Two of the most sensible (one a forger, the other a kleptomaniac on an
important scale) are friends of mine. They are fairly well educated,
respectable city men, clean, solemn, stodgy, punctilious, and resigned,
but they are both unhappy; not because they are cursed with the double
brand of madness and crime, and have forfeited their freedom in
consequence; but because they find there are so few "ladies and
gentlemen" in a criminal lunatic asylum, and they have always been used
to "the society of ladies and gentlemen." Were it not for this, they
would be well content to live here. And each is in the habit of
confiding to me that he considers the other a very high-minded,
trustworthy fellow, and all that, but not altogether "quite a
gentleman." I do not know what they consider me; they probably confide
that to each other.
Can anything be less odd, less eccentric or interesting?
Another, when quite sane, speaks English with a French accent and
demonstrative French gestures, and laments the lost glories of the old
French regime, and affects to forget the simplest English words. He
doesn't know a word of French, however. But when his madness comes on,
and he is put into a strait-waistcoat, all his English comes back, and
very strong, fluent, idiomatic English it is, of the cockneyest kind,
with all its "h's" duly transposed.
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