The room where I found myself was filled with double board bunks, the upper bunks coming so near the ceiling, or floor of the saloon above, that a man could just crawl into them. Some of these poor objects were making an attempt to get a bath from a shower in a corner, but even if they succeeded in getting this excuse for a bath, they were obliged to crawl back into their filthy clothes or onto the still more filthy bunks. Some men, under the sidewalk, I saw spread out old newspapers on the boards, and lie down unwashed and unfed in their wretchedness. Slipping out as quickly as possible, unnoticed, I reached the street. The night air and open street was as a pleasant dream which follows the waking hours of one who suffers. At the Salvation Army the attendant told me he was not authorized to give anything away, and all that was left me was the old city prison. Threading up an alley, I found myself at the Old Bastile of San Francisco. The keeper at the door said he would allow me to lie down in the cell house, but first he must be assured I had neither knife, gun, or razor upon me. Satisfied I was not an escaped lunatic, or a desperado with an arsenal concealed about me, I was turned over to the turnkey, who led me to the chamber of horrors, a long room about sixty by thirty feet. In the center was a row of large cells, or "drunk tanks," in which were being thrown the unfortunates of both sexes in all degrees of insanity, from the raving delirium tremens to the semi-idiots, the fighting drunks, the laughing drunks, the sick drunks and the sleeping drunks. The jailer pointing to a pile of blankets, said, "Take one of those and find a place to spread it down." The lodgers were allowed to lie down on the stone floor in the narrow passage which surrounded this row of cells. The passage was so narrow that they had to lie in single file, which left just space enough to walk between them and the cells. I seized a blanket; there seemed to be just one space left. If you have ever been in an insane asylum, or in a cell house of your States prison, where some unusual sound startles and terrifies the inmates, you can frame some idea of what it means to sleep around the "drunk tanks" in the city prison. Women with disarranged clothing, and disheveled hair, were pleading and babbling, and begging to be released, declaring they could not breathe, and in piercing tones crying that they were suffocating. Strange as it may seem, these women this night were more or less refined in voice and language, and the most vile and vulgar epithets hurled at them by the men derelicts in the adjoining cells met with no response. Men raved and fought, and cursed and groaned. The jailer was kept busy separating them. As he was forcing an aggressive prisoner from one cell to another, the toe of the unfortunate caught me in the side, which left me a sore and stinging remembrance of that awful night for several days.