After our bath and germicide, we were shown into a physician’s room, where two skilled physicians examined each man carefully. The perceptibly diseased man was given a specially marked night-robe and sent to an isolation ward, where he received free medical treatment. Those who were sound in health and body, were given a soft, clean night-robe and socks, and were taken in an elevator up to the wonderful dormitories. I was assigned to bed 310. There were over three hundred beds in this dormitory, accommodating more than three hundred men. They were of iron and painted white, and placed one above the other, that is, “double-deck,” and furnished with woven wire springs. The mattresses and pillows were of hair, and exceedingly comfortable. The linen was snowy white.
I had been in bed but a short time when an old man about seventy years of age took the bed next to mine. As he lay down in that public place I heard him breathe a little prayer, ever so softly and almost inaudibly, but I heard it—“Oh, God, I thank Thee!” And I said to myself, “That prayer ought to build a Municipal Emergency Home in every city of our land.” It came to me then what a great and wonderful social clearing-house it was or could be.
I did not sleep, I did not want to sleep, but lay there taking mental notes of the soul’s activity. The room was quiet and restful except for the restless man who silently walked the floor. As he came over near me I said to him, “Man, what is the matter?”
He came close to my bed and said, with a hot, flushed face, “I was not considered a subject for the isolation ward, but I am on the verge of delirium tremens. Feel my pulse, isn’t it jumping to beat the devil?”
I felt his pulse; it was jumping like a trip-hammer. But in the way of assurance I answered, “No, your pulse is normal.”
“Have we been up here four hours? They gave me some medicine downstairs to take every four hours, and if I was restless, I was to send down for it and take a dose.”
“No, I think we have been up here about two hours. You might send down for it, and if it is a good thing to take a full dose every four hours, you might take a half-dose in two hours.”
He hesitated for a moment, then agreed. I advised him to cut out the drink, and he went to the attendant for his medicine, received it, and slept like a babe until dawn. There is an attendant in each dormitory all night long, and he must report to the office by telephone every hour, not being allowed to sleep one moment on duty.
A few days later, after my visit was made public, I received many letters at my hotel, and among them was one from this man. He thanked me for my bit of advice to cut out the drink, and said that he had braced up and had not drunk a drop since that night, and that he had determined to be a man and fill a man’s place in the world. His resolution was not due to my advice at all. It was due to the influence of "God’s House," to New York’s Municipal Emergency Home, and had turned him back to his true inheritance.
At six o’clock in the morning we were called. Every man took the linen from his bed and put it in a pile where it was all gathered up and taken afterward to the laundries. Every day fresh and spotless linen is supplied.