One of these, the proprietor of a hole in the ground covered with an arch
of adobe bricks, had absolutely no bed-clothes except a couple of short
pieces of board--and very little other clothing. He dug a trench in the
bottom of what was by courtesy called his tent, sufficiently large to
contain his body below his neck. At nightfall he would crawl into this,
put his two bits of board so that they joined over his breast, and then
say: "Now, boys, cover me over;" whereupon his friends would cover him up
with dry sand from the sides of his domicile, in which he would slumber
quietly till morning, when he would rise, shake the sand from his
garments, and declare that he felt as well refreshed as if he had slept
on a spring mattress.

There has been much talk of earth baths of late years in scientific and
medical circles. I have been sorry that our Florence comrade if he still
lives--did not contribute the results of his experience.

The pinching cold cured me of my repugnance to wearing dead men's
clothes, or rather it made my nakedness so painful that I was glad to
cover it as best I could, and I began foraging among the corpses for
garments. For awhile my efforts to set myself up in the mortuary
second-hand clothing business were not all successful. I found that
dying men with good clothes were as carefully watched over by sets of
fellows who constituted themselves their residuary legatees as if they
were men of fortune dying in the midst of a circle of expectant nephews
and nieces. Before one was fairly cold his clothes would be appropriated
and divided, and I have seen many sharp fights between contesting
claimants.

I soon perceived that my best chance was to get up very early in the