talking to me, often much against my will.  His persistent inquisitiveness seemed to support his own statement that he had formerly been a successful life-insurance agent.  He finally gained my confidence to such a degree that months before I finally began to talk to others I permitted myself to converse frequently with him—­but only when we were so situated as to escape observation.  I would talk to him on almost any subject, but would not speak about myself.  At length, however, his admirable persistence overcame my reticence.  During a conversation held in June, 1902, he abruptly said, “Why you are kept here I cannot understand.  Apparently you are as sane as anyone.  You have never made any but sensible remarks to me.”  Now for weeks I had been waiting for a chance to tell this man my very thoughts.  I had come to believe him a true friend who would not betray me.

“If I should tell you things which you apparently don’t know, you would understand why I am held here,” I said.

“Well, tell me,” he urged.

“Will you promise not to repeat my statements to any one else?”

“I promise not to say a word.”

“Well,” I remarked, “you have seen certain persons who have come here, professing to be relatives of mine.”

“Yes, and they are your relatives, aren’t they?”

“They look like my relatives, but they’re not,” was my reply.

My inquisitive friend burst into laughter and said, “Well, if you mean that, I shall have to take back what I just said.  You are really the craziest person I have ever met, and I have met several.”

“You will think differently some day,” I replied; for I believed that when my trial should occur, he would appreciate the significance of my remark.  I did not tell him that I believed these callers to be detectives; nor did I hint that I thought myself in the hands of the police.

Meanwhile, during July and August, 1902, I redoubled my activity in devising suicidal schemes; for I now thought my physical condition satisfactory to my enemies, and was sure that my trial could not be postponed beyond the next opening of the courts in September.  I even went so far as to talk to one of the attendants, a medical student, who during the summer worked as an attendant at the hospital.  I approached him artfully.  First I asked him to procure from the library for me “The Scarlet Letter,” “The House of the Seven Gables,” and other books; then I talked medicine and finally asked him to lend me a textbook on anatomy which I knew he had in his possession.  This he did, cautioning me not to let anyone know that he had done so.  The book once secured, I lost no time in examining that part which described the heart, its functions, and especially its exact position in the body.  I had scarcely begun to read when the young man returned and took the book from me, giving as his reason that an attendant had no right to let a patient read a medical work.  Maybe his change of heart was providential.