told that so soon as I became polite and meek and lowly I should find myself in possession of my clothes and of certain privileges.  In every instance I must earn my reward before being entrusted with it.  If the doctor, instead of demanding of me all the negative virtues in the catalogue of spineless saints, had given me my clothes on the condition that they would be taken from me again if I so much as removed a button, his course would doubtless have been productive of good results.  Thus I might have had my clothes three weeks earlier than I did, and so been spared much suffering from the cold.

I clamored daily for a lead pencil.  This little luxury represents the margin of happiness for hundreds of the patients, just as a plug or package of tobacco represents the margin of happiness for thousands of others; but for seven weeks no doctor or attendant gave me one.  To be sure, by reason of my somewhat exceptional persistence and ingenuity, I managed to be always in possession of some substitute for a pencil, surreptitiously obtained, a fact which no doubt had something to do with the doctor’s indifference to my request.  But my inability to secure a pencil in a legitimate way was a needless source of annoyance to me, and many of my verbal indiscretions were directly inspired by the doctor’s continued refusal.

It was an assistant physician, other than the one regularly in charge of my case, who at last relented and presented me with a good, whole lead pencil.  By so doing he placed himself high on my list of benefactors; for that little shaftlike implement, magnified by my lively appreciation, became as the very axis of the earth.

XXIV

A few days before Christmas my most galling deprivation was at last removed.  That is, my clothes were restored.  These I treated with great respect.  Not so much as a thread did I destroy.  Clothes, as is known, have a sobering and civilizing effect, and from the very moment I was again provided with presentable outer garments my conduct rapidly improved.  The assistant physician with whom I had been on such variable terms of friendship and enmity even took me for a sleigh-ride.  With this improvement came other privileges or, rather, the granting of my rights.  Late in December I was permitted to send letters to my conservator.  Though some of my blood-curdling letters were confiscated, a few detailing my experiences were forwarded.  The account of my sufferings naturally distressed my conservator, but, as he said when he next visited me:  “What could I have done to help you?  If the men in this State whose business it is to run these institutions cannot manage you, I am at a loss to know what to do.”  True, he could have done little or nothing, for he did not then know the ins and outs of the baffling situation into which the ties of blood had drawn him.