A few days after I visited the same hospital and talked with the surgeon in charge of it. He told me that the sick refugees seemed to be utterly destitute of heart and hope, and that it was quite impossible to get such dejected men upon their feet again. While he spoke the clock struck twelve. “Before nine o’clock,” he said, “I visited every man in the hospital and carefully noted his condition. I did not find one desperately ill, nor did I see any evidence of approaching death. But since that time three of them have died.” “And how,” I asked, “do you account for their deaths?” He replied, “They die simply because they have not enough ambition to breathe.” But of course they were not all alike. Their differences were interesting and suggestive. A gentleman told me that a Baptist woman from Mississippi wished to see me. I found her on Third Street, in the second story of a tumble-down brick house. She was not an object of charity. She had brought along with her enough money and household stuff to meet all of her bodily wants. But the things in her room seemed to be in inextricable confusion. She apparently had a genius for disorder. Her apartment was grimy, filthy, malodorous; like the king’s “offence” in “Hamlet,” it was rank and smelled to heaven. She was of medium height, fat, had brown, frowzy hair, and dull, leaden eyes, under dust-colored eyebrows. Her cheeks were sallow and flabby. Around her obesity hung a faded, dirty, calico gown, that did not quite reach her ankles. Her bare feet were conspicuous, thrust into a pair of coarse slippers, with worn-down, run-over heels. Hanging to her belt by her side was a cow’s horn, in which was a stick, frayed at one end, making a rude brush. She offered me a chair, and having seated herself by a rusty, rickety cooking-stove, our conversation began. “Ah ye,” she said, “the Babtis’ minister?” I told her who I was. She now took the stick from the horn at her side, put the brush end of it into her mouth and sucked it for a moment, and then thrusting it once more into the horn, returned it, laden with snuff, to her mouth again. I had heard of snuff-dippers, but this was the first one that I had ever seen. Apparently refreshed by her dip, she said that she was a member of a “Babtis’” church down in “Mississipp,” and wished to “jine” a “Babtis’” church here in St. Louis. What could I say to such a proposal? I saw at a glance that unless she was thoroughly converted from her present habits and mode of life my church would not be congenial to her; so I fell back upon a stratagem, by which I might satisfy her without denying her request, which request, in itself, was of course altogether creditable to her. I fled for refuge to the deep prejudice of the poor whites against negroes. I commended her, I could not do otherwise, for her determination to identify herself with her own denomination in our city, but told her that a negro belonged to my church, and that I had never heard any one in the church