Explore "The Enormous Room" by E.E. Cummings on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
One day somebody and I were "catching water" for Monsieur the Chef.
"Catching water" was ordinarily a mixed pleasure. It consisted, as I have mentioned, in the combined pushing and pulling of a curiously primitive two-wheeled cart over a distance of perhaps three hundred yards to a kind of hydrant situated in a species of square upon which the mediaeval structure known as Porte (or Camp) de Triage faced stupidly and threateningly. A _planton_ always escorted the catchers through a big door, between the stone wall, which backed the men's _cour_ and the end of the building itself, or, in other words, the canteen. The ten-foot stone wall was, like every other stone wall, connected with La Ferté, topped with three feet of barbed wire. The door by which we exited with the water-wagon to the street outside was at least eight feet high, adorned with several large locks.