Though I was granted considerable liberty during the months of April, May, and June, 1903, not until July did I enjoy a so-called unlimited parole which enabled me to walk about the neighboring city unattended.  My privileges were granted so gradually that these first tastes of regained freedom, though delightful, were not so thrilling as one might imagine.  I took everything as a matter of course, and, except when I deliberately analyzed my feelings, was scarcely conscious of my former deprivations.

This power to forget the past—­or recall it only at will—­has contributed much to my happiness.  Some of those who have suffered experiences such as mine are prone to brood upon them, and I cannot but attribute my happy immunity from unpleasant memories to the fact that I have viewed my own case much as a physician might view that of a patient.  My past is a thing apart.  I can examine this or that phase of it in the clarifying and comforting light of reason, under a memory rendered somewhat microscopic.  And I am further compensated by the belief that I have a distinct mission in life—­a chance for usefulness that might never have been mine had I enjoyed unbroken health and uninterrupted liberty.

The last few months of my life in the hospital were much alike, save that each succeeding one brought with it an increased amount of liberty.  My hours now passed pleasantly.  Time did not drag, for I was engaged upon some enterprise every minute.  I would draw, read, write, or talk.  If any feeling was dominant, it was my feeling for art; and I read with avidity books on the technique of that subject.  Strange as it may seem, however, the moment I again found myself in the world of business my desire to become an artist died almost as suddenly as it had been born.  Though my artistic ambition was clearly an outgrowth of my abnormal condition, and languished when normality asserted itself, I am inclined to believe I should even now take a lively interest in the study of art if I were so situated as to be deprived of a free choice of my activities.  The use of words later enthralled me because so eminently suited to my purposes.

During the summer of 1903, friends and relatives often called to see me.  The talks we had were of great and lasting benefit to me.  Though I had rid myself of my more extravagant and impossible delusions of grandeur—­flying-machines and the like—­I still discussed with intense earnestness other schemes, which, though allied to delusions of grandeur, were, in truth, still more closely allied to sanity itself.  My talk was of that high, but perhaps suspicious type in which Imagination overrules Common Sense.  Lingering delusions, as it were, made great projects seem easy.  That they were at least feasible under certain conditions, my mentors admitted.  Only I was in an abnormal hurry to produce results.  Work that I later realized could not be accomplished in less than five or ten years, if, indeed, in a lifetime, I then believed could be accomplished in a year or two, and by me single-handed.  Had I had none but mentally unbalanced people to talk with, I might have continued to cherish a distorted perspective.  It was the unanimity of sane opinions that helped me to correct my own views; and I am confident that each talk with relatives and friends hastened my return to normality.