directions.




VIII.


Lemuel entered a lighted doorway from a bricked courtyard, and found
himself with twenty or thirty houseless comrades in a large, square
room, with benching against the wall for them to sit on. They were
all silent and quelled-looking, except a young fellow whom Lemuel
sat down beside, and who, ascertaining that he was a new-comer,
seemed disposed to do the honours of the place. He was not daunted
by the reserve native to Lemuel, or by that distrust of strangers
which experience had so soon taught him. He addressed him promptly
as mate, and told him that the high, narrow, three-sided tabling in
the middle of the room was where they would get their breakfast, if
they lived.

"And I guess I shall live," he said. "I notice I 'most always live
till breakfast-time, whatever else I do, or I don't do; but
sometimes it don't seem as if I _could_ saw my way through that
quarter of a cord of wood." At a glance of inquiry which Lemuel
could not forbear, he continued: "What I mean by a quarter of a cord
of wood is that they let you exercise that much free in the morning,
before they give you your breakfast: it's the doctor's orders. This
used to be a school-house, but it's in better business now. They got
a kitchen under here, that beats the Parker House; you'll smell it
pretty soon. No whacking on the knuckles here any more. All serene,