For a few hours my mind was calmer than it had been.  But my new-found ease was soon dispelled by the appearance of a nurse—­one of several who had attended me at the hospital.  Though at home and surrounded by relatives, I jumped to the conclusion that I was still under police surveillance.  At my request my brother had promised not to engage any nurse who had been in attendance at the hospital.  The difficulty of procuring any other led him to disregard my request, which at the time he held simply as a whim.  But he did not disregard it entirely, for the nurse selected had merely acted as a substitute on one occasion, and then only for about an hour.  That was long enough, though, for my memory to record her image.

Finding myself still under surveillance, I soon jumped to a second conclusion, namely, that this was no brother of mine at all.  He instantly appeared in the light of a sinister double, acting as a detective.  After that I refused absolutely to speak to him again, and this repudiation I extended to all other relatives, friends and acquaintances.  If the man I had accepted as my brother was spurious, so was everybody—­that was my deduction.  For more than two years I was without relatives or friends, in fact, without a world, except that one created by my own mind from the chaos that reigned within it.

While I was at Grace Hospital, it was my sense of hearing which was the most disturbed.  But soon after I was placed in my room at home, all of my senses became perverted.  I still heard the “false voices”—­which were doubly false, for Truth no longer existed.  The tricks played upon me by my senses of taste, touch, smell, and sight were the source of great mental anguish.  None of my food had its usual flavor.  This soon led to that common delusion that some of it contained poison—­not deadly poison, for I knew that my enemies hated me too much to allow me the boon of death, but poison sufficient to aggravate my discomfort.  At breakfast I had cantaloupe, liberally sprinkled with salt.  The salt seemed to pucker my mouth, and I believed it to be powdered alum.  Usually, with my supper, sliced peaches were served.  Though there was sugar on the peaches, salt would have done as well.  Salt, sugar, and powdered alum had become the same to me.

Familiar materials had acquired a different “feel.”  In the dark, the bed sheets at times seemed like silk.  As I had not been born with a golden spoon in my mouth, or other accessories of a useless luxury, I believed the detectives had provided these silken sheets for some hostile purpose of their own.  What that purpose was I could not divine, and my very inability to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion stimulated my brain to the assembling of disturbing thoughts in an almost endless train.

Imaginary breezes struck my face, gentle, but not welcome, most of them from parts of the room where currents of air could not possibly originate.  They seemed to come from cracks in the walls and ceiling and annoyed me exceedingly.  I thought them in some way related to that ancient method of torture by which water is allowed to strike the victim’s forehead, a drop at a time, until death releases him.  For a while my sense of smell added to my troubles.  The odor of burning human flesh and other pestilential fumes seemed to assail me.