Maybe it was a fortunate circumstance for me that I was thus taken off my feet, as it served to effectually hide or exclude me from sight, and frustrated any efforts that might have been put forward for my capture. In the meantime the sensation that was, perhaps, caused by my escape had died out and I had been forgotten.
As it was, that night I was taken sick and the next morning I was unable to get out of my bed. The trouble was principally dysentery, such as was epidemic in the Rebel Army at Manassas, and had probably been caused by the bad water, or change of water, greatly aggravated in my case by the nights of terror I had undergone. While in my weak condition, perhaps, I had overloaded my suffering stomach too much the first day of my arrival in Richmond. I can testify here to the fact that there was plenty to eat in Richmond in 1861, and it was not so very much more expensive at that time than in Washington.
The hotel people of Richmond were a little dubious about refugee boarders from Baltimore, as I soon learned, and were inclined to be rather disposed to refer their sick guest to a hospital. Fortunately, I was able to prevent this by a prompt advance of a week's boarding from my church-collection fund, which fully satisfied the Virginia Yankee hotel-keeper. It happened, too, that there was some change due me from the amount I had passed to him, which, in the princely style I had assumed, I graciously told him to keep for a credit on the next week's account. I still had some money left, but not enough to pay another week's expenses at that hotel, but it was best to keep up a good appearance.
The colored boy's name who served me with meals and who attended to all my sick wants, I regret, I have forgotten. He was indeed a good friend, and when my week was out and I was still so weak that it was impossible for me to move, he continued to serve me with three light meals a day in a room where I had been moved by him, which was located in a block of buildings which served as an annex to the crowded hotel.
YOU ALWAYS SAY DOWN HERE, AND THAT YOU'RE GOING TO GO UP HOME.
The hotel clerks, or the people at the office, supposed when I left the room that I had gone from the hotel; at least, they did not give me any trouble, and I have always thought my presence in that room was overlooked or forgotten by them in the great rush of their business of those days. This colored boy was one of the regular waiters employed at the hotel, who had for the week or ten days previous to my change served me regularly, and had told me several times, in explanation or in self-justification, that he was told to serve me every day, and he was going to do it until he was told to stop. Though I had not dared to breath to the poor colored boy even a whisper of my true character, yet it was instinctively understood between us that I was a Yankee. I knew this from his manner, and I could see in every move he made that he was so carrying on his little game to aid me that he might not be detected in it, yet it was so shrewdly managed that, if he had been picked up, he would have readily cleared himself of all collusion by merely referring to his orders.
In talking with him one day, he remarked, with a significant grin: "You always say down here, and that your going to go up home; I thought you was going to stay in Dixie?" I took the ignorant boy's teachings thankfully, and was more careful in the use of the words after that lesson.
I might fill a chapter with interesting stories of Richmond life which the boy gave me that were a pleasant relief for me, and served to while away, in my solitary sick bed, my first weeks in Richmond.
I took the opportunity the leisure afforded me of putting in operation a plan for secretly attempting to communicate with my friends in the North. I realized that I should not be able soon to undertake any adventuresome travels, and I could not reach home by any easy stages.