Ten Days in a Mad-House | Page 8

for some
information which he had given me. If he were in, would he not
recognize me? And then all would be lost so far as getting to the island
was concerned. I pulled my sailor hat as low down over my face as I
possibly could, and prepared for the ordeal. Sure enough there was
sturdy Captain McCullagh standing near the desk.
He watched me closely as the officer at the desk conversed in a low
tone with Mrs. Stanard and the policeman who brought me.

"Are you Nellie Brown?" asked the officer. I said I supposed I was.
"Where do you come from?" he asked. I told him I did not know, and
then Mrs. Stanard gave him a lot of information about me--told him
how strangely I had acted at her home; how I had not slept a wink all
night, and that in her opinion I was a poor unfortunate who had been
driven crazy by inhuman treatment. There was some discussion
between Mrs. Standard and the two officers, and Tom Bockert was told
to take us down to the court in a car.
"Come along," Bockert said, "I will find your trunk for you." We all
went together, Mrs. Stanard, Tom
Bockert, and myself. I said it was very kind of them to go with me, and
I should not soon forget them. As we walked along I kept up my refrain
about my trucks, injecting occasionally some remark about the dirty
condition of the streets and the curious character of the people we met
on the way. "I don't think I have ever seen such people before," I said.
"Who are they?" I asked, and my companions looked upon me with
expressions of pity, evidently believing I was a foreigner, an emigrant
or something of the sort. They told me that the people around me were
working people. I remarked once more that I thought there were too
many working people in the world for the amount of work to be done,
at which remark Policeman P. T. Bockert eyed me closely, evidently
thinking that my mind was gone for good. We passed several other
policemen, who generally asked my sturdy guardians what was the
matter with me. By this time quite a number of ragged children were
following us too, and they passed remarks about me that were to me
original as well as amusing.
"What's she up for?" "Say, kop, where did ye get her?" "Where did yer
pull 'er?" "She's a daisy!"
Poor Mrs. Stanard was more frightened than I was. The whole situation
grew interesting, but I still had fears for my fate before the judge.
At last we came to a low building, and Tom Bockert kindly volunteered
the information: "Here's the express office. We shall soon find those
trunks of yours."

The entrance to the building was surrounded by a curious crowd and I
did not think my case was bad enough to permit me passing them
without some remark, so I asked if all those people had lost their
trunks.
"Yes," he said, "nearly all these people are looking for trunks."
I said, "They all seem to be foreigners, too." "Yes," said Tom, "they are
all foreigners just landed. They have all lost their trunks, and it takes
most of our time to help find them for them."
We entered the courtroom. It was the Essex Market Police Courtroom.
At last the question of my sanity or insanity was to be decided. Judge
Duffy sat behind the high desk, wearing a look which seemed to
indicate that he was dealing out the milk of human kindness by
wholesale. I rather feared I would not get the fate I sought, because of
the kindness I saw on every line of his face, and it was with rather a
sinking heart that I followed Mrs. Stanard as she answered the
summons to go up to the desk, where Tom Bockert had just given an
account of the affair.
"Come here," said an officer. "What is your name?"
"Nellie Brown," I replied, with a little accent. "I have lost my trunks,
and would like if you could find them."
"When did you come to New York?" he asked.
"I did not come to New York," I replied (while I added, mentally,
"because I have been here for some time.")
"But you are in New York now," said the man.
"No," I said, looking as incredulous as I thought a crazy person could,
"I did not come to New York."
"That girl is from the west," he said, in a tone that made me tremble.
"She has a western accent."

Some one else who had been listening to the brief dialogue here
asserted that he had lived south and that my accent was southern,