But each day still had its distressing incidents.  Whenever the attendants were wanted at the office, an electric bell was rung.  During the fourteen months that I remained in this hospital in a depressed condition, the bell in my ward rang several hundred times.  Never did it fail to send through me a mild shock of terror, for I imagined that at last the hour had struck for my transportation to the scene of trial.  Relatives and friends would be brought to the ward—­heralded, of course, by a warning bell—­and short interviews would be held in my room, during which the visitors had to do all the talking.  My eldest brother, whom I shall refer to hereafter as my conservator, called often.  He seldom failed to use one phrase which worried me.

“You are looking better and getting stronger,” he would say.  “We shall straighten you out yet.”

To be “straightened out” was an ambiguous phrase which might refer to the end of the hangman’s rope or to a fatal electric shock.

I preferred to be let alone, and the assistant physician in charge of my case, after several ineffectual attempts to engage me in conversation, humored my persistent taciturnity.  For more than a year his only remarks to me were occasional conventional salutations.  Subsequent events have led me to doubt the wisdom of his policy.

For one year no further attention was paid to me than to see that I had three meals a day, the requisite number of baths, and a sufficient amount of exercise.  I was, however, occasionally urged by an attendant to write a letter to some relative, but that, of course, I refused to do.  As I shall have many hard things to say about attendants in general, I take pleasure in testifying that, so long as I remained in a passive condition, those at this institution were kind, and at times even thoughtful.  But there came a time when diplomatic relations with doctors and attendants became so strained that war promptly ensued.

It was no doubt upon the gradual, but sure improvement in my physical condition that the doctors were relying for my eventual return to normality.  They were not without some warrant for this.  In a way I had become less suspicious, but my increased confidence was due as much to an increasing indifference to my fate as to an improvement in health.  And there were other signs of improved mental vigor.  I was still watchful, however, for a chance to end my life, and, but for a series of fortunate circumstances, I do not doubt that my choice of evils would have found tragic expression in an overt act.

Having convinced myself that most of my associates were really insane, and therefore (as I believed) disqualified as competent witnesses in a court of law, I would occasionally engage in conversation with a few whose evident incompetency seemed to make them safe confidants.  One, a man who during his life had more than once been committed to an institution, took a very evident interest in me and persisted in