his
contempt, not only for me, but for those in authority.

The man who had so terribly beaten me was particularly flagrant in
ignoring the claims of age. On more than one occasion he viciously
attacked a man of over fifty, who, however, seemed much older. He was a
Yankee sailing-master, who in his prime could have thrashed his
tormentor with ease. But now he was helpless and could only submit.
However, he was not utterly abandoned by his old world. His wife called
often to see him; and, because of his condition, she was permitted to
visit him in his room. Once she arrived a few hours after he had been
cruelly beaten. Naturally she asked the attendants how he had come by
the hurts--the blackened eye and bruised head. True to the code, they
lied. The good wife, perhaps herself a Yankee, was not thus to be
fooled; and her growing belief that her husband had been assaulted was
confirmed by a sight she saw before her visit was ended. Another
patient, a foreigner who was a target for abuse, was knocked flat two
or three times as he was roughly forced along the corridor. I saw this
little affair and I saw that the good wife saw it. The next day she
called again and took her husband home. The result was that after a few
(probably sleepless) nights, she had to return him to the hospital and
trust to God rather than the State to protect him.

Another victim was a man sixty years of age. He was quite inoffensive,
and no patient in the ward seemed to attend more strictly to his own
business. Shortly after my transfer from the violent ward this man was
so viciously attacked that his arm was broken. The attendant (the man
who had so viciously assaulted me) was summarily discharged.
Unfortunately, however, the relief afforded the insane was slight and
brief, for this same brute, like another whom I have mentioned, soon
secured a position in another institution--this one, however, a
thousand miles distant.

Death by violence in a violent ward is after all not an unnatural
death--for a violent ward. The patient of whom I am about to speak was
also an old man--over sixty. Both physically and mentally he was a
wreck. On being brought to the institution he was at once placed in a
cell in the Bull Pen, probably because of his previous history for
violence while at his own home. But his violence (if it ever existed)
had already spent itself, and had come to be nothing more than an utter
incapacity to obey. His offence was that he was to