Third Degree, only on a grander scale. Nevertheless, I did soon come to
the conclusion that the institution was what it purported to be--still
cherishing the idea, however, that certain patients and attachés were
detectives.

For a while after my arrival I again abandoned my new-found reading
habit. But as I became accustomed to my surroundings I grew bolder and
resumed the reading of newspapers and such books as were at hand. There
was a bookcase in the ward, filled with old numbers of standard English
periodicals; among them: _Westminster Review, Edinburgh Review, London
Quarterly_, and _Blackwood's_. There were also copies of _Harper's_ and
_The Atlantic Monthly_, dated a generation or more before my first
reading days. Indeed, some of the reviews were over fifty years old.
But I had to read their heavy contents or go without reading, for I
would not yet ask even for a thing I ardently desired. In the room of
one of the patients were thirty or forty books belonging to him. Time
and again I walked by his door and cast longing glances at those books,
which at first I had not the courage to ask for or to take. But during
the summer, about the time I was getting desperate, I finally managed
to summon enough courage to take them surreptitiously. It was usually
while the owner of these books was attending the daily service in the
chapel that his library became a circulating one.

The contents of the books I read made perhaps a deeper impression on my
memory than most books make on the minds of normal readers. To assure
myself of the fact, I have since reread "The Scarlet Letter," and I
recognize it as an old friend. The first part of the story, however,
wherein Hawthorne describes his work as a Custom House official and
portrays his literary personality, seems to have made scarcely any
impression. This I attribute to my utter lack of interest at that time