I recollect coming in from the field one day at noon. I was called to the supervisor's room; he took down a bottle and poured out a table spoonful of some kind of liquid, as white as water, and ordered me to drink it. I had learned before this, to ask no questions when anything was given me to drink. I drank it down; he repeated the dose, and I took it. He saw that I writhed under it. He said I must come to his room three times a day before eating, and take two table-spoonfuls of the contents of this bottle, until it was all taken up. It was a large case bottle, holding, perhaps, a little more than a quart. I judged it to be the decoction of quassia wood; at all events, I had never taken anything before that compared with it for bitterness. Said nothing, but a strange feeling came over me. I was taking other medicine, as usual, besides this. I felt for the moment that they, seeing that I was doing well and gaining my flesh, took this course to kill me, by over-dosing me with medicine. It seemed to me that I could never live to take all that with my other doses, but I did take it and live. But I did not believe then, neither do I now, that the doctors thought I needed this in addition to the beer and the other medicine I was taking three times a day. I have always believed it was given me to see if I would not resist. I had never once resisted taking anything offered, and never meant to, live or die, for I knew it would be forced down me if I did; I had frequently seen the operation performed on others, and I did not covet the luxury. Perhaps this conclusion of mine will be regarded by many as unjust and unreasonable, who are unacquainted with matters in that institution, and of course will be laughed at by those who ordered the medicine. I would laugh at it too if I were they; it is the best way for them to dispose of the matter. Yet my opinion will be the same; I have my reasons for this. If I had been running down in health and appetite, confined to my room or to my bed, such a course might have seemed justifiable, but I was well, eating very heartily, working in the field every day with others. July came, and I had heard nothing from my friends, and nothing had been said to me about writing to them. I had once asked the privilege of writing to the man that took me there, but had been denied. I was sitting in the reading room one Sabbath afternoon in July; my anguish of mind was very intense, as I was considering my condition—that my present life was worse than a blank, shut out as I was from all knowledge of the outer world, and yet in a free country. I was not aware that I had forfeited my liberty by any crime, yet I was confined by bolts and bars, and if I was permitted to go outside, was guarded and watched by a set of ignorant, unprincipled hirelings. Such were my meditations, when all of a sudden the newsboy announced to me that my daughter had come and wanted to see me.