After the President had entered the Church, I lounged outside while the great organ gave the beautiful Sunday morning an impressive salute. When the tones had died away, feeling more homesick and blue than ever, I started off on my walk down Main street toward the Libby and the Warehouse prisons. As Libby is in the lower end of the city pretty close to Rockett's Wharf, it was a long walk, though it was Sunday, and the shops along the way were open and dispensing refreshments to the crowds.
My early Rebel friend was not on guard that morning, but some of his friends said he would be around after dinner, so, under pretense of waiting for him, I sat around in such shape that I could get a good view of the "animals" as they called the prisoners.
The tobacco warehouses in which the prisoners were confined have been so often described that any attempt of mine would be superfluous. It will be remembered, however, that, even before the war, all these large barn-like buildings were constructed pretty much after the form of our modern bonded warehouses. All the windows were made with iron bars, presenting the appearance of cages.
Groups of our poor fellows were easily to be seen through the bars, some of them having become pretty ragged; others were standing by the windows peering through the bars; a few walked or promenaded in pairs up and down the large barn-like floors. There were always two sentries and an officer at the main door, while on the pavement in front other sentries paced their silent beats, so that it was impossible for me to have any communication with them.
I desired for a particular reason to ascertain the names of some of the prisoners, and, if possible, to get the address of their friends in the North, that I might test my mail communication, by sending some word direct to them. Perhaps, for my own good, I was not successful.
I may be permitted to say here that, in case we had another war, the benefit of the Signal Service Code will be made apparent in this, that a silent communication may be carried on between friends of the same side under just precisely such conditions as I have described here.
If there had been a prisoner inside the bars who had been familiar with the Telegraph Code, as adapted to the motions of the hand, I could have spelled out over the head of the guard, without his knowledge, quite as rapidly as I can write it, messages that would have been a relief and pleasure to the prisoners inside, if not otherwise beneficial.
It was while standing in front of the Warehouse Prison, on Main street, thinking and planning over the possibilities in this direction, looking intently, from where I stood on the inside of the pavement, through the windows at the prisoners, that I felt a slap on my back that caused me to jump like an india-rubber ball. The voice, which was not a familiar one, said, loudly enough for even the prisoners to hear, using my own, my right name:
"Hello, Blank!"
When I turned to see who had "struck" me, I am sure that I presented a very flushed and, perhaps, angry face. I did not at once recognize the person, probably because he was in a gray uniform, but the smiling face of his companion, in the full black beard, I at once recognized as Doctor ——, of San Marcos, Texas, whom I had known familiarly as the young son of my uncle's neighbor.