While my inventive operations were in progress, I was chafing under the unjust and certainly unscientific treatment to which I was being subjected.  In spite of my close confinement in vile cells, for a period of over three weeks I was denied a bath.  I do not regret this deprivation, for the attendants, who at the beginning were unfriendly, might have forced me to bathe in water which had first served for several other patients.  Though such an unsanitary and disgusting practice was contrary to rules, it was often indulged in by the lazy brutes who controlled the ward.

I continued to object to the inadequate portions of food served me.  On Thanksgiving Day (for I had not succeeded in escaping and joining in the celebration at home) an attendant, in the unaccustomed role of a ministering angel, brought me the usual turkey and cranberry dinner which, on two days a year, is provided by an intermittently generous State.  Turkey being the rara avis the imprisoned, it was but natural that I should desire to gratify a palate long insulted.  I wished not only to satisfy my appetite, but to impress indelibly a memory which for months had not responded to so agreeable a stimulus.  While lingering over the delights of this experience I forgot all about the ministering angel.  But not for long.  He soon returned.  Observing that I had scarcely touched my feast, he said, “If you don’t eat that dinner in a hurry, I’ll take it from you.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes to you whether I eat it in a hurry or take my time about it,” I said.  “It’s the best I’ve had in many a day, and I have a right to get as much pleasure out of it as I can.”

“We’ll see about that,” he replied, and, snatching it away, he stalked out of the room, leaving me to satisfy my hunger on the memory of vanished luxuries.  Thus did a feast become a fast.

Under this treatment I soon learned to be more noisy than my neighbors.  I was never without a certain humor in contemplating not only my surroundings, but myself; and the demonstrations in which I began to indulge were partly in fun and partly by way of protest.  In these outbursts I was assisted, and at times inspired, by a young man in the room next mine.  He was about my own age and was enjoying the same phase of exuberance as myself.  We talked and sang at all hours of the night.  At the time we believed that the other patients enjoyed the spice which we added to the restricted variety of their lives, but later I learned that a majority of them looked upon us as the worst of nuisances.

We gave the doctors and attendants no rest—­at least not intentionally.  Whenever the assistant physician appeared, we upbraided him for the neglect which was then our portion.  At one time or another we were banished to the Bull Pen for these indiscretions.  And had there been a viler place of confinement still, our performances in the Bull Pen undoubtedly would have brought us to it.  At last the doctor hit upon the expedient of transferring me to a room more remote from my inspiring, and, I may say, conspiring, companion.  Talking to each other ceased to be the easy pastime it had been; so we gradually lapsed into a comparative silence which must have proved a boon to our ward-mates.  The megaphonic Bull Pen, however, continued with irregularity, but annoying certainty to furnish its quota of noise.