ed were not ordinary. I was simply
protecting myself against what I believed to be unjust and illegal
confiscation of letters.

I have already described how an assistant physician arbitrarily denied
my request that I be permitted to send a birthday letter to my father,
thereby not merely exceeding his authority and ignoring decency, but,
consciously or unconsciously, stifling a sane impulse. That this should
occur while I was confined in the Bull Pen was, perhaps, not so
surprising. But about four months later, while I was in one of the best
wards, a similar, though less open, interference occurred. At this time
I was so nearly normal that my discharge was a question of but a very
few months. Anticipating my return to my old world, I decided to renew
former relationships. Accordingly, my brother, at my suggestion,
informed certain friends that I should be pleased to receive letters
from them. They soon wrote. In the meantime the doctor had been
instructed to deliver to me any and all letters that might arrive. He
did so for a time, and that without censoring. As was to be expected,
after nearly three almost letterless years, I found rare delight in
replying to my reawakened correspondents. Yet some of these letters,
written for the deliberate purpose of re-establishing myself in the
sane world, were destroyed by the doctor in authority. At the time, not
one word did he say to me about the matter. I had handed him for
mailing certain letters, unsealed. He did not mail them, nor did he
forward them to my conservator as he should have done, and had earlier
agreed to do with all letters which he could not see his way clear to
approve. It was fully a month before I learned that my friends had not
received my replies to their letters. Then I accused the doctor of
destroying them, and he, with belated frankness, admitted that he had
done so. He offered no better excuse than the mere statement that he
did not approve of the sentiments I had expressed. Another flagrant
instance was that of a letter addressed to me in reply to one of those
which I had posted surreptitiously. The person to whom I wrote, a
friend of years' standing, later informed me that he had sent the
reply. I never received it. Neither did my conservator. Were it not
that I feel absolutely sure that the letter in question was received at
the hospital and destroyed, I should not now raise this point. But such
a point, if raised at all, must of course be made wit