A Mind That Found Itself | Page 8

unintelligible mumblings of invisible
persecutors.
I remember distinctly my delusion of the following day--Sunday. I seemed to be no
longer in the hospital. In some mysterious way I had been spirited aboard a huge ocean
liner. I first discovered this when the ship was in mid-ocean. The day was clear, the sea
apparently calm, but for all that the ship was slowly sinking. And it was I, of course, who
had created the situation which must turn out fatally for all, unless the coast of Europe
could be reached before the water in the hold should extinguish the fires. How had this
peril overtaken us? Simply enough: During the night I had in some way--a way still
unknown to me--opened a porthole below the water-line; and those in charge of the
vessel seemed powerless to close it. Every now and then I could hear parts of the ship
give way under the strain. I could hear the air hiss and whistle spitefully under the
resistless impact of the invading waters; I could hear the crashing of timbers as partitions
were wrecked; and as the water rushed in at one place I could see, at another, scores of
helpless passengers swept overboard into the sea--my unintended victims. I believed that
I, too, might at any moment be swept away. That I was not thrown into the sea by
vengeful fellow-passengers was, I thought, due to their desire to keep me alive until, if
possible, land should be reached, when a more painful death could be inflicted upon me.

While aboard my phantom ship I managed in some way to establish an electric railway
system; and the trolley cars which passed the hospital were soon running along the deck
of my ocean liner, carrying passengers from the places of peril to what seemed places of
comparative safety at the bow. Every time I heard a car pass the hospital, one of mine
went clanging along the ship's deck.
My feverish imaginings were no less remarkable than the external stimuli which excited
them. As I have since ascertained, there were just outside my room an elevator and near it
a speaking-tube. Whenever the speaking-tube was used from another part of the building,
the summoning whistle conveyed to my mind the idea of the exhaustion of air in a
ship-compartment, and the opening and shutting of the elevator door completed the
illusion of a ship fast going to pieces. But the ship my mind was on never reached any
shore, nor did she sink. Like a mirage she vanished, and again I found myself safe in my
bed at the hospital. "Safe," did I say? Scarcely that--for deliverance from one impending
disaster simply meant immediate precipitation into another.
My delirium gradually subsided, and four or five days after the 23d the doctors were able
to set my broken bones. The operation suggested new delusions. Shortly before the
adjustment of the plaster casts, my legs, for obvious reasons, were shaved from shin to
calf. This unusual tonsorial operation I read for a sign of degradation--associating it with
what I had heard of the treatment of murderers and with similar customs in barbarous
countries. It was about this time also that strips of court-plaster, in the form of a cross,
were placed on my forehead, which had been slightly scratched in my fall, and this, of
course, I interpreted as a brand of infamy.
Had my health been good, I should at this time have been participating in the Triennial of
my class at Yale. Indeed, I was a member of the Triennial Committee and though, when I
left New York on June 15th, I had been feeling terribly ill, I had then hoped to take part
in the celebration. The class reunions were held on Tuesday, June 26th--three days after
my collapse. Those familiar with Yale customs know that the Harvard baseball game is
one of the chief events of the commencement season. Headed by brass bands, all the
classes whose reunions fall in the same year march to the Yale Athletic Field to see the
game and renew their youth--using up as much vigor in one delirious day as would insure
a ripe old age if less prodigally expended. These classes, with their bands and cheering,
accompanied by thousands of other vociferating enthusiasts, march through West Chapel
Street--the most direct route from the Campus to the Field. It is upon this line of march
that Grace Hospital is situated, and I knew that on the day of the game the Yale thousands
would pass the scene of my incarceration.
I have endured so many days of the most exquisite torture that I hesitate to distinguish
among them by degrees; each deserves its own unique place, even as a Saint's Day in the
calendar of an