"Steam 'em." So he tied my clothes in a bundle and put them under a
pressure of two hundred and fifty pounds of steam, the coloured man
remarking as he stowed them away: "What's left of 'em when they come
out, boss, 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