334             WISCONSIN      LEGISLATIVE      MANUAL.

such cases to either of the Managers, as it is not fit that meritorious disabled
soldiers of the Nation should be supported by private or public charity.
Soldiers are especially informed that the Asylums are neither hospitals nor
alms-houses, but homes, where subsistence, care, education, religious instruce
tion and employment are provided for disabled soldiers, by the Congress of
the United States, to be paid for from the forfeitures and fines of deserters
from the army. The provision is not a charity. It is a contribution by the
bounty-jumpers and bad soldiers to the brave and deseriung, and is their
right.
  On being admitted to the Asylum, the soldier is required to deposit his
pen-
sion and other papers with the Treasurer, who collects his pension and pays
it
over to the soldier or his family, conformably to the rules and by-laws of
the
Institution.
  The Asylum is built on a knoll in the center of a tract of four hundred
and
twenty-five acres, lying on the line of the Mlilwaukee and St. Paul Railway,
less than two miles west of the city limits, is one of the finest buildings
in the
State, and contains at present over five hundred inmates. It is furnished
with
bath rooms, smoking room, reading room, billiard room, card room, ten-pin
alley, and store room, in addition to the necessary offices, dining room,
dor-
mitories, and a chapel and concert room well fitted up with seats for six
hun-
dred. The library contains over one thousand volumes.