When the superintendent of that department was called into counsel, my use of English rather surprised him, and he let it go at that.  Then we were marched upstairs to bed; there were one hundred and fifty beds in a big dormitory.  I looked around for the linen of the “Annual Report,” and was again disappointed.  The cots were furnished with horse blankets.

The method of arousing the men in the early morning was rather unique.  A man with a stick—­a heavy stick that reminded me of an Irish flail—­thumped the bare floor, and, to my astonishment, there was a rush of this savage-looking, naked crowd to the door.  As I knew no reason for the excitement, I took my time.

I followed the men to the boiler-room, where, after calling out my number, I got the bundle corresponding to it, and it looked like a crow’s nest.  Everybody around me was hustling to get his clothes on, boiled or unboiled; and again I was mystified as to the hurry.  When I arrived in the yard, I discovered the reason for this unusual activity of my parishioners.  The first men out in the yard had a cord of wood each to saw, and it took twice as long to chop as it did to saw it.  Those who were last had to chop.  I took my axe and began my task.  Soon the splinters were flying in all directions.  The man next to me was rather put out by this activity and said that if he wanted to work like that he could do it outside.

“This ain’t no place to work like that,” he said; then he began to expectorate over my block and annoy me in that way.  I tried a few words of gentle persuasion on him, but it made him worse.  He bespattered my hands and the axe handle, and I took him by the neck and ran him to the other end of the yard and dumped him in a corner.  Any kind of a fuss in that yard had usually a very serious ending; but this had not, for the yard superintendent took my part.

I think it was about eleven o’clock in the forenoon when I finished my wood, and went in to get breakfast, which consisted of a bowl of gruel and two hard biscuits.  One of these biscuits I kept hanging in my study for two years.  After breakfast I marched into the office, and said to the superintendent: 

“Brother, I want to ask you a few questions which belong to a domain—­that mysterious domain that lies between the facts and your ‘Annual Report.’”

“Are you a reporter?” was his first question.

Assuring him that I was not, I asked him the necessary questions, and, furnished with some real information, I returned to the Wall Street Conference.

I think John H. Finley of the City College was the representative, and he rendered his report.  Then I stood up and told of my experience which differed vitally from the re-hash of the “Annual Report.”  The facts, as I found them, were all in favour of such an institution.  A man would have to be mighty hard up to go to the Boston municipal lodging house; and that is exactly what was needed.  The necessity for padding the “Annual Report” I could never find out.