preceding his appearance on the scene. During that period, no fewer
than seven attendants contributed to my misery. Though some of them
were perhaps decent enough fellows outside a sickroom, not one had the
right to minister to a patient in my condition.

The two who were first put in charge of me did not strike me with their
fists or even threaten to do so; but their unconscious lack of
consideration for my comfort and peace of mind was torture. They were
typical eighteen-dollar-a-month attendants. Another of the same sort,
on one occasion, cursed me with a degree of brutality which I prefer
not to recall, much less record. And a few days later the climax was
appropriately capped when still another attendant perpetrated an
outrage which a sane man would have resented to the point of homicide.
He was a man of the coarsest type. His hands would have done credit to
a longshoreman--fingers knotted and nearly twice the normal size.
Because I refused to obey a peremptory command, and this at a time when
I habitually refused even on pain of imagined torture to obey or to
speak, this brute not only cursed me with abandon, he deliberately spat
upon me. I was a mental incompetent, but like many others in a similar
position I was both by antecedents and by training a gentleman. Vitriol
could not have seared my flesh more deeply than the venom of this human
viper stung my soul! Yet, as I was rendered speechless by delusions, I
could offer not so much as a word of protest. I trust that it is not
now too late, however, to protest in behalf of the thousands of
outraged patients in private and state hospitals whose mute submission
to such indignities has never been recorded.

Of the readiness of an unscrupulous owner to employ inferior
attendants, I shall offer a striking illustration. The capable
attendant who acted as my protector at this sanatorium has given me an