But circumstances now arose which brought about the untimely stifling—­I might better say strangulation—­of my artistic impulses.  The doctors were led—­unwisely, I believe—­to decide that absolute seclusion was the only thing that would calm my over-active brain.  In consequence, all writing and drawing materials and all books were taken from me.  And from October 18th until the first of the following January, except for one fortnight, I was confined in one or another small, barred room, hardly better than a cell in a prison and in some instances far worse.

A corn cob was the determining factor at this crisis.  Seeing in myself an embryonic Raphael, I had a habit of preserving all kinds of odds and ends as souvenirs of my development.  These, I believed, sanctified by my Midas-like touch, would one day be of great value.  If the public can tolerate, as it does, thousands of souvenir hunters, surely one with a sick mind should be indulged in the whim for collecting such souvenirs as come within his reach.  Among the odds and ends that I had gathered were several corn cobs.  These I intended to gild and some day make useful by attaching to them small thermometers.  But on the morning of October 18th, the young man in charge of me, finding the corn cobs, forthwith informed me that he would throw them away.  I as promptly informed him that any such action on his part would lead to a fight.  And so it did.

When this fight began, there were two attendants at hand.  I fought them both to a standstill, and told them I should continue to fight until the assistant physician came to the ward.  Thereupon, my special attendant, realizing that I meant what I said, held me while the other went for assistance.  He soon returned, not with the assistant physician, but with a third attendant, and the fight was renewed.  The one who had acted as messenger, being of finer fibre than the other two, stood at a safe distance.  It was, of course, against the rules of the institution for an attendant to strike a patient, and, as I was sane enough to report with a fair chance of belief any forbidden blows, each captor had to content himself with holding me by an arm and attempting to choke me into submission.  However, I was able to prevent them from getting a good grip on my throat, and for almost ten minutes I continued to fight, telling them all the time that I would not stop until a doctor should come.  An assistant physician, but not the one in charge of my case, finally appeared.  He gave orders that I be placed in the violent ward, which adjoined the private apartment I was then occupying, and no time was lost in locking me in a small room in that ward.

Friends have said to me:  “Well, what is to be done when a patient runs amuck?” The best answer I can make is:  “Do nothing to make him run amuck.”  Psychiatrists have since told me that had I had an attendant with the wisdom and ability to humor me and permit me to keep my priceless corn cobs, the fight in question, and the worse events that followed, would probably not have occurred—­not that day, nor ever, had I at all times been properly treated by those in charge of me.