_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. O the looks that came from those faces! There
were two or three I shall probably never forget. Nothing at all markedly
repulsive or hideous--strange enough I did not see one such. Our common
humanity, mine and yours, everywhere:
"The same old blood--the same red, running blood;"
yet behind most, an inferr'd arriere of such storms, such wrecks, such
mysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems,
crosses--mirror'd from those crazed faces (yet now temporarily so
calm, like still waters,) all the woes and sad happenings of life and
death--now from every one the devotional element radiating--was it not,
indeed, _the peace of God that passeth all understanding_, strange as it
may sound? I can only say that I took long and searching eyesweeps as
I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing unprecedented thoughts, problems
unanswerable. A very fair choir, and melodeon accompaniment. They sang
"Lead, kindly light," after the sermon. Many join'd in the beautiful
hymn, to which the minister read the introductory text, _In the daytime
also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire_.
Then the words:
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on.
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou
Should'st lead me on;
I lov'd to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on.
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears
Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.
A couple of days after, I went to the "Refractory building," under
special charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly,
both the men's and women's. I have since made many other visits of the
kind through the asylum, and around among the detach'd cottages. As far
as I could see, this is among the most advanced, perfected, and kindly
and rationally carried on, of all its kind in America. It is a town in
itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants.
I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and populous province,
Ontario, has the very best and plentiest benevolent institutions in all
departments.