Yesterday a lunatic burst into my quarters and warned me that the Jesuits were going to `cook' (poison) me in my food or kill on the stage at night. He said a mysterious sign was visible upon my posters and meant my death. He said he saved the Rev. Mr Haweis's life by warning him that there were three men on his platform who would kill him if he took his eyes off them for a moment during his lecture. The same men were in my audience last night, but they saw that hewas there. `Will they be there again to-night?' He hesitated; then said no, he thought they would rather take a rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he had `saved so many lecturers in twenty years that they put him in the asylum.' I think he has less refinement than any lunatic I have met.

Mark Twain in Wanganui, 1895
More Tramps Abroad p. 220