I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied every vile name to me. I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform, even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a good nervous system to have passed through it all. Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that the only thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did, and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind. When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my mind.