I was suspicious of the printed report of the Boston place.  It spoke of the men getting clean bedding, clean sheets and good meals; and experience was teaching me that that kind of catering for the tramp would swamp any institution.  Then, I knew something about the padding of charitable reports.  I did not care to offer any objection to the sending of a representative, but I determined to go myself; so, dressed in an old cotton shirt with collar attached, a ragged coat, a battered hat and with exactly the railroad fare in my pocket, I went to Boston.  I stopped a policeman on the street, told him I was homeless and hungry.  “Go to the Police Station,” he said, and knowing that at each Police Station tickets of admission were served, I presented myself to the Sergeant at the desk.

Furnished with a ticket, I went to No. 30 Hawkins Street, and there fell in line with a crowd of the same kind of people I was working with and for on the Bowery.  We had about an hour to wait.  When it came my turn for examination, I was rather disturbed to find the representative of the committee sitting beside the superintendent, investigating the tramps as they passed.  I knew he could not recognize me by my clothes, but I was not so certain about my voice, so I spoke in a low tone.

“Open your mouth,” the superintendent said.  “Where are you from?”

I kept my eyes on the ground and answered a little louder, “Ireland.”

“You are lying,” the superintendent said.  “Where are you from?”

“Ireland,” I answered again in the same tone.

Two kinds of checks lay on the table in front of him—­one pile green, the other red.  After answering the rest of the questions, I was given a red check and taken to a cell where a black man stripped me to the skin.

“Why did I get a red card while most of the others got a green card?” I asked.

“You’re lousy, boss, dat’s why.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Steam ’em.”  So he tied my clothes in a bundle and put them under a pressure of two hundred and fifty pounds of steam, the coloured man remarking as he stowed them away:  “What’s left of ’em when they come out, boss, aint gwine to do no harm.”  Then I was marched, sockless, with my shoes on and a metal check strung around my neck, to the bath where I was taken charge of by another coloured man.

“Here!” he said, as he pointed to an empty tub.  I bathed myself to his satisfaction and then looked for the clean towels of the “Annual Report,” but found them not.  Instead, there was a pile of towels already used—­towels made of crash—­and I was told to select the driest of them and dry myself.

“I was clean when I went into that tub,” I said to the black man—­“I am cleaner now; but if I dry myself with this sodden piece of crash, I will be dirtier than when I began.”  The black man proceeded to force me to do this and his attempt nearly ended the experiment, for I refused pointblank to do it.  “No, thank you,” I said, “I will walk up and down until I dry.”