I had ample opportunity to study the subject personally while a guest at the prison table, and to compare my impressions with those of my fellow prisoners, as well as to enlarge them by conferences with persons employed in the kitchen and commissary department. Men who had served in other prisons--and their combined experiences covered a great many--were unanimous and emphatic in declaring that the table at Atlanta was the worst they had ever known, not only as to scantness of supply, but as to the unwholesomeness or positively poisonous quality of the food furnished. But let me tell a little of what I saw and knew myself. When the change was made from long tables and benches to tables seating eight and chairs, it was announced that table cloths would also be supplied, and napkins. That was two or three years ago, but table cloths have not yet appeared, and the eaters still wipe their mouths on the backs of their hands in the good old way. Pepper and salt were on the table, and a bottle of something that looked like beer and was supposed to be vinegar, but was sampled only by the more reckless or inexperienced convicts. Sugar was not provided except on rare occasions, and to "diet" prisoners--men who were restricted to bread and milk and oatmeal. Some beverage that dishonored the name of tea was served about once a fortnight; a brown, semi-transparent rinsing of dirty kettles, sugarless, thin and bitter, called coffee, came every day; but if your stomach rejected either of these, you could fill up on plain water. The latter, however, like the "diet" milk and oatmeal and the drinkables generally, had to be taken out of metal mugs covered with white enamel, minute particles of which chipped off and mingled with what you drank. These particles were hard and sharp, like pure glass, and they cut and lodged in the intestines, causing, with other things, an excessive predisposition to appendicitis--a frequent disease in the penitentiary. This was also promoted by the bread, which was made of the poorest grade of white flour, without nourishing quality, the value per loaf being about two cents; the flour was ground in steel mills, and microscopic particles of steel were rubbed off into it--this fact I had from a physician who had examined it. The flour, when received at the prison, was frequently full of weevils, most of which but not all were sifted out before it was used. The bread was tasteless and light; it was baked in large quantities, and what was not consumed by the prisoners was sold outside.