for a laugh when he was about. When he got his
artificial leg on tight he got tight himself on the strength of it, and
made so much noise that the Doctors came to the melancholy conclusion
that it was necessary to put him into the guard-house—which was Room No.
41, fourth story. There he made more noise than ever, sat in the open
window with his feet dangling out—one a wooden one, you know—and
threatened to jump down upon the roof of the piazza, a distance of
twenty-five or thirty feet; so, the Doctors got scared, lest he should
do so, and thus sprain the ankle of his new leg, and they had him
brought down and locked up in the cellar, where there was not such a
broad field for exercise.
Nor shall I ever forget Young, a reckless boy of the New York Fire
Zouaves, whose leg was amputated five times. One evening when I was just
about to retire, he came home from the city, more than tight, fell, as
he came blundering up the steps, and bursted his unfortunate “stump”
open, so that half-an-inch more of the bone had to be sawed off. He
begged the privilege of keeping this fragment of himself, and when he
got into a convalescent state again, he worked whole days at it with a
pocket knife, and carved it into a very handsome ring, which he ever
afterwards wore on his middle finger, both at the table and elsewhere.
There, too, was Mr. Becker, (a citizen,) the clerk of the hospital. He
was a handsome fellow, with black curling hair; and he made love, _pro
tempore_, to one of the village girls.
And there was Bingham, whom I shall never forget, a religious fellow who
sung psalms of an evening, and induced the boys to make up money enough
for him to go home on—although it was subsequently ascertained that he
had plenty of money himself at the time. He was the only mean fellow I
remember; but he had lost a leg in the service of his country, and I
will spare him.
One evening, a few weeks after I had been admitted to the hospital, a
man named Thomas, who had been absent for ten days, returned and
occupied a bed by the side of mine. He was a soldier who had been
slightly wounded, and was doing guard duty at the hospital. He had been
absent without leave, had been drinking all that time, and now returned
in a very nervous and shattered state of body, and an uneasy and gloomy
frame of mind. To add to his trepidation, he was apprehensive that he
had been marked as a deserter, during his absence; and he retired to bed
in uncommonly low spirits.
I was just falling asleep, and every thing was quiet about the hospital,
when Mr. Thomas suddenly startled me by springing up to a sitting
posture in his bed, and crying out:
“No you don’t! I’ll die first! I won’t be taken! You want to try me for
a deserter and shoot me with twelve muskets! I tell you, I’ll not be
taken!”
“What’s the matter, Thomas?” I asked in alarm.
“Matter? Why, don’t you see? There’s a whole company of soldiers
surrounding the house, and they want to take me for a deserter! Look!”
he exclaimed wildly, pointing through the window. “Don’t you see them?”
“No, no,” I replied, perceiving that he was afflicted with a mild attack
of the _horrors_. “There are no soldiers there. Lie down!”
“Yes, there are!” he exclaimed, springing out upon the floor. “See! See!
Twenty! Thirty! Forty! Fifty!—I’ll cut their hearts out if they try to
take me! I will!”—— ——Here he swore a profane oath.
I confess that I felt rather uneasy in the presence of this madman, but
calming my fears, I said, coaxingly:
“Come, now, Thomas, there’s no one after you. Don’t act so foolishly! Do
lie down and go to sleep!”
“But I see them! They are down there by that car, now. Do you see? O,
I’m watching them! They’ll be sharp if they take me alive!”
The terminus of the Market Street and West Philadelphia horse railway is
at the building then used as a hospital, and a car arrived and departed
every forty minutes till eleven o’clock. At this time, there was one
standing some fifty yards from the building, awaiting its time to depart
for the depot in West Philadelphia.
“Yes, I do see them now,” I said, thinking it better to humor him; “but
it is very plain they have concluded you are not here, for they are
getting on that car to leave.”
“O, I know their tricks!” he replied, quickly. “They only want to make
me think they are gone, so that I will go to sleep, and they can come
and take me easily. But they don’t catch me that way! I should think
not! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Really, Thomas,” said I, persuasively, “I believe they intend to go. Go
to bed, and I will watch for you. If they do not leave on that car when
it goes, and offer to come this way, I will wake you and tell you.
Depend on me.”
“Will you?”
“Yes, indeed I will. Lie down.”
“I will, then; but, mind, don’t let ’em get near. They’re sly as foxes.
Watch ’em.”
“Don’t fear,” I replied. “Go to bed, and I will wake you in good time if
I see them coming.”
Thereupon Thomas, who was a large strong man of thirty years, returned
somewhat reluctantly to his bed, while some of the other boys of the
“ward” began to wake up, and swear moderately because their slumbers had
been disturbed. The murmur soon subsided, however, Thomas seemed to
sleep, all grew quiet, and I lay down again.
I was just getting into a comfortable doze, when Thomas started
suddenly, sprung out upon the floor, between his bed and mine, making
the whole house quiver, placed his hands upon my stomach, and leaped
clear over me and my bed at a bound. At first, I thought my “time had
come,” for I fancied he was about to “slash” me in two with a knife; but
having executed the gymnastic feat just described, he withdrew his
hands, and stood in a kind of crouching position, trembling like a
leaf—especially like an aspen leaf.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, trembling about as much as he.
“Hush!” he whispered, in an awful manner. “They’re at the window! They
were pointing their muskets in! One of them touched me on the head.
Look! See their bayonets at the window! Where’s my knife? Reach and get
it for me from my pants’ pocket! Do!”
“Wait a moment,” I replied, “till I go to the door and look out. I want
to see how many there are.” My object was to get out into the hall, go
and wake the Doctor, and inform him of this sad case.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” he said, quickly, at the same time jumping
about four feet high, and coming down on the floor like a thunderbolt;
“don’t open the door! They would all rush in!”
“Only the hall-door,” I persisted, beginning to rise. “They’re not in
the hall. Stay here, and I’ll get you a musket to defend yourself with.”
The muskets belonging to the guards off duty were kept on a kind of rack
in the hall, immediately adjoining the room I was in. I did not wait to
hear any further remonstrances on the part of Thomas, but leaving him
standing there trembling, as only a man suffering from delirium tremens
can tremble, I seized my two crutches—for I used two then—stalked to the
door, went out into the hall, closed the door after me and hastened to
the room in which the Doctor slept, which was on the same floor.
It was some little time before I succeeded in getting him awake, and
when I did, he growled out in an ill humor, asked what in the deuce I
wanted, imagined I was some one come to rob him, seized his revolver,
cocked it, threatened to blow my unhappy brains out, called to me to
“halt, or I was a dead man;” and, in fact, he was, altogether, quite
playful.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” I fairly yelled. “It is I, Doctor—I, John
Smith!”
“What do you want—waking a fellow at this time of night?” he demanded.
“Are you sick? Do you want medicine? Go to the cadet and tell him to
give you:
℞ Sac., Satur. ʒi,
Ext. Vr. Viride, ℈ii,
Emetia, ʒi,
Ol. Tiglii, gtt, xx.
Acid. Tannicum, ℥iss,
Fowler’s Sol. Ars., ℥ss,
Aqua distillata, ℥iiiss.
Coch. mag. every ten minutes, till relieved;
and if——”
“Stop! stop, for suffering humanity’s sake!” I interrupted. “I am not
sick, at all. On the contrary, am quite well—thank you. But——”
“Well, what is the matter?”
“I came to tell you that Mr. Thomas is raving mad. He imagines that a
provost-guard is after him, and that he is to be shot as a deserter; and
he is scampering about over the ward, like a rat in a hot stove. He
talks strangely about cutting people’s hearts out; and he may hurt some
of the boys.”
“O, is that it?” said the Doctor, now wide awake. “Well, I’ll attend to
him!” And he hurriedly turned out and drew on his unmentionables.
Accompanied by the Doctor, a light, and a guard of two men armed with
muskets, I soon returned to “Ward A,” and found Thomas raving like a
“wild man of the woods.” He imagined himself already attacked by a
company of soldiers, and he was hammering away at my empty bed with his
big fists, and cursing and swearing like an officer of the Regular Army.
All the boys of the “ward” were now wide awake, and more than scared.
They were all cripples, and some of them still in a weak condition, and
they really had much to fear in case of Thomas’s becoming generally
pugnacious.
“What do you mean, Thomas?” demanded the Doctor, angrily. “Do you want
to go into the guard-house right now? or will you lie down and take a
night’s rest?”
“They’ve surrounded me!” vociferated Thomas, with a profane oath. “And
I’ll not be taken! I’ll sell my life as dearly as possible! I will!”
“Confound you!” said the Doctor, vexatiously. “You’ll cheat the man that
buys it, then!—seize him, boys, and put him in the cellar. Put on your
pantaloons, Thomas; you must sleep in the cellar to-night. You shall not
carry on in this way.”
Much to my surprise, Thomas at once cooled down, and became perfectly
tractable. He offered no resistance, nor showed any signs of
disobedience, but straightway drew on his trousaloons, put on his
blouse, placed his cap on his head, with the visor shoved down over his
eyes, and quietly accompanied the guard, and allowed himself to be
locked up in a strong room in the basement. So, our peace and
tranquillity were no more invaded till roll-call in the morning.
When one of the guards went to give Thomas his breakfast, he found him
sitting with a grave air on a low stool near the door of his prison,
with a large bloody pocket-knife in his hand. There was a pool of gore
on the floor at his feet, and his neck and breast were terribly gashed.
“Why, Thomas!” exclaimed the horrified sentinel, “What have you done?”
“Some fellow,” returned Thomas, in a calm, and even dignified tone,
“murdered my father last night in the room above, and——” pointing to the
blood on the floor—“his blood ran down here. Some of it fell on me, but
how could I help that?”
“But what are you doing with that knife? You have surely cut yourself.”
“O,” he retorted coolly, as he pointed to his lacerated breast, “I have
been merely trying to get my heart out. I had hold of it once, but it
slipped out of my hand.”
There was a wild look in his eye, and he presented a rather dangerous
appearance with the gory knife in his hand, and his clothes stained with
blood. The sentinel paused a moment, then duty triumphing over fear, he
advanced boldly, and said, in an authoritative tone:
“Give me that knife!”
Without a word, Thomas submissively handed him the bloody instrument,
with which he had been attempting self-destruction. It was a large knife
with eating-fork attached, such as was much used by soldiers during the
war—the blade being about four inches long.
Having secured this weapon, the sentinel closed and locked the door,
then hastened to inform the Doctor of what had occurred. Thereupon
Thomas was conducted to an upper room, his wounds—twenty-two in
number—were examined and dressed, and he was put to bed. There were two
Doctors at the hospital at the time, and both expressed a like opinion
on the case of poor Thomas. They said they wouldn’t be surprised if he
should die, but yet, that it was possible he might get well—if “kept
quiet:” so, by this non-committal course, they did not endanger their
reputation.