Clear the way now for sweepers. From one end of the room to the other they ply their coarse wooden brooms. Some officers are remarkably neat, and will scrape their floor space with pieces of glass from the broken windows; a few are listless, sullen, utterly despondent, regardless of surroundings, apparently sinking into imbecility; the majority are taking pains to keep up an appearance of respectability.
Many who have been kept awake through the night by cold or rheumatism now huddle around the stoves and try to sleep. Most of the remainder, as the weeks pass, glide into something like a routine of occupations. For several weeks I spent an hour or two every day carving with a broken knife-blade a spoon from a block of hard wood. Sporadic wood-splitting is going on, and cooking appears to be one of the fine arts. An hour daily of oral exercises in French, German, Spanish, Latin, or Italian, under competent teachers, after the Sauveur or Berlitz method, amused and to some extent instructed many. Our cavalry adjutant, Dutch Clark, so called from his skill in the "Pennsylvania Dutch" dialect made perhaps a hundred familiar with the morning salutation, "Haben Sie gut geschlafen?" ("Have you slept well?") Lieut. Henry Vander Weyde, A. D. C., 1st Div., 6th Corps, the artist chum of our principal German instructor, amused many by his pencil portraits of "Slim Jim," the nondescript "roll-call sergeant" of uncertain age and gender; also of some of the sentries, and one or two of his fellow prisoners. A worn-out pack of fifty-two cards, two or three chess and checker boards of our manufacture, and twenty-four rudely carved checker-men and thirty-two fantastic chess-men, furnished frequent amusement to those who understood the games.
On an average once in two days we received about one o'clock what was called soup. We were told, and we believed it to be true, that all the rich nitrogenous portion had been carefully skimmed off for use elsewhere; not thrown away as the fresh maid threw the "scum" that formed on top of the milk!
The topic of most frequent discussion was the prospect of an exchange of prisoners. Our would-be German conversationalists never forgot to ask, "Haben Sie etwas gehörten von Auswechseln der Gefangenen?" ("Have you heard anything of exchange of prisoners?") It was hard to believe that our government would leave us to die of starvation.
At the close of the soup hour and after another turn at sweeping, almost every officer again sat down or sat up to rid himself of the pediculidæ vestimenti. We called it "skirmishing"; it was rather a pitched battle. The humblest soldier and the brevet major-general must daily strip and fight. Ludicrous, were it not so abominable, was this mortifying necessity. No account of prison life in Danville would be complete without it. Pass by it hereafter in sorrow and silence, as one of those duties which Cicero says are to be done but not talked about.
The occupations of the morning are now largely resumed, but many prefer to lie quiet on the floor for an hour.
An interesting incident that might happen at any time is the arrival in prison of a Confederate newspaper. A commotion near the stairway! Fifty or a hundred cluster around an officer with a clear strong voice, and listen as he reads aloud the news, the editorials, and the selections. The rebels are represented as continually gaining victories, but singularly enough the northern armies are always drawing nearer!
Toward sunset many officers walk briskly half an hour to and fro the length of the room for exercise.
Another roll-call by the mysterious heterogeneous if not hermaphroditical Carolina sergeant!
Brooms again by the mess on duty. Again oral language-lessons by Cook and Putnam. Then discussions or story-telling.