XIII
After two years of silence I found it no easy matter to carry on with
my brother a sustained conversation. So weak were my vocal cords from
lack of use that every few minutes I must either rest or whisper. And
upon pursing my lips I found myself unable to whistle, notwithstanding
the popular belief, drawn from vague memories of small-boyhood, that
this art is instinctive. Those who all their lives have talked at will
cannot possibly appreciate the enjoyment I found in using my regained
power of speech. Reluctantly I returned to the ward; but not until my
brother had left for home, laden with so much of my conversation that
it took most of his leisure for the next two days to tell the family
what I had said in two hours.
During the first few hours I seemed virtually normal. I had none of the
delusions which had previously oppressed me; nor had I yet developed
any of the expansive ideas, or delusions of grandeur, which soon began
to crowd in upon me. So normal did I appear while talking to my brother
that he thought I should be able to return home in a few weeks; and,
needless to say, I agreed with him. But the pendulum, as it were, had
swung too far. The human brain is too complex a mechanism to admit of
any such complete readjustment in an instant. It is said to be composed
of several million cells; and, that fact granted, it seems safe to say
that every day, perhaps every hour, hundreds of thousands of the cells
of my brain were now being brought into a state of renewed activity.
Comparatively sane and able to recognize the important truths of life,
I was yet insane as to many of its practical details. Judgment being
King of the Realm of Thought, it was not surprising that my judgment
failed often to decide correctly the many questions presented to it by
its abnormally communicative subjects. At first I seemed to live a
second childhood. I did with delight many things which I had first
learned to do as a child—the more so as it had been necessary for me
to learn again to eat and walk, and now to talk. I had much lost time
to make up; and for a while my sole ambition seemed to be to utter as
many thousand words a day as possible. My fellow-patients who for
fourteen months had seen me walk about in silence—a silence so
profound and inexorable that I would seldom heed their friendly
salutations—were naturally surprised to see me in my new mood of
unrestrained loquacity and irrepressible good humor. In short, I had
come into that abnormal condition which is known to psychiatrists as
elation.
For several weeks I believe I did not sleep more than two or three
hours a night. Such was my state of elation, however, that all signs of
fatigue were entirely absent and the sustained and abnormal mental and
physical activity in which I then indulged has left on my memory no
other than a series of very pleasant impressions. Though based on
fancy, the delights of some forms of mental disorder are real. Few, if
any, sane persons would care to test the matter at so great a price;
but those familiar with the "Letters of Charles Lamb" must know that
Lamb, himself, underwent treatment for mental disease. In a letter to
Coleridge, dated June 10th, 1796, he says: "At some future time I will
amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the
strange turns my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a
gloomy kind of envy; for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of
pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur
and wildness of Fancy till you have gone mad! All now seems to me
vapid, comparatively so!"
As for me, the very first night vast but vague humanitarian projects
began joyously to shape themselves in my mind. My garden of thoughts
seemed filled with flowers which might properly be likened to the
quick-blowing night-blooming cereus—that Delusion of Grandeur of all
flowering plants that thinks itself prodigal enough if it but unmask
its beauty to the moon! Few of my bold fancies, however, were of so
fugitive and chaste a splendor.
The religious instinct is found in primitive man. It is not strange,
therefore, that at this time the religious side of my nature was the
first to display compelling activity. Whether or not this was due to my
rescue from a living death, and my immediate appreciation of God's
goodness, both to me and to those faithful relatives who had done all
the praying during the preceding two years—this I cannot say. But the
fact stands out, that, whereas I had, while depressed, attached a
sinister significance to everything done or said in my presence, I now
interpreted the most trifling incidents as messages from God. The day
after this transition I attended church. It was the first service in
over two years which I had not attended against my will. The reading of
a psalm—the 45th—made a lasting impression upon me, and the
interpretation which I placed upon it furnishes the key to my attitude
during the first weeks of elation. It seemed to me a direct message
from Heaven.
The minister began: "My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the
things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a
ready writer."—Whose heart but mine? And the things indited—what were
they but the humanitarian projects which had blossomed in my garden of
thoughts over night? When, a few days later, I found myself writing
very long letters with unwonted facility, I became convinced that my
tongue was to prove itself "the pen of a ready writer." Indeed, to
these prophetic words I trace the inception of an irresistible desire,
of which this book is the first fruit.
"Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into thy
lips:" was the verse next read (by myself and the congregation), to
which the minister responded, "Therefore God hath blessed thee for
ever."—"Surely, I have been selected as the instrument wherewith great
reforms shall be effected," was my thought. (All is grist that comes to
the mill of a mind in elation—then even divine encomiums seem not
undeserved.)
"Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy
majesty"—a command to fight. "And in thy majesty ride prosperously
because of truth and meekness and righteousness;" replied the minister.
"And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things,"—was another
response. That I could speak the truth, I knew. "Meekness" I could not
associate with myself, except that during the preceding two years I had
suffered many indignities without open resentment. That my right hand
with a pen should teach me terrible things—how to fight for reform—I
firmly believed.
"Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies, whereby the
people fall under thee," quoth the minister. Yes, my tongue could be as
sharp as an arrow, and I should be able to stand up against those who
should stand in the way of reform. Again: "Thou lovest righteousness,
and hatest wickedness. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above thy fellows." The first sentence I did not
apply to myself; but being then, as I supposed, a man restored to
himself, it was easy to feel that I had been anointed with the oil of
gladness above my fellows. "Oil of gladness" is, in truth, an apt
phrase wherewith to describe elation.
The last two verses of the psalm corroborated the messages found in the
preceding verses: "I will make thy name to be remembered in all
generations:"—thus the minister. "Therefore shall the people praise
thee for ever and ever," was the response I read. That spelled immortal
fame for me, but only on condition that I should carry to a successful
conclusion the mission of reform—an obligation placed upon me by God
when He restored my reason.
When I set out upon a career of reform, I was impelled to do so by
motives in part like those which seem to have possessed Don Quixote
when he set forth, as Cervantes says, with the intention "of righting
every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger, from
which in the issue he would obtain eternal renown and fame." In
likening myself to Cervantes' mad hero my purpose is quite other than
to push myself within the charmed circle of the chivalrous. What I wish
to do is to make plain that a man abnormally elated may be swayed
irresistably by his best instincts, and that while under the spell of
an exaltation, idealistic in degree, he may not only be willing, but
eager to assume risks and endure hardships which under normal
conditions he would assume reluctantly, if at all. In justice to
myself, however, I may remark that my plans for reform have never
assumed quixotic, and therefore, impracticable proportions. At no time
have I gone a-tilting at windmills. A pen rather than a lance has been
my weapon of offence and defence; for with its point I have felt sure
that I should one day prick the civic conscience into a compassionate
activity, and thus bring into a neglected field earnest men and women
who should act as champions for those afflicted thousands least able to
fight for themselves.
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