| Author: | J. Y. Akerman | ISBN: | 1230000139305 |
| Publisher: | WDS Publishing | Publication: | June 5, 2013 |
| Imprint: | Language: | English |
| Author: | J. Y. Akerman |
| ISBN: | 1230000139305 |
| Publisher: | WDS Publishing |
| Publication: | June 5, 2013 |
| Imprint: | |
| Language: | English |
Calling one day on a friend, who had amassed a large collection of autographs, and other manuscript curiosities, he showed me a small quarto volume, which had been bequeathed to him by a relative, a physician, who for many years had been in extensive practice in London.
'He attended the patients at a private asylum for insane persons of the better classes,' said my friend, 'and I have often heard him speak of the writer of that beautiful MS, a gentleman of good family, who had been an inmate of----House upwards of thirty years,' at the time he was first called to attend him.
On looking over the volume, I found it filled with scraps of poetry, extracts from classic authors, and even from the Talmudic writers; but what interested me most was a narrative of several pages, which appeared so circumstantially related as to leave little doubt of its being partly, if not wholly, founded on fact. I begged permission to make a transcript, which was readily granted, and the result is before the reader.
'We laugh at what we call the folk of our ancestors, and their notions of destiny, and the malignant influences of the stars. For what will our children deride us? Perhaps for dreaming that friendship was a reality, and that constant love dwelt upon earth. I once believed that friendship was not a vain name, and thought, with the antique sage, that one mind sometimes dwelt in two bodies. I dreamt, and woke to find that I had been dreaming!
Calling one day on a friend, who had amassed a large collection of autographs, and other manuscript curiosities, he showed me a small quarto volume, which had been bequeathed to him by a relative, a physician, who for many years had been in extensive practice in London.
'He attended the patients at a private asylum for insane persons of the better classes,' said my friend, 'and I have often heard him speak of the writer of that beautiful MS, a gentleman of good family, who had been an inmate of----House upwards of thirty years,' at the time he was first called to attend him.
On looking over the volume, I found it filled with scraps of poetry, extracts from classic authors, and even from the Talmudic writers; but what interested me most was a narrative of several pages, which appeared so circumstantially related as to leave little doubt of its being partly, if not wholly, founded on fact. I begged permission to make a transcript, which was readily granted, and the result is before the reader.
'We laugh at what we call the folk of our ancestors, and their notions of destiny, and the malignant influences of the stars. For what will our children deride us? Perhaps for dreaming that friendship was a reality, and that constant love dwelt upon earth. I once believed that friendship was not a vain name, and thought, with the antique sage, that one mind sometimes dwelt in two bodies. I dreamt, and woke to find that I had been dreaming!
