"Old Kelley" spoiled that sermon, though he meant kindly. He died not
long afterward, gloating over his fancied millions to the last.

"If you have steady nerves, come with me and I will show you the worst
case we have--a woman half tigress, and half devil."

Ascending a stairway, I was led to an angle of the building assigned to
the patients whose violence required them to be kept in close
confinement.

"Hark! don't you hear her? She is in one of her paroxysms now."

The sounds that issued from one of the cells were like nothing I had
ever heard before. They were a series of unearthly, fiendish shrieks,
intermingled with furious imprecations, as of a lost spirit in an
ecstasy of rage and fear.

The face that glared upon me through the iron grating was hideous,
horrible. It was that of a woman, or of what had been a woman, but was
now a wreck out of which evil passion had stamped all that was womanly
or human. I involuntarily shrunk back as I met the glare of those fiery
eyes, and caught the sound of words that made me shudder. I never
suspected myself of being a coward, but I felt glad that the iron bars
of the cell against which she dashed herself were strong. I had read of
Furies--one was now before me. The bloated, gin-inflamed face, the
fiery-red, wicked eyes, the swinish chin, the tangled coarse hair
falling around her like writhing snakes, the tiger-like clutch of her
dirty fingers, the horrible words--the picture was sickening, disgust
for the time almost, extinguishing pity.