hat
he would send me to a hospital where I could receive proper treatment
and care. I made up a little bundle of necessary underwear, and in an
hour a driver appeared at the door; I was lifted into the cart and off
we went through the muddy streets to the outskirts of the city, where I
was duly delivered at a large building which I supposed to be the
hospital. It was near evening, and I was brought into a large
dining-room, with a hundred others or more, served with supper, corn
mush and molasses water, after which I was shown to a bed in a large
room among many others. I suffered with fever, and for the first time in
my life with loneliness. Exhausted nature finally took out its due, and
I slept soundly until awakened in the morning by a loud sound of a gong.
As soon as dressed I walked out in the yard, or lawn, back of the
building. On one side was a high plank fence, behind which I heard some
strange sounds. I found a knot-hole, and, peeping through this, I
observed another lawn, on which were many people. They were strange
looking; I never saw any like them before. Some were swinging, some
dancing, others shouting, singing and weeping and behaving in a most
out-of-the-way manner. I wondered and wondered, and finally it dawned
upon me that it must be a lunatic asylum. It was, in fact, as I since
learned, the county poor farm, where one part was used for the lunatics
and the other for paupers like myself. Has it come to this? I asked
myself; is this the goal of all my ambition and hopes? Going back to the
room, where I had slept, I stealthily took my little bundle, slipped out
through a side door into a back yard, found a gate open and was soon in
the street. I started on a run with all the power in me, as if pursued
by all the furies of paupers and lunatics, never stopping until I was
near the old boarding house, where I was taken in exhausted and in deep
despair. I would have killed the landlord for deceiving me if I had been
able to do so. One good thing resulted from the sad experience of that
day: the mental shock on discovering where I was, cured me for the time
being of the ague.

The next day my friend returned from Hamburg, where he could no longer
get any employment on account of his blistered hands, and poor health in
general. We now put our wise heads together and agreed that we had
already had enough of the West for the time being. Having plenty of good
clothes, bedding, revolvers and other knick-knacks,