Our provision here became worse and less, until it very nearly reached the starvation point. For some months, the only food we received was a very short allowance of corn-bread, baked with all the bran in it, and without salt, with a little pork, mostly spoiled! Frequently the pork would be completely covered with maggots, and disgusting as it was, hunger compelled us to eat it! Even then, there was not enough of this miserable fare to satisfy our appetites! What would those who spend their time in denouncing our government as the only enemy, and sympathize with "our mistaken Southern brethren," who have been alienated by the misconduct of the loyal States, say, if these "brethren" had subjected them to the same treatment. Their sympathies would hardly have survived the trial.
Dreary as the days were here, yet we did not surrender ourselves to gloomy forebodings and vain lamentings over our misfortunes. Although the fate of our companions seemed suspended over our heads by a single hair, yet we shunned despondency, and labored to provide such amusements as would relieve us of the heavy tedium of our prison-life.
On that terrible day of execution, we threw away our cards, which before had been played almost day and night, and resolved to engage no more in that game. But the necessity of doing something prompted us to search for new pastimes. We carved a checker-board on the floor, and it was occupied from morning till evening by eager players. We all became very expert in checkers. To provide a more intellectual amusement, we also formed a debating society, and spent hour after hour in discussing quaint questions of every kind. Many were the long-winded speeches that were made, for time was no object; and if no one was convinced of a new position, we still had the consolation of knowing that there was no lost labor, where the labor itself was a pleasure.
In order to enjoy to the fullest extent the books we had so fortunately procured, we appointed regular reading hours—two in the forenoon, and the same in the afternoon. During this time, no one was allowed even to whisper. Some of our boys were a little wild and restless at times, and would break the rules; but generally our order was excellent. We gained much useful knowledge during these hours of intellectual employment in our novel school.
But all our efforts to pleasantly while away those terribly long summer days were in vain. The tediousness, and oppressiveness, and vain longing for action, would press down on us closer and closer. Brown, who was one of the most restless of mortals, would amuse himself, as long as he could endure it, at the pastimes we had devised, then suddenly cease playing, and commence pacing the floor like a caged bear; when this, too, grew unendurable, he would stop at the door, and say, in the most piteous tones (of course meant only for us to hear) "O! kind sir, please let me out!" The feeling he expressed was shared by all. Never before could I realize the full value of liberty, and the horror of confinement. Even in the prisons where we had hitherto been, the novelty of our situation, the frequency of our removals, and the bustle and excitement of the trial, prevented the blank monotony of imprisonment from settling down on us as it did here, when the first few weeks had rolled by, and no intimations of our fate reached us. It was like the stillness and the death that brood over the Dead Sea.
We would sit at the windows, in the sultry noon, and look out through the bars, at the free birds as they flew past, seemingly so merry and full of joyous life, and foolishly wish that we, too, were birds, that we might fly away, and be at peace.
At long intervals, two of us would be permitted to go down into the yard, to do our washing. One day it came my turn; it was then three months since I had stepped out of my room, and the unobscured vision of open air and sky made it seem like another world. I remember looking up at the snowy clouds, my eyes almost dazzled by the unusual light, and wondering, as I gazed on their beautiful and changing forms, whether beyond them lay a world of rest, in which were neither wars nor prisons. And with the thought came the fear that if I was once more permitted to mingle as a free man, away from the immediate pressure of danger, with the busy throng of life, I would forget my prison-made vows, and thus lose my claim to a world of never-fading light. Such a sense of weakness and helplessness came over me, that it was with a feeling almost of relief that I returned once more to my dark and narrow room, where the contrast between freedom and bondage was less palpably forced on my view.
All this time we hardly permitted ourselves to indulge a hope of ever getting home again. The friends we once knew in happier days, seemed separated from us by an impassable gulf; and when our minds would call up before us the scenes and loved ones of home, it was like treading on forbidden ground. But when the miseries of the day were passed, and we were wrapped in that sweet slumber that ever visits the weary alike in prison and palace, there was no longer any restraint, and we were once more at home—once more in the enjoyment of love and freedom.
Often have I seen in dreams the streets and buildings of my own town rise before me, and have felt a thrilling pleasure in contemplating them, as I wended my way towards the sacred precincts for ever hallowed by affection. But the waking from these incursions into the realms of paradise was sad beyond measure, and the cold, bare walls of prison never looked half so dreary, as when seen in contrast with the visions which had just been dispersed by the morning light.
An anecdote here will fitly illustrate the affection and exaggerated reverence we felt for what we, to the great annoyance of the guards and citizens, insisted on calling "God's country." I had been reading one of Bascom's sermons, from a book which the minister had loaned us, on "The Joys of Heaven." All listened to his magnificent description with the greatest of interest, and when it was finished, some one started the query as to whether they would rather be in heaven, safe from all harm, or in Cincinnati. After a debate which was conducted with great animation on both sides, the majority concluded, no doubt honestly, that they would rather be in Cincinnati—for a while, at least!