
ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE
LONDON.
ONTARIO
London, Ont.,15 Sept 1888
All quiet here and another perfect autumn day. Your card of 13th came this morning. I
think it is wonderful how perfect your handwriting keeps through all your illness
and feebleness. No I would not recommend Froude's
Carlyle to a man who needed cheering up. I read it a few
years ago and it nearly gave me an attack of melancholia. I look upon that same
Carlyle as being (or having been?) one of the worst "cranks" that ever lived. And he
certainly had about as bad a time of it for 86 years as any man ever had in this
world. Nothing gave him pleasure, nearly everything gave him pain. As long as his
wife lived her presence only seemed to add to his worry and gloom; as soon as she
was dead he was more gloomy and worried more than ever because he had lost her! He
was a bad sample and she was little (if any?) better. He couldn't even live with his
favorite brother John! I think his ignorant old mother with her pipe was the best of the lot;
think I could have liked her—I shall like to know C. by & by to see what
he is like in the next world but I never expect to care much about him!

