In another minute two men with sponges had removed every trace of prison grime from his body, and passed him on to two more men, who wiped him dry, and moved him on to where a man handed him a new shirt, a pair of drawers, pair of socks, pair of pantaloons, pair of slippers, and a hospital gown, and motioned him to go on into the large room, and array himself in his new garments.  Like everything else about the Hospital this performance was reduced to a perfect system.  Not a word was spoken by anybody, not a moment’s time lost, and it seemed to me that it was not ten minutes after I marched up on the balcony, covered with dirt, rags, vermin, and a matted shock of hair, until I marched out of the room, clean and well clothed.  Now I began to feel as if I was really a man again.

The next thing done was to register our names, rank, regiment, when and where captured, when and where released.  After this we were shown to our rooms.  And such rooms as they were.  All the old maids in the country could not have improved their spick-span neatness.  The floors were as white as pine plank could be scoured; the sheets and bedding as clean as cotton and linen and woolen could be washed.  Nothing in any home in the land was any more daintily, wholesomely, unqualifiedly clean than were these little chambers, each containing two beds, one for each man assigned to their occupancy.

Andrews doubted if we could stand all this radical change in our habits.  He feared that it was rushing things too fast.  We might have had our hair cut one week, and taken a bath all over a week later, and so progress down to sleeping between white sheets in the course of six months, but to do it all in one day seemed like tempting fate.

Every turn showed us some new feature of the marvelous order of this wonderful institution.  Shortly after we were sent to our rooms, a Surgeon entered with a Clerk.  After answering the usual questions as to name, rank, company and regiment, the Surgeon examined our tongues, eyes, limbs and general appearance, and communicated his conclusions to the Clerk, who filled out a blank card.  This card was stuck into a little tin holder at the head of my bed.  Andrews’s card was the same, except the name.  The Surgeon was followed by a Sergeant, who was Chief of the Dining-Room, and the Clerk, who made a minute of the diet ordered for us, and moved off.  Andrews and I immediately became very solicitous to know what species of diet No. 1 was.  After the seasickness left us our appetites became as ravenous as a buzz-saw, and unless Diet No. 1 was more than No. 1 in name, it would not fill the bill.  We had not long to remain in suspense, for soon another non-commissioned officer passed through at the head of a train of attendants, bearing trays.  Consulting the list in his hand, he said to one of his followers, “Two No. 1’s,” and that satellite set down two large plates, upon each of which were a cup of coffee, a shred of meat, two boiled eggs and a couple of rolls.