And again: 

    “Failure to comply with Federal Statute which forbids any one
    except addressee to open a letter renders one liable to imprisonment
    in State Prison.”

My letter reached the Governor.  One of the clerks at the shop in which I left the missive found and mailed it.  From him I afterwards learned that my unique instructions had piqued his curiosity, as well as compelled my wished-for action.  Assuming that the reader’s curiosity may likewise have been piqued, I shall quote certain passages from this four-thousand-word epistle of protest.  The opening sentence read as follows:  “If you have had the courage to read the above” (referring to an unconventional heading) “I hope you will read on to the end of this epistle—­thereby displaying real Christian fortitude and learning a few facts which I think should be brought to your attention.”

I then introduced myself, mentioning a few common friends, by way of indicating that I was not without influential political connections, and proceeded as follows:  “I take pleasure in informing you that I am in the Crazy Business and am holding my job down with ease and a fair degree of grace.  Being in the Crazy Business, I understand certain phases of the business about which you know nothing.  You as Governor are at present ‘head devil’ in this ‘hell,’ though I know you are unconsciously acting as ‘His Majesty’s’ 1st Lieutenant.”

I then launched into my arraignment of the treatment of the insane.  The method, I declared, was “wrong from start to finish.  The abuses existing here exist in every other institution of the kind in the country.  They are all alike—­though some of them are of course worse than others.  Hell is hell the world over, and I might also add that hell is only a great big bunch of disagreeable details anyway.  That’s all an Insane Asylum is.  If you don’t believe it, just go crazy and take up your abode here.  In writing this letter I am laboring under no mental excitement.  I am no longer subjected to the abuses about which I complain.  I am well and happy.  In fact I never was so happy as I am now.  Whether I am in perfect mental health or not, I shall leave for you to decide.  If I am insane to-day I hope I may never recover my Reason.”

First I assailed the management of the private institution where I had been strait-jacketed and referred to “Jekyll-Hyde” as “Dr.——­, M.D.  (Mentally Deranged).”  Then followed an account of the strait-jacket experience; then an account of abuses at the State Hospital.  I described in detail the most brutal assault that fell to my lot.  In summing up I said, “The attendants claimed next day that I had called them certain names.  Maybe I did—­though I don’t believe I did at all.  What of it?  This is no young ladies’ boarding school.  Should a man be nearly killed because he swears at attendants who swear like pirates?  I have seen at least fifteen men, many of them mental