The patients felt as though they were waking from a deep sleep as her words sank in. And these waking soldiers began to take their first few steps on a long march to freedom. Soon, a handful of them laid down their labor in protest at the lack of payment, enough that McFarland had cause to comment on it in his biennial report. He lamented that he was struggling on this issue where overseas institutions did not; getting his defense in early, he claimed foreign patients tended to work without complaint, having “a mental level, too low to be reached by the incentives of hope and ambition.”6
They were also untouched by the words of Elizabeth Packard.
“The wonderful power she possessed over the minds of others drew all to her ample heart,”7 raved one reader, blown away by the book. Another predicted that The Great Drama would be “read in our Legislative Halls and in Congress.”8 One spiritualist even confidently prophesied of Elizabeth, “She’ll be in Congress one of these days, helping to make new laws!”9
The author scoffed at that. “If this prophetess had said that woman’s influence would be felt in Congress, giving character to laws,” she said, “I might have said I believed she had uttered a true prophecy.”10
Elizabeth’s biggest fan was perhaps a patient named Sophia Olsen, a relative newcomer to Eighth Ward, who’d been at the asylum since August. Like Elizabeth, she’d started out on Seventh, but after she’d protested various rules, she’d been promptly moved to Eighth to make her conform.
But there she’d encountered Elizabeth. “When she came into our hall,” Sophia said of her first impressions of the author, “every hand, eye and heart were open to receive her. I never saw one…who, after having seen her once, did not wish to see her again.”11
Sophia felt exactly that way. The two women hit it off instantly. They were actually incredibly similar: both came from New England （Sophia from New Hampshire）， both had received excellent educations at first-class academies, both loved to write （Sophia, too, was keeping a secret journal）， and both focused on alleviating the sufferings of others in favor of dwelling on their own. Both were forty-five, and both had been committed by their husbands, with Sophia having possibly suffered domestic abuse prior to her banishment.
Yet similar as they were, Sophia had never met anyone like Elizabeth. “Such an ardent lover of truth, so heroic a defender of principles…I never saw outside these walls,”12 she said in wonder. She thought The Great Drama and its author truly phenomenal: “The boldness with which she reproved tyranny, and the thrilling eloquence with which she defended the cause of suffering humanity!”13
Elizabeth was equally enamored of Sophia. It was rare on Eighth to find such an intelligent and sympathetic woman. She described Sophia’s companionship as “the brightest oasis of my prison life.”14 She soon lent her new friend clothes from her trunk and even gave her a “beautifully wrought white chain”15 as a “pledge of her attachment,”16 which Sophia wore every day. It was not long before they were intimate acquaintances, their conversations in the dining hall a great solace to them both.
“This inestimable woman,” Sophia said, “has proved to me the brightest star that ever shone around my dark path of life.”17
The problem was, Elizabeth was a star to too many people. And like the special starlight in the nativity, where she shone, others followed. Her influence was truly like that of a celestial body: invisible yet all-powerful, pulling at the hearts and minds of patients like gravity.
McFarland, of course, could not be blind to the impact she was having.
One day, after a meal was over, Sophia and Elizabeth arose from the dining table and went their separate ways; they resided in different halls that were both within Eighth Ward. Sophia suddenly thought of something else she wished to say, so she followed her friend a step or two, even though her own hall did not lie that way.
She felt herself pulled back violently as an attendant grabbed hold of her dress.
“You needn’t speak to Mrs. Packard,”18 the attendant said crossly.
She gave no other explanation for her actions, despite Sophia demanding one.
The curtailments on Mrs. Packard’s new friend soon grew tighter. Sophia protested, for she refused to abide by the unwritten rule that patients must accept indignities, yet that was just prelude to punishment. Mrs. McFarland looked her up and down one day when she begged to be allowed to send a letter to her family, remarking coolly, “If Mrs. Olsen gets troublesome, I think she will have to go down.”19