"Bridge burners, are they! They ought to be hung, every man of them; and so ought every man that does anything against the Confederacy." Had he said for, I would have agreed with him heartily.
Soon the guide returned, and ordered us to be conducted up stairs. Up we went, passing by a room filled with a howling and yelling multitude, who made such an outrageous racket that I was compelled to put my hands to my ears. As we came in view, a score of voices screamed with all the energy their lungs could give:
"Fresh fish! Fresh fish!" The same exclamation greeted every new arrival.
We were taken into the office and searched, to see if we possessed anything contraband, or, in plainer terms, anything they could make useful to themselves. They took some nice pocket knives from the Tennesseeans, which they had contrived to keep secreted till now. When it came my turn, I managed to slip a large knife, that I had obtained at Atlanta, up my sleeve, and by carefully turning my arm when they felt for concealed weapons, succeeded in keeping it out of the way.
The examination over, I thought they were going to put us into the miniature mad-house we had just passed; and they did not do much better, for they put us into a stall beside it. I call it a stall, for the word describes it most fully. It was one of a range, partitioned off from the large room in which were the noisy miscreants, and from each other by loose plank, with cracks wide enough to let the wind circulate freely through them. Most of the windows of the large room were out, which greatly increased the cold. Our stall was only eight or nine feet wide, and perhaps sixteen in length. It was bare of any furniture—not even having a chair, or any means of making a fire.
In this cheerless place our party, six in number, and nine Tennesseeans, were confined during the months of December and January!
The first day of our imprisonment here, our spirits sank lower than they had ever done before. All our bright hopes were dashed to the ground, and there seemed every reason to believe that we were doomed to this dreary abode for the remaining term of the war, even if we escaped sharing with our murdered friends the horrors of a Southern scaffold. It was too disheartening for philosophy, and that day was one of the blackest gloom. We seldom spoke, and when we did, it was to denounce our folly, in suffering ourselves to be deluded to Richmond by the lies they had told, and not seizing some of the many opportunities our journey afforded for making our escape. But it was no use lamenting; and all we could do was to register a solemn vow never to be deceived by them again. When night came, we knelt in prayer to God, and if I ever prayed with fervor, it was in this hour of disappointment and dread. I tried to roll all my cares upon the Lord, and partly succeeded, rising from my knees comforted, and assured that whatever might be the issue, we had one Friend who was nigh to save, and had often made his children rejoice, in worse situations than ours. The next morning I awoke again cheerful, and felt nerved for any fate that might befall me.
Here the routine of prison life did not differ materially from that at Atlanta. We had to go down to the court (the building was square, and built with an open court in the center) to wash in the morning, and were immediately taken back to our stall, and locked up. But the principal difference was our want of fire. This made it our greatest difficulty to keep warm, and effectually destroyed all those pleasant fireside chats that had done so much to make our condition endurable in the Atlanta barracks.
As the darkness and coldness of night drew on, we were compelled to pace the floor, trying to keep warm; and when sleep became a necessity, we would all pile down in a huddle, as pigs sometimes do, and spread over us the thin protection of our two bits of carpet. Thus we would lie until too cold to remain longer, and then arise and resume our walk. We had always plenty of light, except when the awkwardness of the gas managers left the whole city in darkness, which was frequently the case.
We never omitted our devotions. For awhile the deserters outside, who were composed of the very scum of Southern society, many of them being the rowdies, gamblers, and cutthroats of the large cities, tried to interrupt us by every means in their power; but finding that their efforts produced no effect, they finally gave over, and left us to pursue our own way in peace. We found afterward, when, for a short time, we were put among them, that they respected us the more for it. Thus it will always be when perseverance is exercised in a good cause.