At seven o'clock on the next morning I was one of a gang of twenty laborers who were digging a sewer-ditch. The ditch had passed the farther edge of a meadow, and must cut its way through the field to the Asylum buildings, two hundred yards beyond. Its course was marked by a straight cut through the sod which was to furnish us a guide. Some of the men took their former places in unfinished portions of the work, and the rest of us fell apart, leaving intervals of about three yards from man to man. With the cut as a guide, and with the single instruction to keep the ditch two feet wide, we began to wield our picks and shovels. A thick, unmoving fog lay damp upon the meadow, already saturated with dew. The sun-rays, gathering penetrating power as they pierced the fog, were soon producing the effect of prickly heat. This atmosphere, surcharged with moisture and lifeless in its sluggish weight, yet quick with stinging heat, was a medium in which the actual work done was out of proportion to its cost in potential energy. In the forceful Irishism of one of the laborers: "It was a muggy morning, and a man must do his work twice over to get it done." By dint of strenuous industry and careful imitation of the methods of the other men, I managed to keep pace with them. I saw from the first that the work would be hard; and in point of severity it proved all that I expected, and more. To ply a pick and urge a shovel for five continuous hours calls for endurance. Down sweeps your pick with a mighty stroke upon what appears yielding, presentable earth, only to come into contact with a rock concealed just below the surface, a contact which sends a violent jar through all your frame, causing vibrations which end in the sensation of an electric shock at your finger-tips. A few repetitions of this experience are distinctly disheartening in effect. Besides, the sun has cleared the fog, and is shining full upon us through the still air. The trench is well below the surface, now, and we work with the sun beating on our aching backs, and our heads buried in the ditch, where we breathed the hot air heavy with the smell of fresh soil, and the sweat drips from our faces upon the damp clay. By nine o'clock what strength and courage I have left seem oozing from every pore. The demoralization is complete, and I know that only "the shame of open shame" holds me to my work. I dig mechanically on through another sluggish hour of torment; and then I come to, and find myself breathing deeply, with long regular breaths, in the miracle of "second wind," with fresh energy flowing like a stream of new life through my body.