As already observed, there were not a great number of officers who suffered so intensely, but there were some, who, like nearly all the privates, had no friends or acquaintances in the North to render any assistance, and they suffered greatly.  Of course, we endeavored to relieve one another as far as we could.  Often have I and others given our entire day’s ration from the mess hall to some brother officer less fortunate than ourselves.  I have seen an officer peal an apple, throw the pealing upon the ground, and immediately an unfortunate one would pick it up and ravenously devour it.  There were a great many wharf rats burrowing under the plank walks which traversed the open court of the prison.  These rodents are much larger than our common barn rats, and they were eagerly sought by the starving officers.  There was a general warfare declared on the wharf rat in prison.  When these rats were taken and being prepared, the odor arising therefrom was certainly tempting to a hungry man, and when ready they were eaten with a keen relish.  The rats did not require any of Lee’s and Perin’s Worcester sauce to make them palatable, or to give them zest.  This will give the reader some idea of the straits to which some of the Confederate officers, and nearly all the privates, in prison at Fort Delaware were reduced to by gaunt hunger.

I must here chronicle an event which I desire to go down in history.  After being in prison and being hungry for about two months, I received a letter, addressed in a lady’s handwriting, to “Lieut.  U.B.  White, Division 28, Fort Delaware,” and postmarked “Baltimore, Md.”  My surprise was great, but on opening it and finding the writer’s name to be “Mrs. Mary Howard, of Lexington Avenue, Baltimore,” my surprise was unbounded.  I knew no such person as Mrs. Mary Howard, and, in fact, at that time I did not know a soul in Baltimore.  I felt sure that there must be some mistake about it.  I read and re-read that letter.  I scrutinized and examined the address again and again.  It was plain, except that the final “s” in my name was wanting, which was and is, to my mind, a very natural and correct omission.  Mrs. Howard said in her letter that she had been informed that I was a prisoner of war and that I was in Division Twenty-eight, Fort Delaware, and that I was in need of both money and clothing, and that if this was true she would be glad to relieve my wants.  I immediately answered that letter.  I said to Mrs. Howard that her information was only too true, which I very much regretted.  From that time my hunger was appeased and my nakedness clad.  Thirty-five years have elapsed since Mrs. Mary Howard wrote that letter, and to-day it is as much of a mystery to me as it was on the day I received it—­by whom or by what means or device Mrs. Howard ever found out who I was, or what my condition and circumstances were, I will never know.  She and I corresponded regularly during the balance of my prison life, and for sometime after the war when I returned to South