My delirium gradually subsided, and four or five days after the 23d the doctors were able to set my broken bones.  The operation suggested new delusions.  Shortly before the adjustment of the plaster casts, my legs, for obvious reasons, were shaved from shin to calf.  This unusual tonsorial operation I read for a sign of degradation—­associating it with what I had heard of the treatment of murderers and with similar customs in barbarous countries.  It was about this time also that strips of court-plaster, in the form of a cross, were placed on my forehead, which had been slightly scratched in my fall, and this, of course, I interpreted as a brand of infamy.

Had my health been good, I should at this time have been participating in the Triennial of my class at Yale.  Indeed, I was a member of the Triennial Committee and though, when I left New York on June 15th, I had been feeling terribly ill, I had then hoped to take part in the celebration.  The class reunions were held on Tuesday, June 26th—­three days after my collapse.  Those familiar with Yale customs know that the Harvard baseball game is one of the chief events of the commencement season.  Headed by brass bands, all the classes whose reunions fall in the same year march to the Yale Athletic Field to see the game and renew their youth—­using up as much vigor in one delirious day as would insure a ripe old age if less prodigally expended.  These classes, with their bands and cheering, accompanied by thousands of other vociferating enthusiasts, march through West Chapel Street—­the most direct route from the Campus to the Field.  It is upon this line of march that Grace Hospital is situated, and I knew that on the day of the game the Yale thousands would pass the scene of my incarceration.

I have endured so many days of the most exquisite torture that I hesitate to distinguish among them by degrees; each deserves its own unique place, even as a Saint’s Day in the calendar of an olden Spanish inquisitor.  But, if the palm is to be awarded to any, June 26th, 1900, perhaps has the first claim.

My state of mind at that time might be pictured thus:  The criminal charge of attempted suicide stood against me on June 23rd.  By the 26th many other and worse charges had accumulated.  The public believed me the most despicable member of my race.  The papers were filled with accounts of my misdeeds.  The thousands of collegians gathered in the city, many of whom I knew personally, loathed the very thought that a Yale man should so disgrace his Alma Mater.  And when they approached the hospital on their way to the Athletic Field, I concluded that it was their intention to take me from my bed, drag me to the lawn, and there tear me limb from limb.  Few incidents during my unhappiest years are more vividly or circumstantially impressed upon my memory.  The fear, to be sure, was absurd, but in the lurid lexicon of Unreason there is no such word as “absurd.”  Believing, as I did, that I had dishonored Yale and forfeited the privilege of being numbered among her sons, it was not surprising that the college cheers which filled the air that afternoon, and in which only a few days earlier I had hoped to join, struck terror to my heart.