“Put all your clothes in the bags,” said the guard.  “It’s no good trying to smuggle anything in.  You’ve got to line up naked for inspection.  Men for thirty days or less keep their shoes and suspenders.  Men for more than thirty days keep nothing.”

This announcement was received with consternation.  How could naked men smuggle anything past an inspection?  Only my pal and I were safe.  But it was right here that the convict barbers got in their work.  They passed among the poor newcomers, kindly volunteering to take charge of their precious little belongings, and promising to return them later in the day.  Those barbers were philanthropists—­to hear them talk.  As in the case of Fra Lippo Lippi, never was there such prompt disemburdening.  Matches, tobacco, rice-paper, pipes, knives, money, everything, flowed into the capacious shirts of the barbers.  They fairly bulged with the spoil, and the guards made believe not to see.  To cut the story short, nothing was ever returned.  The barbers never had any intention of returning what they had taken.  They considered it legitimately theirs.  It was the barber-shop graft.  There were many grafts in that prison, as I was to learn; and I, too, was destined to become a grafter—­thanks to my new pal.

There were several chairs, and the barbers worked rapidly.  The quickest shaves and hair-cuts I have ever seen were given in that shop.  The men lathered themselves, and the barbers shaved them at the rate of a minute to a man.  A hair-cut took a trifle longer.  In three minutes the down of eighteen was scraped from my face, and my head was as smooth as a billiard-ball just sprouting a crop of bristles.  Beards, mustaches, like our clothes and everything, came off.  Take my word for it, we were a villainous-looking gang when they got through with us.  I had not realized before how really altogether bad we were.

Then came the line-up, forty or fifty of us, naked as Kipling’s heroes who stormed Lungtungpen.  To search us was easy.  There were only our shoes and ourselves.  Two or three rash spirits, who had doubted the barbers, had the goods found on them—­which goods, namely, tobacco, pipes, matches, and small change, were quickly confiscated.  This over, our new clothes were brought to us—­stout prison shirts, and coats and trousers conspicuously striped.  I had always lingered under the impression that the convict stripes were put on a man only after he had been convicted of a felony.  I lingered no longer, but put on the insignia of shame and got my first taste of marching the lock-step.

In single file, close together, each man’s hands on the shoulders of the man in front, we marched on into another large hall.  Here we were ranged up against the wall in a long line and ordered to strip our left arms.  A youth, a medical student who was getting in his practice on cattle such as we, came down the line.  He vaccinated just about four times as rapidly as the barbers shaved.  With a final caution to avoid rubbing our arms against anything, and to let the blood dry so as to form the scab, we were led away to our cells.  Here my pal and I parted, but not before he had time to whisper to me, “Suck it out.”