He makes his will, and dies, and then it is found that
his whole property is left in trust to be employed in the maintenance of
his library of Bibles, in purchasing others which may become known to
the trustees, and in printing one copy, for his library, of the book
in any language in which it does not already exist. A letter which is
addressed to his trustees informs them that, when he was a boy, a Bible
which he had in the breast-pocket of his coat preserved his life by
stopping a bullet which another boy had accidentally discharged from a
pistol, and that he then had resolved to make the honoring of the Bible
the duty of his whole life.
Neither of these persons can be regarded as insane. Both were the
subjects of acquired eccentricity, which, in all likelihood, would have
ensued in some other form, from some other circumstance acting upon
brains naturally predisposed to be thus affected. The brain is the soil
upon which impressions act differently, according to its character, just
as, with the sower casting his seed-wheat upon different fields, some
springs up into a luxuriant crop, some grows sparsely, and some, again,
takes no root, but rots where it falls.
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