As soon as this was ended, I heard a sound ringing through the whole length of the hall, “_Bed time gents_.” I thought it very strange, as the sun was yet an hour high. The attendant came to me and told me I must retire. I said, “this is earlier than I am used to retiring.” He made no reply, but led me into a large dormitory, at the end of the hall, containing five beds. One of these was assigned to me; the others were occupied by two Irishmen, and two Americans—one from Saratoga Springs, by the name of Burnham, the other from Hartford, N.Y., whose name I do not now recollect. Burnham and one of the Irishmen were very crazy. The Irishman would get out of bed, wrap himself in his sheet, walk the room, or stand and look out the window, keeping up, in the meantime, an incoherent jingle of words, mixing it with cursings on all Protestants, threatening to scald them to death with hot water; while Burnham would damn him and pour upon him the most bitter curses. I tried to appease them by flattery. So the night wore away, and in consequence of the novelty of the scene, being locked up in a room with four crazy men, our clothing left out in the hall, the quarreling of my room-mates, with now and then a wild yell from some other apartment, were not very favorable accompaniments to sleep or rest. Sleep entirely departed; I did not feel the least sensation of sleep during the whole night. No one, unless placed in the same condition with myself, can imagine with what pain and anguish I passed that first night of my captivity. I had already seen that patients were treated more like prisoners than like innocent men and invalids. I had been in bed about an hour, it being now about sundown, when one of the attendants, a gladiatorial looking German, entered the dormitory bearing in his hand a tray of medicine, arranged in rows in little white earthen mugs, each holding perhaps a half of a gill; he came to my bed side and held out one of these mugs to me, and said in broken English, “_trink tis_.” I had seen enough already to know that resistance or remonstrance was of no use, so drank the nostrum but a more nauseous dose I never took. In half an hour more another dose was presented of another kind, I knew not what. I began to think by this time that if a man could live through all this, he must be made of stern stuff.