except under some unusual stress of emotion. The only time I took the
initiative in this regard while living in the home of my attendant was
on a bitterly cold and snowy day when I had the temerity to tell him
that the wind had blown the blanket from a horse that had been standing
for a long time in front of the house. The owner had come inside to
transact some business with my attendant's relatives. In appearance he
reminded me of the uncle to whom this book is dedicated. I imagined the
mysterious caller was impersonating him and, by one of my curious
mental processes, I deduced that it was incumbent on me to do for the
dumb beast outside what I knew my uncle would have done had he been
aware of its plight. My reputation for decency of feeling I believed to
be gone forever; but I could not bear, in this situation, to be
unworthy of my uncle, who, among those who knew him, was famous for his
kindliness and humanity.

My attendant and his relatives were very kind and very patient, for I
was still intractable. But their efforts to make me comfortable, so far
as they had any effect, made keener my desire to kill myself. I shrank
from death; but I preferred to die by my own hand and take the blame
for it, rather than to be executed and bring lasting disgrace on my
family, friends, and, I may add with truth, on Yale. For I reasoned
that parents throughout the country would withhold their sons from a
university which numbered among its graduates such a despicable being.
But from any tragic act I was providentially restrained by the very
delusion which gave birth to the desire--in a way which signally
appeared on a later and, to me, a memorable day.