considerably surprised to find out my mistake.

Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary accommodation
of all comers whose crimes were trifling. Among us they were two
Americans, two "Greasers" (Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four
Irishmen, a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated from us by a
grating, two women), all drunk, and all more or less noisy; and as night
fell and advanced, they grew more and more discontented and disorderly,
occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through them at the
slowly pacing officer, and cursing him with all their hearts. The two
women were nearly middle-aged, and they had only had enough liquor to
stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently they would fondle and
kiss each other for some minutes, and then fall to fighting and keep it
up till they were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and
tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile and pant and swear. While
they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as "ladies," but
while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest name they could think
of--and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity
to it. In their last fight, which was toward midnight, one of them bit
off the other's finger, and then the officer interfered and put the
"Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it because the woman that
did it laid it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because, as
she said afterward, she "wanted another crack at the huzzy when her
finger quit hurting," and so she did not want her removed. By this time
those two women had mutilated each other's clothes to that extent that
there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness. I found that one
of these creatures had spent nine years in the county jail, and that the
other one had spent about four or five years in the same place. They had
done it from choice. As soon as they were discharged from captivity they
would go straight and get drunk, and then steal some trifling thing while