ce, snatched every one of our
filthy, lousy rags off in the twinkling of an eye, and flung them over
the railing to the ground, where a man loaded them into a wagon with a
pitchfork.

With them went our faithful little black can, our hoop-iron spoon, and
our chessboard and men.

Thus entirely denuded, each boy was given a shove which sent him into a
little room, where a barber pressed him down upon a stool, and almost
before he understood what was being done, had his hair and beard cut off
as close as shears would do it. Another tap on the back sent the shorn
lamb into a room furnished with great tubs of water and with about six
inches of soap suds on the zinc-covered floor.

In another minute two men with sponges had removed every trace of prison
grime from his body, and passed him on to two more men, who wiped him
dry, and moved him on to where a man handed him a new shirt, a pair of
drawers, pair of socks, pair of pantaloons, pair of slippers, and a
hospital gown, and motioned him to go on into the large room, and array
himself in his new garments. Like everything else about the Hospital
this performance was reduced to a perfect system. Not a word was spoken
by anybody, not a moment's time lost, and it seemed to me that it was not
ten minutes after I marched up on the balcony, covered with dirt, rags,
vermin, and a matted shock of hair, until I marched out of the room,
clean and well clothed. Now I began to feel as if I was really a man
again.

The next thing done was to register our names, rank, regiment, when and
where captured, when and where released. After this we were shown to our
rooms. And such rooms as they were. All the old maids in the country
could not have improved their spick-span neatness. The floors were as
white as pine plank could be scoured; the sheets and bedding as clean as
cotton and linen and woolen could be washed. Nothing in any home in the
land was any more daintily, wholesomely, unqualifiedly clean than were
these little chambers, each containing two beds, one for each man
assigned to their occupancy.

Andrews doubted if we could stand all this radical change in our habits.
He feared that it was rushing things too fast. We might have had our
hair cut one week, and taken a bath all over a week later, and so
progress down to sleeping between white sheets in the course of six
months, but to do it all in one day seemed like tempting fate.

Every turn showed us some new feature