III
It was squarely in front of the dining-room window that I fell, and
those at dinner were, of course, startled. It took them a second or two
to realize what had happened. Then my younger brother rushed out, and
with others carried me into the house. Naturally that dinner was
permanently interrupted. A mattress was placed on the floor of the
dining room and I on that, suffering intensely. I said little, but what
I said was significant. "I thought I had epilepsy!" was my first
remark; and several times I said, "I wish it was over!" For I believed
that my death was only a question of hours. To the doctors, who soon
arrived, I said, "My back is broken!"—raising myself slightly,
however, as I said so.
An ambulance was summoned and I was placed in it. Because of the nature
of my injuries it had to proceed slowly. The trip of a mile and a half
seemed interminable, but finally I arrived at Grace Hospital and was
placed in a room which soon became a chamber of torture. It was on the
second floor; and the first object to engage my attention and stir my
imagination was a man who appeared outside my window and placed in
position several heavy iron bars. These were, it seems, thought
necessary for my protection, but at that time no such idea occurred to
me. My mind was in a delusional state, ready and eager to seize upon
any external stimulus as a pretext for its wild inventions, and that
barred window started a terrible train of delusions which persisted for
seven hundred and ninety-eight days. During that period my mind
imprisoned both mind and body in a dungeon than which none was ever
more secure.
Knowing that those who attempt suicide are usually placed under arrest,
I believed myself under legal restraint. I imagined that at any moment
I might be taken to court to face some charge lodged against me by the
local police. Every act of those about me seemed to be a part of what,
in police parlance, is commonly called the "Third Degree." The hot
poultices placed upon my feet and ankles threw me into a profuse
perspiration, and my very active association of mad ideas convinced me
that I was being "sweated"—another police term which I had often seen
in the newspapers. I inferred that this third-degree sweating process
was being inflicted in order to extort some kind of a confession,
though what my captors wished me to confess I could not for my life
imagine. As I was really in a state of delirium, with high fever, I had
an insatiable thirst. The only liquids given me were hot saline
solutions. Though there was good reason for administering these, I
believed they were designed for no other purpose than to increase my
sufferings, as part of the same inquisitorial process. But had a
confession been due, I could hardly have made it, for that part of my
brain which controls the power of speech was seriously affected, and
was soon to be further disabled by my ungovernable thoughts. Only an
occasional word did I utter.
Certain hallucinations of hearing, or "false voices," added to my
torture. Within my range of hearing, but beyond the reach of my
understanding, there was a hellish vocal hum. Now and then I would
recognize the subdued voice of a friend; now and then I would hear the
voices of some I believed were not friends. All these referred to me
and uttered what I could not clearly distinguish, but knew must be
imprecations. Ghostly rappings on the walls and ceiling of my room
punctuated 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 olden Spanish
inquisitor. But, if the palm is to be awarded to any, June 26th, 1900,
perhaps has the first claim.
My state of mind at that time might be pictured thus: The criminal
charge of attempted suicide stood against me on June 23rd. By the 26th
many other and worse charges had accumulated. The public believed me
the most despicable member of my race. The papers were filled with
accounts of my misdeeds. The thousands of collegians gathered in the
city, many of whom I knew personally, loathed the very thought that a
Yale man should so disgrace his Alma Mater. And when they approached
the hospital on their way to the Athletic Field, I concluded that it
was their intention to take me from my bed, drag me to the lawn, and
there tear me limb from limb. Few incidents during my unhappiest years
are more vividly or circumstantially impressed upon my memory. The
fear, to be sure, was absurd, but in the lurid lexicon of Unreason
there is no such word as "absurd." Believing, as I did, that I had
dishonored Yale and forfeited the privilege of being numbered among her
sons, it was not surprising that the college cheers which filled the
air that afternoon, and in which only a few days earlier I had hoped to
join, struck terror to my heart.
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