text:  Men women and children--some half naked--some with the most loathsome rags for a covering--were lying sitting squatting and crouching in every part of the room--some sunk into a kind of doze--others on the contrary actively engaged in ridding their own and their children's heads of those inhabitants that seemed to constitute the sole wealth of this class of people--an occupation which they pursued with as great zeal and apparent interest as if it had been absolutely essential to the proper celebration of the festival-day