r's Office of the
Sheffield Scientific School and a brother of mine, called to see
me.

Perhaps what he said was true, but after the events of the last
two years I find myself inclined to doubt the truth of everything
that is told me. He said that he would come and see me again
sometime next week, and I am sending you this letter in order that
you may bring it with you as a passport, provided you are the one
who was here on Wednesday.

If you did not call as stated please say nothing about this letter
to anyone, and when your double arrives, I'll tell him what I
think of him. Would send other messages, but while things seem as
they do at present it is impossible. Have had someone else address
envelope for fear letter might be held up on the way.

Yours,

CLIFFORD W.B.

Though I felt reasonably confident that this message would reach my
brother, I was by no means certain. I was sure, however, that, should
he receive it, under no circumstances would he turn it over to anyone
hostile to myself. When I wrote the words: "Dear George," my feeling
was much like that of a child who sends a letter to Santa Claus after
his childish faith has been shaken. Like the skeptical child, I felt
there was nothing to lose, but everything to gain. "Yours" fully
expressed such affection for relatives as I was then capable of--for
the belief that I had disgraced, perhaps destroyed, my family prompted
me to forbear to use the family name in the signature.

The thought that I might soon get in touch with my old world did not
excite me. I had not much faith anyway that I was to re-establish
former relations with it, and what little faith I had was all but
destroyed on the morning of August 30th, 1902, when a short message,
written on a slip of paper, reached me by the hand of an attendant. It
informed me that my conservator would call that afternoon. I thought it
a lie. I felt that any brother of mine would have taken the pains to
send a letter in reply to the first I had written him in over two
years. The thought that there had not been time for him to do so and
that this message must have arrived by telephone did not then occur to
me. What I believed was that my own letter had been confiscated. I
asked one of the doctors to swear on his honor that it really was my
own brother who was coming to see me. This he did. But abnormal
suspicion robbed all men in my sight of whatever h