I think I must have been a little “luny” just at that time, for I confess I was so afraid that some of us would over-eat of this rich dinner, that ten to one if we did not have half a dozen deaths in less than eight and forty hours afterwards; for this dinner was not confined to one or two halls, but was general. At all events, I was so afraid of making myself sick, that I was foolishly reserved in eating; I ate scarcely any of the turkey, and, by the way, I never liked turkey; I ate no pie, I thought it was too rich; I made my dinner of stuffing, sauce, bread, butter, and confectioneries. I was not sick, and I heard of no deaths on that account. The next Thanksgiving dinner, of 1864, was on the first hall. It did not make so deep an impression on my mind as the first, for it was not exactly like it, we had no turkey, nor butter for that dinner; but we did have a very good dinner, with a dessert and confectioneries to close up with. Another spring now came, the spring of 1865; I had made up my mind to go no more out to work; I had got above work by this time, though I was better able to work now than I was the year before; yet if I had been ordered out, I suppose I should have went, but very little would have been the work I should have done; as it was, however, I was not ordered out. I had quit the dining room six months before this, except to eat my meals, as the Supervisor had told me I need not work there longer unless I pleased; so I quit it, and took to sweeping the hall for exercise every morning after breakfast. There were a number of men on the hall who were excessive eaters, but not one chore could be got out of them, except to make their beds and sweep their rooms. The floor of the hall had to be scrubbed and washed every Monday morning; this gave us a little good exercise. The cleaning of house came on this spring, as usual; this is quite a business; the patients can have employment in this for a number of days. While this is going on no visitors are received. The windows are all taken out and washed, the mouldings and casings all scoured, the bedsteads all taken out of their rooms, the beds put into a pile and the bedsteads scoured and thoroughly saturated with kerosene, to prevent the vandals from eating up the patients. All the rooms are then whitewashed. The bedsteads are prepared with strips of sheet-iron instead of cords to lay the beds on; this, perhaps, is an improvement. One particular incident I cannot pass over without recording. Some time in the course of the fall or winter of 1864-5—I cannot be particular here as to the exact time—Dr. Gray came on the hall accompanied by a man in regimentals; a dark, curly black-haired man, rather slim, but carrying a decided look and apparently a firm will, and, as I inspected him from a distance, he looked to me, as though he could hew a man in pieces with all the _sang froid_ of a Roman gladiator.