the hands of the attendant, and a certain similarity between the
doctor's name and the name of a man whose trial for arson I once
attended out of idle curiosity, led me to imagine that in some way I
had been connected with that crime. For months I firmly believed I
stood charged as an accomplice.

The putting on of the muff was the most humiliating incident of my
life. The shaving of my legs and the wearing of the court-plaster brand
of infamy had been humiliating, but those experiences had not
overwhelmed my very heart as did this bitter ordeal. I resisted weakly,
and, after the muff was adjusted and locked, for the first time since
my mental collapse I wept. And I remember distinctly why I wept. The
key that locked the muff unlocked in imagination the door of the home
in New Haven which I believed I had disgraced--and seemed for a time to
unlock my heart. Anguish beat my mind into a momentary sanity, and with
a wholly sane emotion I keenly felt my imagined disgrace. My thoughts
centred on my mother. Her (and other members of the family) I could
plainly see at home in a state of dejection and despair over her
imprisoned and heartless son. I wore the muff each night for several
weeks, and for the first few nights the unhappy glimpses of a ruined
home recurred and increased my sufferings.

It was not always as an instrument of restraint that the muff was
employed. Frequently it was used as a means of discipline on account of
supposed stubborn disobedience. Many times was I roughly overpowered by
two attendants who locked my hands and coerced me to do whatever I had
refused to do. My arms and hands were my only weapons of defence. My
feet were still in plaster casts, and my back had been so severely
injured as to necessitate my lying flat upon it most of the time. It
was thus that these unequal fights were fought. And I had not even the