What a page of life was revealed to me in that one day! What a work is there here for you to do, O women of this broad land, for your fellow woman, if you will address yourselves to it!
It required the exercise of a large share of physical courage to enter, and examine into the condition of the private apartments of my boarders.
I shrank away from the task in loathing. Low, narrow, confined, they were like the cages of wild animals.
The human odor of the occupants had penetrated the walls and made the air noisome. They were ventilated through the bars of the door, and an aperture of five or six inches in diameter in the inner wall of the cell; but being used for all purposes, they would have remained uncleansed had every care been taken.
I went to the door of one, and looked in. I shivered, dreaded to enter, turned away. I went along to another. It looked comparatively tidy. A little white cloth embroidered around the edge with gay-colored thread, was laid carefully over the box. I stood and looked in while I reasoned with myself to screw my courage to the sticking point.
I put my head within the door, the bugs were crawling along the walls, and the white-wash was spotted with marks of the violent death which had befallen many of them the night before. Again I shrank back in disgust. I called the white-wash woman to come with her brush and cover up the filthy sight, if she could not cleanse the dirt away.
If the sight is so revolting, what must it be to sleep among them, to be lodged with, and fed upon by them. I worked up my feelings of pity for the poor prisoners till my disgust was partially overcome.
The rats and mice can come in at the open doors, and there is no obstacle to such ingress of bed-bugs. Indeed such armies of them as I beheld could hardly have made their entrance in any other way. There they were in swarms, and had planted their colonies upon the solid brick and mortar, granite and iron, industriously, as the busy bee prepares her dormitory.
There is no ill to which the flesh is heir which has not been endured by the flesh. What has been endured by one flesh may be by another. In this case under modifying circumstances. Truly I can bear the sight of these vermin, and attend to their destruction with much less suffering than those poor women can be made their prey night after night.