AN “INSANE” PAPER

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 33.

AN “INSANE” PAPER.

The inmates of the provincial lunatic asylum of Saint John, New Brunswick, says the Christian Advocate, publish a monthly called the Lancaster Argus. Its editors and writers are all insane, but it has considerable circulation among the sane. The New York Tribune publishes its prospectus: “An elegant, moral, and refined miscellaneous family journal. Devoted to polite literature, wit and humor, prose and poetic gems, and original matter written expressly for this paper. Nothing of an immoral nature will ever be admitted into its columns, therefore making it emphatically a paper for the million and a welcome visitor to the home circle.” Some newspapers speak of this as unprecedented. This is not the case. The inmates of the lunatic asylum at Utica, N. Y., published a magazine known as The Opal about forty years ago, of which we have several copies, and from time to time have published extracts in this paper, in two instances not indicating the origin, and in one of these cases we had several letters asking the name of the author and declaring the article to be, as was the case, one of unusual beauty and pathos.