We first carted it to the barn-yard, where we washed it by playing water over it with a hose, and then to the kitchen wing, where we chopped it into smaller pieces and threw these into openings which communicated with the large refrigerators inside. Again and again was this process repeated, until an adequate supply had been furnished, and then there remained before six o'clock time enough to cart to the pigs their evening meal from the kitchen. With slight changes in detail, this remained the order of our work through the few days of my stay. I held the job long enough to find myself ensconced at the Asylum, and then I told the foreman that I wished to go. He looked at me in some surprise, and began to argue the point. "You'd better stay by your job," he said. "It is not the best work, but we'll find better for you before long." I thanked him heartily, and told him I was interested to learn that, but that I felt obliged to go. He shook hands with me, and cordially wished me luck, and told me to apply to him for work if I happened again in those parts, and added that I could get my wages by calling at the office on the next afternoon, which was the regular pay-day. A free day was highly useful now, for my clothes and boots were seriously in need of repair. The pack contained the means of much mending, and by dinner-time my coat and trousers were patched, and my stockings were stoutly darned. But the boots were beyond me. Already they had cost me dear, for a dollar, the earnings of four days as a porter, had gone for a pair of new soles, and now another outlay, enormous in its relation to my means, was an imperative necessity. I had made an appointment with a cobbler for an early hour in the afternoon, precisely as one would with a dentist; for while he was at work on my only pair of boots, I had to sit by in my stocking feet. Secretly I welcomed the necessity, in spite of its calamitous cost. I could take a book with me, and read with a clear conscience. The cobbler was smoking his after-dinner cigar when I entered his shop. He was little inclined to talk; and when he had finished his smoke he picked up a boot, and bent over it with an air of absorption. I was soon lost in my book.