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The place seemed so strange and empty to me! How they all missed Mr. and Mrs. Davis; for they had done a world of good and scattered sunshine wherever they went. One of my choicest possessions is a tie given me by Mr. Davis for Christmas. I wear it only once a year, on the eleventh day of February, in memory of the good man who gave it to me.

Mr. Davis was buried in Wyuka cemetery. Upon his grave grows the little rose tree that be loved so much in life, transferred from the lawn at Lancaster, a tribute from Warden Melick to the memory of his departed friend.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE "CONVICT PHYSICIAN"

I wish to tell my reader a little more about the "Convict Physician." Thirteen years ago Mr. Dinsmore came to the prison and was put to work in the prison broom shop. Men at the prison are assigned to what position they are best adapted to fill, and it did not take long for the officials to find out that he was too valuable a man to make brooms. If a convict is a bookkeeper on the outside and a bookkeeper is needed, he stands a far better show to get a position as bookkeeper than does one who follows the trade of stove moulder (sic); likewise, is a stove moulder (sic) needed the chances are that the warden would not draw him from the ranks of those keeping books for a living. At no time is a prisoner assigned to a certain position in order to satisfy the wishes of a gang of gossipers.

When a hospital steward was needed, the

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choice of the administration fell upon Mr. Dinsmore, he being the best educated man behind the walls. Judge Frost in his article says that he has a letter from the state board of health stating that Dinsmore has no license to practice medicine and is not even a registered pharmacist, all of which is true. Likewise it is correct that if he went to practise (sic) medicine on the outside that he would be arrested. Although without a license he is far better qualified to practise (sic) medicine than many a quack in Lincoln or throughout the country who managed to to squeeze through college, or who in some mysterious way obtained a diploma. The fact of the matter is that for years the great state has not paid the prison doctor a salary befitting a fourth-class horse doctor, nevertheless once in a while the prison has had a most efficient physician. The salary paid was only seventy-five dollars per month; and no doctor, who is a doctor, can afford to give his entire time to the prison for that little

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amount. He used to come to the prison for two hours every other day only; in other words, he put in six or seven hours each week. Since then the doctor's salary has been increased to one hundred dollars per month, and he now stays at the prison from eight o'clock in the morning until four in the afternoon. Even this arrangement is not as it ought to be. The state should have a first-class physician, should pay him a decent salary and furnish him with apartments at the prison so that he could be there day and night. Never does a week pass by at the prison but what somebody is injured or wounded in the factories. At the time of the shirt factory boys would often willfully injure their fingers that they may be excused for a day or two from that inferno. Considering that there are about four hundred inhabitants to look after, my reader can imagine that the hospital steward, who acts as doctor in the absence of the real doctor, is kept busy; and from his