Though I was not discharged from the State Hospital until September 10th, 1903, during the preceding month I visited my home several times, once for three days.  These trips were not only interesting, but steadying in effect.  I willingly returned to the hospital when my parole expired.  Though several friends expressed surprise at this willingness to enter again an institution where I had experienced so many hardships, to me my temporary return was not in the least irksome.  As I had penetrated and conquered the mysteries of that dark side of life, it no longer held any terrors for me.  Nor does it to this day.  I can contemplate the future with a greater degree of complacency than can some of those whose lot in life has been uniformly fortunate.  In fact, I said at that time that, should my condition ever demand it, I would again enter a hospital for the insane, quite as willingly as the average person now enters a hospital for the treatment of bodily ailments.

It was in this complacent and confident mood, and without any sharp line of transition, that I again began life in my old world of companionship and of business.

XXVIII

For the first month of regained freedom I remained at home.  These weeks were interesting.  Scarcely a day passed that I did not meet several former friends and acquaintances who greeted me as one risen from the dead.  And well they might, for my three-year trip among the worlds—­rather than around the world—­was suggestive of complete separation from the everyday life of the multitude.  One profound impression which I received at this time was of the uniform delicacy of feeling exhibited by my well-wishers.  In no instance that I can recall was a direct reference made to the nature of my recent illness, until I had first made some remark indicating that I was not averse to discussing it.  There was an evident effort on the part of friends and acquaintances to avoid a subject which they naturally supposed I wished to forget.  Knowing that their studied avoidance of a delicate subject was inspired by a thoughtful consideration, rather than a lack of interest, I invariably forced the conversation along a line calculated to satisfy a suppressed, but perfectly proper, curiosity which I seldom failed to detect.  My decision to stand on my past and look the future in the face has, I believe, contributed much to my own happiness, and, more than anything else, enabled my friends to view my past as I myself do.  By frankly referring to my illness, I put my friends and acquaintances at ease, and at a stroke rid them of that constraint which one must feel in the presence of a person constantly in danger of being hurt by a chance allusion to an unhappy occurrence.