As is usual in these institutions, all knives, forks, and other articles that might be used by a patient for a dangerous purpose were counted by the attendants after each meal.  This I knew, and the knowledge had a deterrent effect.  I dared not take one.  Though I might at any time during the night have hanged myself, that method did not appeal to me, and I kept it in mind only as a last resort.  To get possession of some sharp dagger-like instrument which I could plunge into my heart at a moment’s notice—­this was my consuming desire.  With such a weapon I felt that I could, when the crisis came, rob the detectives of their victory.  During the summer months an employe spent his entire time mowing the lawn with a large horse-drawn machine.  This, when not in use, was often left outdoors.  Upon it was a square wooden box, containing certain necessary tools, among them a sharp, spike-like instrument, used to clean the oil-holes when they became clogged.  This bit of steel was five or six inches long, and was shaped like a pencil.  For at least three months, I seldom went out of doors that I did not go with the intention of purloining that steel spike.  I intended then to keep it in my room against the day of my anticipated transfer to jail.

It was now that my delusions protected me from the very fate they had induced me to court.  For had I not believed that the eye of a detective was on me every moment, I could have taken that spike a score of times.  Often, when it was not in use, I walked to the lawnmower and even laid my hand upon the tool-box.  But I dared not open it.  My feelings were much like those of Pandora about a certain other box.  In my case, however, the box upon which I looked with longing had Hope without, and not within.  Instinctively, perhaps, I realized this, for I did not lift the lid.

One day, as the patients were returning to their wards, I saw, lying directly in my path (I could even now point out the spot), the coveted weapon.  Never have I seen anything that I wanted more.  To have stooped and picked it up without detection would have been easy; and had I known, as I know now, that it had been carelessly dropped there, nothing could have prevented me from doing so and perhaps using it with fatal effect.  But I believed it had been placed there deliberately and as a test, by those who had divined my suicidal purpose.  The eye of the imagined detective, which, I am inclined to believe, and like to believe, was the eye of the real God, was upon me; and though I stepped directly over it, I did not pick up that thing of death.

XII