Some of our company, whom we found in the prison, donated us the three sticks necessary to make tent-poles -- wonderful generosity when the preciousness of firewood is remembered.
We hoisted our blanket upon these; built a wall of mud bricks at one end, and in it a little fireplace to economize our scanty fuel to the last degree, and were once more at home, and much better off than most of our neighbors.
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.