nearly the whole place to myself, summer nights, before they got to
passin' these laws against tramps in the country, and lockin' 'em up
when they ketched 'em. That drives 'em into the city summers, now;
because they're always sure of a night's rest and a day's board here
if they ask for it. But winter's the time. You'll see all these cots
full, then. They let on the steam-heat, and it's comfortable; and
it's always airy and healthy." The vast room was, in fact, perfectly
ventilated, and the poor who housed themselves that night, and many
well-to-do sojourners in hotels, had reason to envy the vagrants
their free lodging.

The mate now got under his quilt, and turned his face toward Lemuel,
with one hand under his cheek. "They don't let _every_body into
this room, 's I was tellin' ye. This room is for the big-bugs, you
know. Sometimes a drunk will get in, though, in spite of everything.
Why, I've seen a drunk at the station-house, when I've been gettin'
my order for a bed, stiffen up so 't the captain himself thought he
was sober; and then I've followed him round here, wobblin' and
corkscrewin' all over the sidewalk; and then I've seen him stiffen
up in the office again, and go through his bath like a little man,
and get into bed as drunk as a fish; and may be wake up in the night
with the man with the poker after him, and make things hum. Well,
sir, one night there was a drunk in here that thought the man with
the poker was after him, and he just up and jumped out of this
window behind you--three stories from the ground."

Lemuel could not help lifting himself in bed to look at it. "Did it
kill him?" he asked. "Kill him? _No_! You can't kill a _drunk_. One
night there was a drunk got loose, here, and he run downstairs into
the wood-yard, and he got hold of an axe down there, and it took five