These officers' rooms."
Lemuel followed his officer downstairs into a basement, where on
either side of a white-walled, brilliantly lighted, specklessly
clean corridor, there were numbers of cells, very clean, and
smelling of fresh whitewash. Each had a broad low shelf in it, and a
bench opposite, a little wider than a man's body. Lemuel suddenly
felt himself pushed into one of them, and then a railed door of iron
was locked upon him. He stood motionless in the breadth of light and
lines of shade which the gas-light cast upon him through the door,
and knew the gentlemen were looking at him as their guide talked.
"Well, fill up pretty well, Sunday nights. Most the arrests for
drunkenness. But all the arrests before seven o'clock sent to the
City Prison. Only keep them that come in afterwards."
One of the gentlemen looked into the cell opposite Lemuel's. "There
seems to be only one bunk. Do you ever put more into a cell?"
"Well, hardly ever, if they're men. Lot o' women brought in 'most
always ask to be locked up together for company."
"I don't see where they sleep," said the visitor. "Do they lie on
the floor?"
The officer laughed. "Sleep? _They_ don't want to sleep. What
they want to do is to set up all night, and talk it over."
Both of the visitors laughed.
"Some of the cells," resumed the officer, "have two bunks, but we
hardly ever put more than one in a cell.
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