styles, and in many languages. If he hears of a Bible, in any part of
the world, different in any respect from those he owns, he at once
endeavors to obtain it, no matter how difficult the undertaking, or how
much it may cost. Except in the matter of Bibles he is disposed to be
some what penurious--although his estate is large--and has been known to
refuse to have a salad for his dinner on account of the high price of
good olive-oil. He makes his will, and dies, and then it is found that
his whole property is left in trust to be employed in the maintenance of
his library of Bibles, in purchasing others which may become known to
the trustees, and in printing one copy, for his library, of the book
in any language in which it does not already exist. A letter which is
addressed to his trustees informs them that, when he was a boy, a Bible
which he had in the breast-pocket of his coat preserved his life by
stopping a bullet which another boy had accidentally discharged from a
pistol, and that he then had resolved to make the honoring of the Bible
the duty of his whole life.

Neither of these persons can be regarded as insane. Both were the
subjects of acquired eccentricity, which, in all likelihood, would have
ensued in some other form, from some other circumstance acting upon
brains naturally predisposed to be thus affected. The brain is the soil
upon which impressions act differently, according to its character, just
as, with the sower casting his seed-wheat upon different fields, some
springs up into a luxuriant crop, some grows sparsely, and some, again,
takes no root, but rots where it falls. Possibly, if these individuals
had lived a little longer, they might have passed the border-line which
separates mental soundness from mental unsoundness; but certainly, up to
the period of their deaths, both would have been pronounced sane by all
competent laymen and alienists with whom they might have been brought
into contact; and the contest of their wills, by any heirs-at-law, would