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Extract from Prologue

Written by

Mr. W. P. Reeves, and delivered by Mr. C. Hull,

On the Occasion of the Performance of

"Black-Eyed Susan,"

By the Asylum Staff and Friends,

June 30th, 1885.

Whose woe is deepest of all human woes;
Whose fate is hardest of all mortal fates;
Whose weight is heaviest of earthly weights;
Who know the pain, the worm that never dies,
The agony supreme of agonies;
Whose death in life the living dread to see;
Whose life in death the dying e'en would flee.
And, as the power that gives and takes away—
That takes the mind and leaves the helpless clay—
Sends them among us, can there be a deed
More sacred than to succour such sore need?
Smooth the fear-stricken brow, and aid to tame
The horror of the dread without a name;
To make him smile, who has not smiled for years,
Or give the fevered brain relief in tears?