attendants were wanted at the office, an electric bell was rung. During
the fourteen months that I remained in this hospital in a depressed
condition, the bell in my ward rang several hundred times. Never did it
fail to send through me a mild shock of terror, for I imagined that at
last the hour had struck for my transportation to the scene of trial.
Relatives and friends would be brought to the ward--heralded, of
course, by a warning bell--and short interviews would be held in my
room, during which the visitors had to do all the talking. My eldest
brother, whom I shall refer to hereafter as my conservator, called
often. He seldom failed to use one phrase which worried me.

"You are looking better and getting stronger," he would say. "We shall
straighten you out yet."

To be "straightened out" was an ambiguous phrase which might refer to
the end of the hangman's rope or to a fatal electric shock.

I preferred to be let alone, and the assistant physician in charge of
my case, after several ineffectual attempts to engage me in
conversation, humored my persistent taciturnity. For more than a year
his only remarks to me were occasional conventional salutations.
Subsequent events have led me to doubt the wisdom of his policy.

For one year no further attention was paid to me than to see that I had
three meals a day, the requisite number of baths, and a sufficient
amount of exercise. I was, however, occasionally urged by an attendant
to write a letter to some relative, but that, of course, I refused to
do. As I shall have many hard things to say about attendants in
general, I take pleasure in testifying that, so long as I remained in a
passive condition, those at this institution were kind, and at times