IV

NATURALLY I was suspicious of all about me, and became more so each

day. But not until about a month later did I refuse to recognize my

relatives. While I was at Grace Hospital, my father and eldest brother

called almost every day to see me, and, though I said little, I still

accepted them in their proper characters. I remember well a

conversation one morning with my father. The words I uttered were few,

but full of meaning. Shortly before this time my death had been

momentarily expected. I still believed that I was surely about to die

as a result of my injuries, and I wished in some way to let my father

know that, despite my apparently ignominious end, I appreciated all

that he had done for me during my life. Few men, I believe, ever had a

more painful time in expressing their feelings than I had on that

occasion. I had but little control over my mind, and my power of speech

was impaired. My father sat beside my bed. Looking up at him, I said,

"You have been a good father to me."

"I have always tried to be," was his characteristic reply.

After the broken bones had been set, and the full effects of the severe

shock I had sustained had worn off, I began to gain strength. About the

third week I was able to sit up and was occasionally taken out of doors

But each day, and especially during the hours of the night, my

delusions increased in force and variety. The world was fast becoming

to me a stage on which every human being within the range of my senses

seemed to be playing a part, and that a part which would lead not only

to my destruction (for which I cared little), but also to the ruin of

all with whom I had ever come in contact. In the month of July several

thunder-storms occurred. To me the thunder was "stage" thunder, the

lightning man-made, and the accompanying rain due to some clever

contrivance of my persecutors. There was a chapel connected with the

hospital--or at least a room where religious services were held every

Sunday. To me the hymns were funeral dirges; and the mumbled prayers,

faintly audible, were in behalf of every sufferer in the world but one.

It was my eldest brother who looked after my care and interests during

my entire illness. Toward the end of July, he informed me that I was to

be taken home again. I must have given him an incredulous look, for he

said, "Don't you think we can take you home? Well, we can and will."

Believing myself in the hands of the police, I did not see how that was

possible. Nor did I have any desire to return. That a man who had

disgraced his family should again enter his old home and expect his

relatives to treat him as though nothing were changed, was a thought

against which my soul rebelled; and, when the day came for my return, I

fought my brother and the doctor feebly as they lifted me from the bed.

But I soon submitted, was placed in a carriage, and driven to the house

I had left a month earlier.

For a few hours my mind was calmer than it had been. But my new-found

ease was soon dispelled by the appearance of a nurse--one of several

who had attended me at the hospital. Though at home and surrounded by

relatives, I jumped to the conclusion that I was still under police

surveillance. At my request my brother had promised not to engage any

nurse who had been in attendance at the hospital. The difficulty of

procuring any other led him to disregard my request, which at the time

he held simply as a whim. But he did not disregard it entirely, for the

nurse selected had merely acted as a substitute on one occasion, and

then only for about an hour. That was long enough, though, for my

memory to record her image.

Finding myself still under surveillance, I soon jumped to a second

conclusion, namely, that this was no brother of mine at all. He

instantly appeared in the light of a sinister double, acting as a

detective. After that I refused absolutely to speak to him again, and

this repudiation I extended to all other relatives, friends and

acquaintances. If the man I had accepted as my brother was spurious, so

was everybody--that was my deduction. For more than two years I was

without relatives or friends, in fact, without a world, except that one

created by my own mind from the chaos that reigned within it.

While I was at Grace Hospital, it was my sense of hearing which was the

most disturbed. But soon after I was placed in my room at home, _all_

of my senses became perverted. I still heard the "false voices"--which

were doubly false, for Truth no longer existed. The tricks played upon

me by my senses of taste, touch, smell, and sight were the source of

great mental anguish. None of my food had its usual flavor. This soon

led to that common delusion that some of it contained poison--not

deadly poison, for I knew that my enemies hated me too much to allow me

the boon of death, but poison sufficient to aggravate my discomfort. At

breakfast I had cantaloupe, liberally sprinkled with salt. The salt

seemed to pucker my mouth, and I believed it to be powdered alum.

Usually, with my supper, sliced peaches were served. Though there was

sugar on the peaches, salt would have done as well. Salt, sugar, and

powdered alum had become the same to me.

Familiar materials had acquired a different "feel." In the dark, the

bed sheets at times seemed like silk. As I had not been born with a

golden spoon in my mouth, or other accessories of a useless luxury, I

believed the detectives had provided these silken sheets for some

hostile purpose of their own. What that purpose was I could not divine,

and my very inability to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion stimulated

my brain to the assembling of disturbing thoughts in an almost endless

train.

Imaginary breezes struck my face, gentle, but not welcome, most of them

from parts of the room where currents of air could not possibly

originate. They seemed to come from cracks in the walls and ceiling and

annoyed me exceedingly. I thought them in some way related to that

ancient method of torture by which water is allowed to strike the

victim's forehead, a drop at a time, until death releases him. For a

while my sense of smell added to my troubles. The odor of burning human

flesh and other pestilential fumes seemed to assail me.

My sense of sight was subjected to many weird and uncanny effects.

Phantasmagoric visions made their visitations throughout the night, for

a time with such regularity that I used to await their coming with a

certain restrained curiosity. I was not entirely unaware that something

was ailing with my mind. Yet these illusions of sight I took for the

work of detectives, who sat up nights racking their brains in order to

rack and utterly wreck my own with a cruel and unfair Third Degree.

Handwriting on the wall has ever struck terror to the hearts of even

sane men. I remember as one of my most unpleasant experiences that I

began to see handwriting on the sheets of my bed staring me in the

face, and not me alone, but also the spurious relatives who often stood

or sat near me. On each fresh sheet placed over me I would soon begin

to see words, sentences, and signatures, all in my own handwriting. Yet

I could not decipher any of the words, and this fact dismayed me, for I

firmly believed that those who stood about could read them all and

found them to be incriminating evidence.

I imagined that these visionlike effects, with few exceptions, were

produced by a magic lantern controlled by some of my myriad

persecutors. The lantern was rather a cinematographic contrivance.

Moving pictures, often brilliantly colored, were thrown on the ceiling

of my room and sometimes on the sheets of my bed. Human bodies,

dismembered and gory, were one of the most common of these. All this

may have been due to the fact that, as a boy, I had fed my imagination

on the sensational news of the day as presented in the public press.

Despite the heavy penalty which I now paid for thus loading my mind, I

believe this unwise indulgence gave a breadth and variety to my

peculiar psychological experience which it otherwise would have lacked.

For with an insane ingenuity I managed to connect myself with almost

every crime of importance of which I had ever read.

Dismembered human bodies were not alone my bedfellows at this time. I

remember one vision of vivid beauty. Swarms of butterflies and large

and gorgeous moths appeared on the sheets. I wished that the usually

unkind operator would continue to show these pretty creatures. Another

pleasing vision appeared about twilight several days in succession. I

can trace it directly to impressions gained in early childhood. The

quaint pictures by Kate Greenaway--little children in attractive dress,

playing in old-fashioned gardens--would float through space just

outside my windows. The pictures were always accompanied by the gleeful

shouts of real children in the neighborhood, who, before being sent to

bed by watchful parents, devoted the last hour of the day to play. It

doubtless was their shouts that stirred my memories of childhood and

brought forth these pictures.

In my chamber of intermittent horrors and momentary delights, uncanny

occurrences were frequent. I believed there was some one who at fall of

night secreted himself under my bed. That in itself was not peculiar,

as sane persons at one time or another are troubled by that same

notion. But _my_ bed-fellow--under the bed--was a detective; and he

spent most of his time during the night pressing pieces of ice against

my injured heels, to precipitate, as I thought, my overdue confession.

The piece of ice in the pitcher of water which usually stood on the

table sometimes clinked against the pitcher's side as its center of

gravity shifted through melting. It was many days before I reasoned out

the cause of this sound; and until I did I supposed it was produced by

some mechanical device resorted to by the detectives for a purpose.

Thus the most trifling occurrence assumed for me vast significance.

V

After remaining at home for about a month, during which time I showed

no improvement mentally, though I did gain physically, I was taken to a

private sanatorium. My destination was frankly disclosed to me. But my

habit of disbelief had now become fixed, and I thought myself on the

way to a trial in New York City, for some one of the many crimes with

which I stood charged.

My emotions on leaving New Haven were, I imagine, much the same as

those of a condemned but penitent criminal who looks upon the world for

the last time. The day was hot, and, as we drove to the railway

station, the blinds on most of the houses in the streets through which

we passed were seen to be closed. The reason for this was not then

apparent to me. I thought I saw an unbroken line of deserted houses,

and I imagined that their desertion had been deliberately planned as a

sign of displeasure on the part of their former occupants. As citizens

of New Haven, I supposed them bitterly ashamed of such a despicable

townsman as myself. Because of the early hour, the streets were

practically deserted. This fact, too, I interpreted to my own

disadvantage. As the carriage crossed the main business thoroughfare, I

took what I believed to be my last look at that part of my native city.

From the carriage I was carried to the train and placed in the smoking

car in the last seat on the right-hand side. The back of the seat next

in front was reversed so that my legs might be placed in a comfortable

position, and one of the boards used by card-playing travelers was

placed beneath them as a support. With a consistent degree of suspicion

I paid particular attention to a blue mark on the face of the railroad

ticket held by my custodian. I took it to be a means of identification

for use in court.

That one's memory may perform its function in the grip of Unreason

itself is proved by the fact that my memory retains an impression, and

an accurate one, of virtually everything that befell me, except when

under the influence of an anaesthetic or in the unconscious hours of

undisturbed sleep. Important events, trifling conversations, and more

trifling thoughts of my own are now recalled with ease and accuracy;

whereas, prior to my illness and until a strange experience to be

recorded later, mine was an ordinary memory when it was not noticeably

poor. At school and in college I stood lowest in those studies in which

success depended largely upon this faculty. Psychiatrists inform me

that it is not unusual for those suffering as I did to retain accurate

impressions of their experiences while ill. To laymen this may seem

almost miraculous, yet it is not so; nor is it even remarkable.

Assuming that an insane person's memory is capable of recording

impressions at all, remembrance for one in the torturing grip of

delusions of persecution should be doubly easy. This deduction is in

accord with the accepted psychological law that the retention of an

impression in the memory depends largely upon the intensity of the

impression itself, and the frequency of its repetition. Fear to speak,

lest I should incriminate myself and others, gave to my impressions the

requisite intensity, and the daily recurrence of the same general line

of thought served to fix all impressions in my then supersensitive

memory.

Shortly before seven in the morning, on the way to the sanatorium, the

train passed through a manufacturing center. Many workmen were lounging

in front of a factory, most of them reading newspapers. I believed

these papers contained an account of me and my crimes, and I thought

everyone along the route knew who I was and what I was, and that I was

on that train. Few seemed to pay any attention to me, yet this very

fact looked to be a part of some well-laid plan of the detectives.

The sanatorium to which I was going was in the country. When a certain

station was reached, I was carried from the train to a carriage. At

that moment I caught sight of a former college acquaintance, whose

appearance I thought was designed to let me know that Yale, which I

believed I had disgraced, was one of the powers behind my throne of

torture.

Soon after I reached my room in the sanatorium, the supervisor entered.

Drawing a table close to the bed, he placed upon it a slip of paper

which he asked me to sign. I looked upon this as a trick of the

detectives to get a specimen of my handwriting. I now know that the

signing of the slip is a legal requirement, with which every patient is

supposed to comply upon entering such an institution--private in

character--unless he has been committed by some court. The exact

wording of this "voluntary commitment" I do not now recall; but, it

was, in substance, an agreement to abide by the rules of the

institution--whatever _they_ were--and to submit to such restraint as

might be deemed necessary. Had I not felt the weight of the world on my

shoulders, I believe my sense of humor would have caused me to laugh

outright; for the signing of such an agreement by one so situated was,

even to my mind, a farce. After much coaxing I was induced to go so far

as to take the pen in my hand. There I again hesitated. The supervisor

apparently thought I might write with more ease if the paper were

placed on a book. And so I might, had he selected a book of a different

title. One more likely to arouse suspicions in my mind could not have

been found in a search of the Congressional Library. I had left New

York on June 15th, and it was in the direction of that city that my

present trip had taken me. I considered this but the first step of my

return under the auspices of its Police Department. "Called Back" was

the title of the book that stared me in the face. After refusing for a

long time I finally weakened and signed the slip; but I did not place

it on the book. To have done that would, in my mind, have been

tantamount to giving consent to extradition; and I was in no mood to

assist the detectives in their mean work. At what cost had I signed

that commitment slip? To me it was the act of signing my own

death-warrant.