The last two verses of the psalm corroborated the messages found in the preceding verses:  “I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations:”—­thus the minister.  “Therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever,” was the response I read.  That spelled immortal fame for me, but only on condition that I should carry to a successful conclusion the mission of reform—­an obligation placed upon me by God when He restored my reason.

When I set out upon a career of reform, I was impelled to do so by motives in part like those which seem to have possessed Don Quixote when he set forth, as Cervantes says, with the intention “of righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger, from which in the issue he would obtain eternal renown and fame.”  In likening myself to Cervantes’ mad hero my purpose is quite other than to push myself within the charmed circle of the chivalrous.  What I wish to do is to make plain that a man abnormally elated may be swayed irresistably by his best instincts, and that while under the spell of an exaltation, idealistic in degree, he may not only be willing, but eager to assume risks and endure hardships which under normal conditions he would assume reluctantly, if at all.  In justice to myself, however, I may remark that my plans for reform have never assumed quixotic, and therefore, impracticable proportions.  At no time have I gone a-tilting at windmills.  A pen rather than a lance has been my weapon of offence and defence; for with its point I have felt sure that I should one day prick the civic conscience into a compassionate activity, and thus bring into a neglected field earnest men and women who should act as champions for those afflicted thousands least able to fight for themselves.

XIV

After being without relatives and friends for over two years I naturally lost no time in trying again to get in touch with them; though I did heed my conservator’s request that I first give him two or three days in which to acquaint intimates with the new turn my affairs had taken.

During the latter part of that first week I wrote many letters, so many, indeed, that I soon exhausted a liberal supply of stationery.  This had been placed at my disposal at the suggestion of my conservator, who had wisely arranged that I should have whatever I wanted, if expedient.  It was now at my own suggestion that the supervisor gave me large sheets of manila wrapping paper.  These I proceeded to cut into strips a foot wide.  One such strip, four feet long, would suffice for a mere billet-doux; but a real letter usually required several such strips pasted together.  More than once letters twenty or thirty feet long were written; and on one occasion the accumulation of two or three days of excessive productivity, when spread upon the floor, reached from one end of the corridor to the other—­a distance of about one hundred feet.  My hourly