The very instant I caught sight of my letter in the hands of my brother, all was changed.  The thousands of false impressions recorded during the seven hundred and ninety-eight days of my depression seemed at once to correct themselves.  Untruth became Truth.  A large part of what was once my old world was again mine.  To me, at last my mind seemed to have found itself, for the gigantic web of false beliefs in which it had been all but hopelessly enmeshed I now immediately recognized as a snare of delusions.  That the Gordian knot of mental torture should be cut and swept away by the mere glance of a willing eye is like a miracle.  Not a few patients, however, suffering from certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine enlightenment.  Though insight regained seemingly in an instant is a most encouraging symptom, power to reason normally on all subjects cannot, of course, be so promptly recovered.  My new power to reason correctly on some subjects simply marked the transition from depression, one phase of my disorder, to elation, another phase of it.  Medically speaking, I was as mentally disordered as before—­yet I was happy!

My memory during depression may be likened to a photographic film, seven hundred and ninety-eight days long.  Each impression seems to have been made in a negative way and then, in a fraction of a second, miraculously developed and made positive.  Of hundreds of impressions made during that depressed period I had not before been conscious, but from the moment my mind, if not my full reason, found itself, they stood out vividly.  Not only so, but other impressions registered during earlier years became clearer.  Since that August 30th, which I regard as my second birthday (my first was on the 30th of another month), my mind has exhibited qualities which, prior to that time, were so latent as to be scarcely distinguishable.  As a result, I find myself able to do desirable things I never before dreamed of doing—­the writing of this book is one of them.

Yet had I failed to convince myself on August 30th, when my brother came to see me, that he was no spy, I am almost sure that I should have compassed my own destruction within the following ten days, for the next month, I believed, was the fatal one of opening courts.  You will recall that it was death by drowning that impended.  I liken my salvation itself to a prolonged process of drowning.  Thousands of minutes of the seven hundred and ninety-eight days—­and there were over one million of them, during which I had been borne down by intolerably burdensome delusions—­were, I imagine, much like the last minutes of consciousness experienced by persons who drown.  Many who have narrowly escaped that fate can testify to the vividness with which good and bad impressions of their entire life rush through their confused minds, and hold them in a grip of terror until a kind unconsciousness envelops