threatened attack. He was at once discovered and recognized by the infuriated people, who with one accord dashed after him with frightful yells and cries of

“Kill him! Run him up to the lamp-post!”

It was about this time that several gentlemen connected with the newspaper press arrived on the scene for the purpose of obtaining particulars of the case.

On entering the dwelling, Herriges’ mother, a very old; and as the reporters describe her, “weasaned faced woman,” seized one of them and begged him to save her.

“Oh, save me! for the mob is throwing bricks and stones at the house! They are going to burn it down, and burn us all alive in it.”

She was assured that she would be protected, and that no harm would befal her; and a special messenger was despatched to the police station to have a powerful posse of men hurried down to save the place. Each moment the mob was growing larger and increasing in the violence of its demonstrations, and had not the force of police arrived shortly after this, there is no doubt but that the house would have been torn completely down, and perhaps burned. Happily, however, such a result was averted by prompt action on the part of the authorities.

The newspaper gentlemen, thereupon, had ample opportunity to proceed with their visit of inquiry.

A respectable looking woman led the way up stairs ascending which required more than ordinary effort, not only on account of their wretched condition, but also on account of the frightful stench that came from the late abode of the imbecile.

This person informed the visitors that two rooms had been set apart for the use of John. The “parlor” as she called the den on the first or ground floor was entirely destitute of any furniture but the remains of an ancient sofa, a regular skeliton with nothing left but the wooden slats. Over this was a horribly filthy quilt. This was the imbecile’s “parlor.” His “bed-room” was the cage to which reference has already been made. The scanty glimmering light that forced its way in between the wooden slats nailed across the window was just sufficient to show the efforts that had been so hurriedly but abortively made to cleanse the den.

Most prominent was a bed freshly placed there and covered with a middling good coverlet. One of the gentlemen remarked as he noticed this.

“Ah, I see you have put a bed in here. There was none when John was taken out.”

“Oh, yes it was,” said the woman quickly. “The bed was always here, but we have put a spread over it. We did not do any thing else.”

“Yes you have done something else,” was the rejoinder. “You scraped away several inches of filth off this floor, and whitewashed and scrubbed it, it is all wet yet.”

“Oh well,” said she, “the poor old woman down there was not able to keep him clean at all. She is eighty years old and the most devoted loving mother possible, feeding him with her own hands and providing for him every delicacy, like strawberries and such things as that.”

“Well, now what was the reason you had John confined here?”

“John studied too hard when he tried to get into the High School and turned his brain. When he was first wrong his brother Joseph, who is the kindest hearted man alive, had him taken to a public institution; but his mother got uneasy about him and he was brought home again; and Dr. Goddard was called in to attend him. The doctor said he needed nothing but kindness and skillful nursing, which they gave him with an affection beautiful to behold.”

In reply to an inquiry of how long the poor fellow had been locked up in this room, she said:

“He wasn’t locked up here at all. He had the range of the whole house.”

“How long has he been out of his mind?” asked a gentleman.

“Somewhere about eighteen years.”

“Are you a relation of his?”

“Oh, no, I am only a neighbor, and came in to stay with his poor old mother, who is nearly scared to death.”

“Has he any relatives except his mother and brother?”

“Yes, he has four sisters.”

About this time Joseph Herriges, nearly dead with fright, returned with the police force, and expressed great gratification at the presence of the reporters, in order that they might tell his part of the story, and thus have reliable facts to give to the public instead of a pack of lies told by the neighbors. He said:

“John, when a boy, was very intellectual, and I had resolved to give him a good education, so I got him into the public school, also into a night school, and had him taught penmanship as well as cigar-making.

“Once when he attended a lecture he fell as he came down stairs, and struck his head such a violent blow that he never was the same boy afterwards, but gradually lost his mind. That has been about twelve years ago.”

It will be noticed here that the woman had previously stated eighteen years. This was the first discrepancy. Herriges continued:

“I took him to the almshouse, where he was under Dr. Robert Smith’s care for a month. Then his mother and his sister here visited every day.” [Here Herriges pointed to the woman who had positively said she was only a neighbor.] “At last, to please mother, I brought him home and called in Doctor Gardner, who said, after a long attendance, that he could do him no good. I have devoted my life to that boy, and washed him every day, and attended to his wants whenever I attended to my own, and combed and fed him.”

“Then how is it that his hair and beard have become just like felted cloth with filth, and how is it that he is covered from head to foot with vermin?”

“What! how!” exclaimed Herriges with a decidedly mixed expression on his countenance. “Was there vermin? Well I don’t know how he got them. I never saw any that’s certain.”

“Was he so very violent that you kept him locked up in this cage?”

“Oh, no, John was always as gentle as a lamb.”

“Then what are those iron and wooden slats at that window for?”

“Oh, well, we were afraid that he might take a fit some time and get into the street and say strange things.”

At this juncture of the garbled narrative, Herriges became flurred, and begged the reporters to do him justice, repeating the words.

“Now you will do me justice, won’t you? You see they say I have kept him imprisoned in this way to get his share of the property. He has not got a cent in the world, for this house is only the property of mother during her life time. It is all she has and when she dies it will have to be divided among the whole six of us.”

“But look here,” interrupted a gentlemen of the party, “what about those houses on Lombard street and the houses on Fourth street?”

“Oh, those are all my own,” answered he. “I worked and earned them myself.”

The questioner replied.

“But you told me this morning that your father died in Oregon and left all his property to you alone. How do you make that agree with this last statement?”

“Don’t interrupt me. You confuse me, and put me out. I am trying to tell a straight story and you throw me out. I’ll tell you again exactly all.”

He then repeated his former statement and wound up with a fresh appeal to be done justly by; which seemed in his mind to mean that his statement alone should be given to the public. But he was told that Mrs. Gibson’s story would be published as well as his own, whereupon another sister, who had just arrived on the scene, pronounced Mrs. Gibson a liar, and added her solicitations to have that part of the history suspended.

On a subsequent visit, the sister who had represented herself as only a neighbor, repeated the statements that been previously made by her