first to stagger and finally
to walk across the room and back to the bed. The distance was increased
as the pain diminished, until I was able to walk without more
discomfort than a comparatively pleasant sensation of lameness. For at
least two months after my feet first touched the floor I had to be
carried up and downstairs, and for several months longer I went
flat-footed.

Delusions of persecution--which include "delusions of
self-reference"--though a source of annoyance while I was in an
inactive state, annoyed and distressed me even more when I began to
move about and was obliged to associate with other patients. To my
mind, not only were the doctors and attendants detectives; each patient
was a detective and the whole institution was a part of the Third
Degree. Scarcely any remark was made in my presence that I could not
twist into a cleverly veiled reference to myself. In each person I
could see a resemblance to persons I had known, or to the principals or
victims of the crimes with which I imagined myself charged. I refused
to read; for to read veiled charges and fail to assert my innocence was
to incriminate both myself and others. But I looked with longing
glances upon all printed matter and, as my curiosity was continually
piqued, this enforced abstinence grew to be well-nigh intolerable.

It became again necessary to the family purse that every possible
saving be made. Accordingly, I was transferred from the main building,
where I had a private room and a special attendant, to a ward where I
was to mingle, under an aggregate sort of supervision, with fifteen or
twenty other patients. Here I had no special attendant by day, though
one slept in my room at night.

Of this ward I had heard alarming reports--and these from the lips of
several attendants. I was, therefore, greatly disturbed at the proposed
change. But, the transfer once accomplished, after a few days I really
liked my new quarters better than the old. During the entire time I
remained at the sanatorium I was more alert mentally than I gave
evidence of being. But not until after my removal to this ward, where I
was left alone for hours every day, did I dare to show my alertness.
Here I even went so far on one occasion as to joke with the attendant
in charge. He had been trying to persuade me to take a bath. I refused,
mainly because I did not like the looks of the bath room, which, with
its cement floor and central drain, resembled the room in