Ameliorations of this life might be secured (for money); recreations were possible, though they were mostly vicious, and amusements even might be surreptitiously enjoyed or winked at by the authorities. Human nature is so constituted that it becomes habituated to anything, and the inmates of the _ostrog_ learned to endure its worst evils, and, except for the pain of personal chastisement or the acute sufferings engendered by disease, they spent their weary, unlovely days with dogged, callous indifference. At daybreak every morning a drum beaten near the principal entrance roused all from the last refreshing sleep obtained in the small hours when mosquitoes and more loathsome insects had desisted from their attacks. The convicts rose from their plank beds to the music of clanking leg irons, their inseparable companions, and, trembling with cold as the icy air rushed in through the unbarred open gates, gathered around the water pails, took water into their mouths and washed their faces with their hands. These pails had been filled the night before by appointed orderlies. Personal cleanliness is not entirely neglected by the peasant class in Russia, nor even by convicts, and the periodical vapour bath was greatly appreciated. The orderlies, like the cooks, were chosen by the convicts themselves from among their numbers; they did not work with the rest, but, as elsewhere, attended to the washing of the floors, the condition of camp bedsteads, and the provision of water for ablutions and for drinking. After roll-call, the entire number proceeded to the kitchen, where the first meal of the day was eaten in common. The convicts, in their sheepskin overcoats, received their ration of black bread in their parti-coloured, round, peakless caps, from the cooks who had cut up the loaves for them with the “rascal,” the prison knife, which was the only weapon permitted in the place. As many as could find room, sat grouped around the tables and laughed noisily; some soaked pieces of bread in the cups of sour tea, _kvas_, in front of them; others drank the tea they were permitted to provide for themselves. This privilege was extended to food generally, and the convicts who could pay for it bought their own, which was cooked in the public kitchen and substituted for the ordinary prison fare. Osip, one of the prison cooks, or “cook maids” as they were commonly called, prepared the food, which was purchased in the town market by the old soldiers who were attached to the prison to watch over the general discipline and good order of the place. They were good-natured veterans, always ready to run messages and purvey to the needs of the prisoners.