sence, lie would return home. Invariably, on the morn- ing of the next day after his return, towels, which had been taken from an open portmanteau, were found scat- tered about the room. ^Vlter breakfast, his custom was to retire to the library and write the addresses of all the hotel-keepers at wliose houses he had slept during his absence on so many slips of writing-paper, with direc- tions to his servants to inclose to each address the num- ber of towels specitied upon each piece of paper, and to copy such other ■\\Titing as they might find there, and send this in a letter, -with the towels, to the hotel-keeper. This gentleman was one of the unhappy race of klepto- maniacs, whose particular mania impelled him to pur- loin towels. He subsequently gave to a friend a liistorj^ of his case, and said he was goaded to these journeyings and pilferings by an irresistible impulse, which he insist- ed was tlie residt of demoniacal possession. He was never impelled, however, a second time on the same journey; so that, while no hotel-keeper woidd be likely to suspect, during his visit, a gentleman of his rank and st}'le as one ■who would steal his towels, it never transpired publicly, so far as is known, that he was a thief, although his own consciousness of the fact embittered his existence. Sometimes, in the case of this form of monomania, there exists, in the mind of the sufferer, the delusion that what he steals is his own property, or has been stolen from him, and that he merely reclaims his own. Sometimes he imagines that God orders him to steal. The case is recorded of a .Scotch clerg3-man, distinguished for his learning, piety, and charity ; he stole Bibles with a spe- cial view to the glory of God by the propagation of the Gospel. His manse was a little " missionary society of stolen Bibles," and he was as much in earnest in the con- version of souls by the contraband process as the most enthusiastic foreign missionary coidd be in his calling. He was at last detected in wholesale Bible-stealing. It was farther discovered that he had organized a wide missionary district, and left a Bible or a Testament at every cottage where it was needed along the route. The most touching fact in the story is that he was ar- rested while on his knees by the bedside of a dying old man, with a stolen Bible lying witle open before liim on the bed. '-What made you steal the Biljle, Mr. B.?" asked the sheriff, with pious horror on his face. " God made me steal them, good man," was the reply; '-he was weary of seeing his poor people perish of Gospel- hunger because the rich Bible Society could not afford to feed them without the baubees, and so God set me to steal for them and save them." He could not be per- suaded that he had done wrong. The delusion of the clergyman, who was a very poor man, naturally suggest- ed insanity. But he was perfectly sane upon all other points, and it is doubtful whether he would have received the benefit of Ids malady— whether, indeeil, it would have been admitted as a malady at all — if a learned and pluloso]ihical physician in a neighboring town had not positively sworn that he was the '• victim of moral mania." There is this peculiarity sometimes in the case of kleptomaniacs, that their purloining is confined to single articles. The case is reported of a lady who could not resist the temptation to steal silk stockings. Another lady would steal gloves whenever the opportu- nity was afforded. A boy was arrested some months since in Brooklyn for stealing slii)pers from the feet of ladies while walking in the street. His friends came forwaril and testified that he had been in the habit of steahng sli|)pers, and was never known to have stolen anything else, all his life. A letter-carrier in Harlem, N. Y., was detected in abstracting letters and concealing them under a rock, which he had practiced for more than a year. They -wotc most carefully hoarded in his place of concealment, and were found unopened. It was proven in his case, we believe, that he had a mania for stealing letters without any apparcift motive, as he never made any use of them cxcejit to hoard them.
The cases quoted are sufficient to prove that the form of moral insanity to wluch the name of kleptomania has
been given reallj' exists. From these, as well as many other instances which will readily occur to the reader, it will be seen that there can be little difficulty for a skilfid physician, after a short examination, in distin- guishing between a real victim of this disease and an ordinary thief. And this, as well as every other true form of insanity, ^ve presume, frees every one, whether previously bad or good, from moral responsibility in this particular regard. \Mien the actual condition exists, no matter what the conduct maj- have been which pre- ceded and conduced to it, the earthly account of the subject has already been closed, and the deeds that fol- \o\v, ^ve are sure, \vill be mercifully judged of by him who knows whereof his poor frail creatures are made, and remembers that they are but dust. (E. de P.)