up three of the poor wanderers, and, unluckily, picked up you."

"He should not have committed such a stupid error," said Lynde, clinging
stoutly to his grievance. "He ought to have seen that I was not an
inmate of the asylum."

"An attendant, my dear Mr. Lynde, is not necessarily familiar with all
the patients; he may know only those in his special ward. Besides, you
were bare-headed and running, and seemed in a state of great cerebral
excitement."

"I was chasing a man who had stolen my property."

"Morton and the others report that you behaved with great violence."

"Of course I did. I naturally resented being seized and bound."

"Your natural violence confirmed them in their natural suspicion, you
see. Assuredly they were to blame; but the peculiar circumstances must
plead for them."

"But when I spoke to them calmly and rationally"--

"My good sir," interrupted the doctor, "if sane people always talked as
rationally and sensibly as some of the very maddest of my poor friends
sometimes do, there would be fewer foolish things said in the world.
What remark is that the great poet puts into the mouth of Polonius,
speaking of Hamlet? 'How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so
prosperously be delivered of.' My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent