in my presence, had told the assistant physician that the doctors could permit me to telephone him whenever they should see fit.  It was rather with the wish to test the unfriendly physician than to satisfy any desire to speak with my conservator that one morning I asked permission to call up the latter.  That very morning I had received a letter from him.  This the doctor knew, for I showed him the letter—­but not its contents.  It was on the letter that I based my demand, though in it my brother did not even intimate that he wished to speak to me.  The doctor, however, had no way of knowing that my statement was not true.  To deny my request was simply one of his ill-advised whims, and his refusal was given with customary curtness and contempt.  I met his refusal in kind, and presented him with a trenchant critique of his character.

He said, “Unless you stop talking in that way I shall have you transferred to the Fourth Ward.” (This was the violent ward.)

“Put me where you please,” was my reply.  “I’ll put you in the gutter before I get through with you.”

With that the doctor made good his threat, and the attendant escorted me to the violent ward—­a willing, in fact, eager prisoner.

The ward in which I was now placed (September 13th, 1902) was furnished in the plainest manner.  The floors were of hard wood and the walls were bare.  Except when at meals or out of doors taking their accustomed exercise, the patients usually lounged about in one large room, in which heavy benches were used, it being thought that in the hands of violent patients, chairs might become a menace to others.  In the dining room, however, there were chairs of a substantial type, for patients seldom run amuck at meal time.  Nevertheless, one of these dining-room chairs soon acquired a history.

As my banishment had come on short notice, I had failed to provide myself with many things I now desired.  My first request was that I be supplied with stationery.  The attendants, acting no doubt on the doctor’s orders, refused to grant my request; nor would they give me a lead pencil—­which, luckily, I did not need, for I happened to have one.  Despite their refusal I managed to get some scraps of paper, on which I was soon busily engaged in writing notes to those in authority.  Some of these (as I learned later) were delivered, but no attention was paid to them.  No doctor came near me until evening, when the one who had banished me made his regular round of inspection.  When he appeared, the interrupted conversation of the morning was resumed—­that is, by me—­and in a similar vein.  I again asked leave to telephone my conservator.  The doctor again refused, and, of course, again I told him what I thought of him.