The food, the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the--the sheer animalness of it! "For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the laundry.
And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth--a sizable silver spoon steward--imagine me, my old sore bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth's delights, my old palate ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger days--as I say, steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and indigestibility of our poor fare.

I cadged tobacco, poor cheap tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of dissolution.

Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers' pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he left, then announced the news.
"Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half.

Don't you see ?--I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw.

And I sawed out!" His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph.