Suddenly Ruskin halted and, planting his cane in the ground,
exclaimed, "I don't believe, Alfred--Coventry, I don't believe that
there are in all England three men besides ourselves who, after finding
a violet at this time of year, would have had forbearance and fine
feeling enough to refrain from plucking it."
The reader may judge whether the unconscious display of feeling by the
obscure inmate of a hospital for the insane was not finer than the
self-conscious raptures of these three men of world-wide reputation.
Is it not, then, an atrocious anomaly that the treatment often meted
out to insane persons is the very treatment which would deprive some
sane persons of their reason? Miners and shepherds who penetrate the
mountain fastnesses sometimes become mentally unbalanced as a result of
prolonged loneliness. But they usually know enough to return to
civilization when they find themselves beginning to be affected with
hallucinations. Delay means death. Contact with sane people, if not too
long postponed, means an almost immediate restoration to normality.
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