There is a convict here afflicted with suicidal mania. Those in the hospital who are not insane have been told to watch him and prevent him from harming himself. He is the same man who tried to drown himself by jumping into the river. We have to keep the medicine closet locked and the bread knife hidden.
One night he waited until everybody was asleep, then, sneaking into the bathroom, he took a bottle of medicine which had been left standing on top of the ice box, and gulped a great quantity before the bottle was torn from his lips. He was quite sick for two days. Luckily the bottle only contained "Cascara Sagrada," a powerful cathartic.
Another time he tried even to push the razor into his throat while a convict barber was shaving him. And yet, every time the barred door is locked or unlocked, he seems to be in mortal fear that somebody is coming to shoot him.
The other evening he sat near me while I was reading and suddenly he leaned over and, with quivering nostrils and in a hoarse terrified whisper, asked me, in German, if I was his friend.
"Certainly," I answered. "What can I do for you?"
"They are going to shoot me to-night!" he said. "Get me the bread knife so that I can cut my throat, or some poison to kill myself."
I tried to pacify him, but he was in a state of abject terror. So, thinking it best to do so, I offered him what he imagined to be poison. He drank it quickly and with great relish, waiting impatiently, with gleaming eyes and a sickly, malicious grin, for the death that was to come. But death did not come; the medicine was only a strong dose of salts. This second cathartic potion cured him effectively of his suicidal mania, for thus he came finally to the conclusion that all the alleged poisons in the hospital were only snares and delusions.
After a few months two men with papers came over from the asylum of Matteawan and plied him with questions, his answers to which one of the men wrote down. The poor German cobbler was scared stiff, answering the queries as if his life depended on his replies.
Among other things, he was asked why he had jumped into the river.
"To learn shwimming," was his quick retort.