immediately complied with.
For over one year they had seen me in a passive, almost speechless
condition, and they were, therefore, unable to understand my unwonted
aggressions. The threat that I would chastise them for any disobedience
of my orders they looked upon as a huge joke. So it was, until one day
I incontinently cracked that joke against the head of one of them.

It began in this wise: Early in October there was placed in the ward a
man whose abnormality for the most part consisted of an inordinate
thirst for liquor. He was over fifty years of age, well educated,
traveled, refined and of an artistic temperament. Congenial companions
were scarce where I was, and he and I were soon drawn together in
friendship. This man had been trapped into the institution by the
subterfuge of relatives. As is common in such cases, many "white" lies
had been resorted to in order to save trouble for all concerned--that
is, all except the patient. To be taken without notice from one's home
and by a deceitful, though under the circumstances perhaps justifiable
strategy, placed in a ward with fifteen other men, all exhibiting
insanity in varying degrees, is as heartbreaking an ordeal as one can
well imagine. Yet such was this man's experience. A free man one day,
he found himself deprived of his liberty the next, and branded with
what he considered an unbearable disgrace.

Mr. Blank (as I shall call him) was completely unnerved. As he was a
stranger in what I well knew was a strange world, I took him under my
protecting and commodious wing. I did all I could to cheer him up, and
tried to secure for him that consideration which to me seemed
indispensable to his well-being. Patients in his condition had never
been forced, when taking their exercise, to walk about the grounds with
the other patients. At no time during the preceding fourteen months had
I seen a newly committed patient forced to exercise against his will.
One who objected was invariably left in the ward, or his refusal was
reported to the doctor before further action was taken. No sane person
need stretch his imagination in order to realize how humiliating it
would be for this man to walk with a crowd which greatly resembled a
"chain gang." Two by two, under guard, these hostages of misfortune get
the only long walks their restricted liberty allows them. After the one
or two occasions when this man did walk with the gang, I was impressed
with the not wholly unreasonable