To grunt and sweat under a weary life:
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzled the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;”
The all-wise Being has placed within us all, an instinctive dread of death; had it not been so, I fear many poor, miserable, hopeless, prisoners would have gone out of their misery by the suicide’s route.
Morning came and we were in North Carolina. We took the same route back as far as Augusta, Ga., that we had taken when on our way to Richmond, the autumn previous.
We suffered extremely on the way. We were not allowed to get off the cars for any purpose whatever, except to change cars. The guards brought us water in the bucket we had purloined from Danville. They were not particular where they procured it. They supplied us from the handiest place whether it was the water tank at a station, or from a stagnant pond or ditch by the side of the R. R. track.