CAPTAIN ALBAN ON POLICE DUTY.
We amused ourselves by reading, playing cards, chess, checkers, and other games, while those wishing exercise played cricket or practiced the sabre exercise or fencing, to keep our muscles up, and perfect ourselves in the use of arms. Sabres and foils were whittled out of pine or ash sticks, with which we supplied ourselves. One German whose name I failed to take down, gave daily lessons in fencing, and he was not only an excellent teacher, but an expert swordsman. I have seen him allow three of his most advanced pupils come at him at once, and tell them to go at him as though they meant to kill him, and he would successfully defend himself against them all. One thing I distinctly remember was that he could not speak very plain English, and when he would give the order, “On guard en carte,” in his quick way of speaking it, a person who did not know what he intended to say, thought he said “Cut-a-gut,” and he was known in prison as “Old Cut-a-Gut” always after.
After we had exercised sufficiently we would lay down in the shade and read or sleep during the hottest portion of the day. A number of us formed a literary association, each subscribing toward the purchase of a library that a citizen of Macon had to sell. He said he had a library of about one hundred books, that he would sell for $500, as he was destitute and was obliged to part with them to buy provisions for his family. So twenty of us chipped in $25 apiece around and started a circulating library, appointed one of our number librarian, and in this way we were well supplied with reading matter for a long time.
I do not remember all, or any considerable number of the titles of these books, but what interested me most were some old Harper’s magazines, in the reading of which I found days and weeks of profitable enjoyment. I do not think I ever fully appreciated until then, how much real comfort it was possible to extract from those old literary productions. Our reading was usually done during the hottest part of the day while lying in our quarters, when out of door exercise was too uncomfortable, and when we got tired of reading we would take a nap or go visiting to some of our friends in other portions of the camp, and there sit and talk over affairs, discussing the prospects of exchange, spinning yarns, cracking jokes, or singing old war songs to cheer each other up and pass away the time. Others would resort to the gambling tent, where there was always a game of cards going on; sometimes it was three card loo and sometimes poker; but they would sit there from early morning until dark and play for money, and, as is always the case, some would come away happy and some broke. But somehow or other the same gang would be there the next day, anxious to retrieve their broken fortunes of the previous day, or add to their gains. Men would there as here, sell the last button off their coat to raise money to continue the game, with a hope that luck would come their way. Thus, some who came into prison with enough to subsist them for quite a long time, would soon be obliged to live on the rations they drew, while others, who were nearly destitute when they came in, would live like fighting cocks. I could rehearse incidents of this kind that came under my personal observation, but as I could not do so without giving names, as the boys say, I won’t give it away.
All sorts of games were played, some for money, and some for pastime. Cribbage, back gammon, euchre, seven up, and sometimes we would play poker for the beans we drew for our rations. When the bean ration was given out, each man would have perhaps a good tablespoonful, then five or six would sit down and play until one would have the whole, which would make him quite a respectable dinner, and the rest would have to go without. Thus it will be seen that our prison camp was a village, where all kinds of business was carried on, and all sorts of characters were to be found. We had our church, our prayer meetings, our social circles, our singing, our visiting, and our gambling houses, all in a space of four or five acres of ground.
We had some excellent singers, and were frequently entertained during the long evenings with solos, quartettes, and choruses, patriotic, sentimental and pathetic.
Among the patriotic songs oftenest heard, were “The Star Spangled Banner,” “The Red, White and Blue,” “The Sword of Bunker Hill,” and “Rally ’Round the Flag;” but the one that touched a tender chord in every prisoner’s heart, and that even the rebs used to call for, was this which I quote entire:
In the prison pen I sit, thinking mother most of you,
And the bright and happy home so far away,
While the tears they fill my eyes, spite of all that I can do,
Though I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.
Chorus.—Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,
And beneath the starry flag, we shall breathe the air again,
Of the freeland, in our own beloved home.
In the battle front we stood, when their fiercest charge was made,
And they swept us off, a hundred men or more,
But before we reached their lines, they were driven back dismayed,
And we heard the shout of victory o’er and o’er.
Chorus.—Tramp, tramp, etc.
So within the prison pen, we are waiting for the day,
That shall come and open wide the iron door,
And the hollow eye grows bright, and the poor heart almost gay,
As we think of seeing friends and home once more.