To take up again the thread of my personal story, I have described how I was called 'homicidal.' Where my 'voices' came from, to which I alluded in my first chapter, I never understood; for indeed I have not the faintest notion what they mean. They are used as a yoke-horse with 'delusions;' and being simply nonsensical, they admit of no possible answer. As far as I can remember, after old Diafoirus had asked me a variety of questions to find out the especial form of madness for which my friends had committed me to his tender mercies, and became naturally more puzzled as he went on, he suggested 'voices' as a last desperate resource; and I, being rather tired of the business, and having thus far been unable to admit a single 'symptom' propounded, jumped at the solution as being purely idiotic. I presume that I must have admitted that at times, when I am alone and doing nothing, I am able to fancy to myself the speech and address of absent friends. Heaven knows I needed the fancy there. It struck me as a harmless admission; and when I was once afterwards gravely informed that 'voices' are about the most dangerous and incurable sign of mental alienation, even in my extremity I could not help being tickled by the profound absurdity of the whole thing. 'Voices,' said my friend of the Inverness to me one day in a moment of confidence,--he too was able to discourse pleasantly enough of old college-times, poetry, and other matters when he chose,--'they are always bothering me about "voices," and I don't know what the devil they mean.' This man has been a hopeless prisoner for some time; but he was so far wiser than I that he only admitted to hearing voices indoors; I rashly allowed that I heard them quite as often out of doors as in. I hear them often when I am hungry, summoning me with much emphasis to my meals.