The mutilation was intentional without doubt; his object having been to procure a claim for subsistence in the Infirmary for a time, and afterwards a passport to the poorhouse in Chester for life.

He had experienced the ills of poverty; had outlived his wife and children; and able to talk well and fluently, entertained us with homely but forcible narratives illustrating life in the lowest ranks of society.
When his wounds were healed he was reluctant to quit his comfortable quarters, and was actually driven from the establishment.
Other patients were brought in from time to time, and their wounds dressed.

Some were dismissed in a few days; others detained for months.
One intelligent young man, an English mechanic, was afflicted with a white swelling on his knee and suffered intolerable pain.

His sobs and groans through the night, which he could not suppress, excited my sympathy, but grated harshly on the nerves of my tall friend the corporal of dragoons, who expostulated with him seriously on the unreasonableness of his conduct, arguing, like the honest tar on board the brig Clarissa, that these loud indications of suffering, while they afforded no positive relief to the sufferer, disturbed the slumbers of those who were free from pain or bore it with becoming fortitude.
In the evening, after we had partaken of the regular meal, those of us who were able to move about, and to whom I have more particularly alluded, would gather around the hearth, a coal fire burning in the grate, and pass a couple of hours in conversation, in which agreeable occupations, having read much and already seen something of the world, I was able to bear a part.

There are few persons who are unable to converse, and converse well too, when their feelings are enlisted and they labor under no restraint; and very few persons so dull and stupid as to fail to receive or impart instruction from conversation with others.
Notwithstanding the rules of the infirmary to the contrary, the inmates of "number one" were not altogether deprived of the advantages and charms of female society.