t
Buffalo, New York, we got separated, thence I went to New York city alone,
where I continued drinking until I had no money. I then commenced to pawn
my clothes--first, my vest; second, a pair of new boots, worth fourteen
dollars; I got a quart of whisky, an old and worn-out pair of shoes, and
ten cents in money, for my boots. I drank up the whisky, and traded off my
overcoat. It was worth sixty dollars. I realized about five cents on the
dollar, and all the horrors of all hells ever heard of, for I was attacked
with the delirium tremens. By some means, of which I am entirely ignorant,
I got across the river, into Jersey City, and was there arrested and lodged
in the calaboose, in which I remained from Saturday until the following
Monday. I suffered more in the forty-eight hours embraced in that time
than I ever before or since suffered in the same length of time. I do not
know the hour, but it was getting dark on that Saturday evening, when I got
deathly sick, and commenced vomiting. I continued vomiting until Monday.
Nothing that I swallowed would remain on my stomach. About eight o'clock
Saturday evening the authorities, the police officers, put a large number
of men and boys, who were arrested for being drunk, in the room in which
I was confined. By midnight there were fourteen of us in a small,
poorly-ventilated, dirty room. Planks extended around the room on three
sides, and on these those who could get a place lay down. Among the number
of "drunks" imprisoned with me were some of the worst and largest roughs of
Jersey City, and these inhuman wretches, in the absence of the police,
threatened; to take my life if I vomited again. In the room adjoining ours
a madman was confined, and I don't think he ceased kicking and screaming a
moment from Saturday night until Monday. In the room just across the narrow
hall, fronting ours, was an insane woman, who swore she had two souls, one
of which was in hell! She, too, kept up an incessant, piteous wailing,
begging some one, ever and anon, with piercing screams, to bring back her
lost soul! Indianapolis is more civilized than Jersey City in respect to
her prisons, but not with respect to her police. And I am pretty sure that,
as managed by its present superintendent, the unfortunate insane are in no
other State cared for as they are in the Indiana asylum, and in no other
State is the appropriation for running such a noble institution so beggarly
as in ours. I have visited othe