I became so proficient that I could
completely destroy more than one of these six-by-eight-foot druggets in
a single night. During the following weeks of my close confinement I
destroyed at least twenty of them, each worth, as I found out later,
about four dollars; and I confess I found a peculiar satisfaction in
the destruction of property belonging to a State which had deprived me
of all my effects except underclothes. But my destructiveness was due
to a variety of causes. It was occasioned primarily by a "pressure of
activity," for which the tearing of druggets served as a vent. I was in
a state of mind aptly described in a letter written during my first
month of elation, in which I said, "I'm as busy as a nest of ants."

Though the habit of tearing druggets was the outgrowth of an abnormal
impulse, the habit itself lasted longer than it could have done had I
not, for so long a time, been deprived of suitable clothes and been
held a prisoner in cold cells. But another motive soon asserted itself.
Being deprived of all the luxuries of life and most of the necessities,
my mother wit, always conspiring with a wild imagination for something
to occupy my tune, led me at last to invade the field of invention.
With appropriate contrariety, an unfamiliar and hitherto almost
detested line of investigation now attracted me. Abstruse mathematical
problems which had defied solution for centuries began to appear easy.
To defy the State and its puny representatives had become mere child's
play. So I forthwith decided to overcome no less a force than gravity
itself.

My conquering imagination soon tricked me into believing that I could
lift myself by my boot-straps--or rather that I could do so when my
laboratory should contain footgear that lent itself to the experiment.
But what of the strips of felt torn from the druggets? Why, these I
used as the straps of my missing boots; and having no boots to stand
in, I used my bed as boots. I reasoned that for my scientific purpose a
man in bed was as favorably situated as a man in boots. Therefore,
attaching a sufficient number of my felt strips to the head and foot of
the bed (which happened not to be screwed to the floor), and, in turn,
attaching the free ends to the transom and the window guard, I found
the problem very simple. For I next joined these cloth cables in such
manner that by pulling downward I effected a readjustment of stress and
strain, and my bed, _with me in it_, was