oss, aint gwine to do no harm." Then I was marched, sockless,
with my shoes on and a metal check strung around my neck, to the bath
where I was taken charge of by another coloured man.

"Here!" he said, as he pointed to an empty tub. I bathed myself to his
satisfaction and then looked for the clean towels of the "Annual
Report," but found them not. Instead, there was a pile of towels
already used--towels made of crash--and I was told to select the
driest of them and dry myself.

"I was clean when I went into that tub," I said to the black man--"I
am cleaner now; but if I dry myself with this sodden piece of crash, I
will be dirtier than when I began." The black man proceeded to force
me to do this and his attempt nearly ended the experiment, for I
refused pointblank to do it. "No, thank you," I said, "I will walk up
and down until I dry."

When the superintendent of that department was called into counsel, my
use of English rather surprised him, and he let it go at that. Then we
were marched upstairs to bed; there were one hundred and fifty beds in
a big dormitory. I looked around for the linen of the "Annual Report,"
and was again disappointed. The cots were furnished with horse
blankets.

The method of arousing the men in the early morning was rather unique.
A man with a stick--a heavy stick that reminded me of an Irish
flail--thumped the bare floor, and, to my astonishment, there was a
rush of this savage-looking, naked crowd to the door. As I knew no
reason for the excitement, I took my time.

I followed the men to the boiler-room, where, after calling out my
number, I got the bundle corresponding to it, and it looked like a
crow's nest. Everybody around me was hustling to get his clothes on,
boiled or unboiled; and again I was mystified as to the hurry. When I
arrived in the yard, I discovered the reason for this unusual activity
of my parishioners. The first men out in the yard had a cord of wood
each to saw, and it took twice as long to chop as it did to saw it.
Those who were last had to chop. I took my axe and began my task. Soon
the splinters were flying in all directions. The man next to me was
rather put out by this activity and said that if he wanted to work
like that he could do it outside.

"This ain't no place to work like that," he said; then he began to
expectorate over my block and annoy me in that way. I tried a few
words of gentle persuasion on him, but it made him worse. He
bespattered my h