MY FIRST SUPPER.
This examination over, we heard some one yell, “Go out into the hall.”
One of the patients kindly explained that this was an invitation to
supper. We late comers tried to keep together, so we entered the hall
and stood at the door where all the women had crowded. How we shivered
as we stood there! The windows were open and the draught went whizzing
through the hall. The patients looked blue with cold, and the minutes
stretched into a quarter of an hour. At last one of the nurses went
forward and unlocked a door, through which we all crowded to a landing
of the stairway. Here again came a long halt directly before an open
window.
“How very imprudent for the attendants to keep these thinly clad women
standing here in the cold,” said Miss Neville.
I looked at the poor crazy captives shivering, and added, emphatically,
“It’s horribly brutal.” While they stood there I thought I would not
relish supper that night. They looked so lost and hopeless. Some were
chattering nonsense to invisible persons, others were laughing or crying
aimlessly, and one old, gray-haired woman was nudging me, and, with
winks and sage noddings of the head and pitiful uplifting of the eyes
and hands, was assuring me that I must not mind the poor creatures, as
they were all mad. “Stop at the heater,” was then ordered, “and get in
line, two by two.” “Mary, get a companion.” “How many times must I tell
you to keep in line?” “Stand still,” and, as the orders were issued, a
shove and a push were administered, and often a slap on the ears. After
this third and final halt, we were marched into a long, narrow
dining-room, where a rush was made for the table.
The table reached the length of the room and was uncovered and
uninviting. Long benches without backs were put for the patients to sit
on, and over these they had to crawl in order to face the table. Placed
close together all along the table were large dressing-bowls filled with
a pinkish-looking stuff which the patients called tea. By each bowl was
laid a piece of bread, cut thick and buttered. A small saucer containing
five prunes accompanied the bread. One fat woman made a rush, and
jerking up several saucers from those around her emptied their contents
into her own saucer. Then while holding to her own bowl she lifted up
another and drained its contents at one gulp. This she did to a second
bowl in shorter time than it takes to tell it. Indeed, I was so amused
at her successful grabbings that when I looked at my own share the woman
opposite, without so much as by your leave, grabbed my bread and left me
without any.
Another patient, seeing this, kindly offered me hers, but I declined
with thanks and turned to the nurse and asked for more. As she flung a
thick piece down on the table she made some remark about the fact that
if I forgot where my home was I had not forgotten how to eat. I tried
the bread, but the butter was so horrible that one could not eat it. A
blue-eyed German girl on the opposite side of the table told me I could
have bread unbuttered if I wished, and that very few were able to eat
the butter. I turned my attention to the prunes and found that very few
of them would be sufficient. A patient near asked me to give them to
her. I did so. My bowl of tea was all that was left. I tasted, and one
taste was enough. It had no sugar, and it tasted as if it had been made
in copper. It was as weak as water. This was also transferred to a
hungrier patient, in spite of the protest of Miss Neville.
“You must force the food down,” she said, “else you will be sick, and
who knows but what, with these surroundings, you may go crazy. To have a
good brain the stomach must be cared for.”
“It is impossible for me to eat that stuff,” I replied, and, despite all
her urging, I ate nothing that night.
It did not require much time for the patients to consume all that was
eatable on the table, and then we got our orders to form in line in the
hall. When this was done the doors before us were unlocked and we were
ordered to proceed back to the sitting-room. Many of the patients
crowded near us, and I was again urged to play, both by them and by the
nurses. To please the patients I promised to play and Miss Tillie Mayard
was to sing. The first thing she asked me to play was “Rock-a-bye Baby,”
and I did so. She sang it beautifully.