Excerpt from Three Years in a Mad-House: The Story of My Life at the Asylum, My Escape, and the Strange Adventures Which FollowedI here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period of my life, according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In t/mt hope it is that Ihave drawn it up, and Ma: must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honorable re serve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feel ings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that decent drapery which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them: accord ingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, Spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers, and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature All thisi feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this ten dency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this to come be fore the public and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step, thati have at last concluded on taking it. From the Confessions of Thomas De Quincey.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.