mly believed that those who stood about could read them all and
found them to be incriminating evidence.

I imagined that these visionlike effects, with few exceptions, were
produced by a magic lantern controlled by some of my myriad
persecutors. The lantern was rather a cinematographic contrivance.
Moving pictures, often brilliantly colored, were thrown on the ceiling
of my room and sometimes on the sheets of my bed. Human bodies,
dismembered and gory, were one of the most common of these. All this
may have been due to the fact that, as a boy, I had fed my imagination
on the sensational news of the day as presented in the public press.
Despite the heavy penalty which I now paid for thus loading my mind, I
believe this unwise indulgence gave a breadth and variety to my
peculiar psychological experience which it otherwise would have lacked.
For with an insane ingenuity I managed to connect myself with almost
every crime of importance of which I had ever read.

Dismembered human bodies were not alone my bedfellows at this time. I
remember one vision of vivid beauty. Swarms of butterflies and large
and gorgeous moths appeared on the sheets. I wished that the usually
unkind operator would continue to show these pretty creatures. Another
pleasing vision appeared about twilight several days in succession. I
can trace it directly to impressions gained in early childhood. The
quaint pictures by Kate Greenaway--little children in attractive dress,
playing in old-fashioned gardens--would float through space just
outside my windows. The pictures were always accompanied by the gleeful
shouts of real children in the neighborhood, who, before being sent to
bed by watchful parents, devoted the last hour of the day to play. It
doubtless was their shouts that stirred my memories of childhood and
brought forth these pictures.

In my chamber of intermittent horrors and momentary delights, uncanny
occurrences were frequent. I believed there was some one who at fall of
night secreted himself under my bed. That in itself was not peculiar,
as sane persons at one time or another are troubled by that same
notion. But _my_ bed-fellow--under the bed--was a detective; and he
spent most of his time during the night pressing pieces of ice against
my injured heels, to precipitate, as I thought, my overdue confession.

The piece of ice in the pitcher of water which usually stood on the
table sometimes clinked against the pitcher's side as its cente