ey
consisted of copies of illustrations which I had cut from magazines
that had miraculously found their way into the violent ward. The heads
of men and women interested me most, for I had decided to take up
portraiture. At first I was content to draw in black and white, but I
soon procured some colors and from that time on devoted my attention to
mastering pastel.

In the world of letters I had made little progress. My compositions
were for the most part epistles addressed to relatives and friends and
to those in authority at the hospital. Frequently the letters addressed
to the doctors were sent in sets of three--this to save time, for I was
very busy. The first letter of such a series would contain my request,
couched in friendly and polite terms. To this I would add a postscript,
worded about as follows: "If, after reading this letter, you feel
inclined to refuse my request, please read letter number two." Letter
number two would be severely formal--a business-like repetition of the
request made in letter number one. Again a postscript would advise the
reader to consult letter number three, if the reading of number two had
failed to move him. Letter number three was invariably a brief
philippic in which I would consign the unaccommodating doctor to
oblivion.

In this way I expended part of my prodigious supply of feeling and
energy. But I had also another way of reducing my creative pressure.
Occasionally, from sheer excess of emotion, I would burst into verse,
of a quality not to be doubted. Of that quality the reader shall judge,
for I am going to quote a "creation" written under circumstances which,
to say the least, were adverse. Before writing these lines I had never
attempted verse in my life--barring intentionally inane doggerel. And,
as I now judge these lines, it is probably true that even yet I have
never written a poem. Nevertheless, my involuntary, almost automatic
outburst is at least suggestive of the fervor that was in me. These
fourteen lines were written within thirty minutes of the time I first
conceived the idea; and I present them substantially as they first took
form. From a psychological standpoint at least, I am told, they are not
without interest.

LIGHT

Man's darkest hour is the hour before he's born,
Another is the hour just before the Dawn;
From Darkness unto Life and Light he leaps,
To Life but once,--to Light as oft as God wills he should.
'Tis God's own s