to the ward; but not until my
brother had left for home, laden with so much of my conversation that
it took most of his leisure for the next two days to tell the family
what I had said in two hours.

During the first few hours I seemed virtually normal. I had none of the
delusions which had previously oppressed me; nor had I yet developed
any of the expansive ideas, or delusions of grandeur, which soon began
to crowd in upon me. So normal did I appear while talking to my brother
that he thought I should be able to return home in a few weeks; and,
needless to say, I agreed with him. But the pendulum, as it were, had
swung too far. The human brain is too complex a mechanism to admit of
any such complete readjustment in an instant. It is said to be composed
of several million cells; and, that fact granted, it seems safe to say
that every day, perhaps every hour, hundreds of thousands of the cells
of my brain were now being brought into a state of renewed activity.
Comparatively sane and able to recognize the important truths of life,
I was yet insane as to many of its practical details. Judgment being
King of the Realm of Thought, it was not surprising that my judgment
failed often to decide correctly the many questions presented to it by
its abnormally communicative subjects. At first I seemed to live a
second childhood. I did with delight many things which I had first
learned to do as a child--the more so as it had been necessary for me
to learn again to eat and walk, and now to talk. I had much lost time
to make up; and for a while my sole ambition seemed to be to utter as
many thousand words a day as possible. My fellow-patients who for
fourteen months had seen me walk about in silence--a silence so
profound and inexorable that I would seldom heed their friendly
salutations--were naturally surprised to see me in my new mood of
unrestrained loquacity and irrepressible good humor. In short, I had
come into that abnormal condition which is known to psychiatrists as
elation.

For several weeks I believe I did not sleep more than two or three
hours a night. Such was my state of elation, however, that all signs of
fatigue were entirely absent and the sustained and abnormal mental and
physical activity in which I then indulged has left on my memory no
other than a series of very pleasant impressions. Though based on
fancy, the delights of some forms of mental disorder are real. Few, if
any, sane persons would care to test t