“Can’t I get my socks to-night? I always wash them before I go to bed.”
“No. It’s against the law of the state. And you would dirty up these bowls. I have just scrubbed them out.”
“I will wash them out afterward.”
“I haven’t time to wait. I must get up at four-thirty.”
“But why fumigate my clean underwear, and give me dirty pajamas?”
The Frog was getting flabbergasted. “I tell you it’s the law of New Jersey. You are getting awful fancy. If I had had my way, you would never have been let in here.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” I said to myself, and put on the pajamas.
This insanitary director showed me my bed. It was in a long low room with all the windows closed, where half a score were asleep. The sheets had never, never, never been washed. Why was it that in a mission so shiny in its reading room, and so devout in its chapel, so melodramatic with its clean workman-boss, in the daytime, these things were so?
The lights went out. I kicked off the pajamas and slept. I awoke at midnight and reflected on all these matters. I quoted another scripture to myself: “I was naked, and ye clothed me.”