The visit would have been a dull one, had we not happened to get sight of a singular-looking set of human beings in the distance.  They were clad in stuff of different hues, gray and brown being the leading shades, but both subdued by a neutral tint, such as is wont to harmonize the variegated apparel of travel-stained vagabonds.  They looked slouchy, listless, torpid,—­an ill-conditioned crew, at first sight, made up of such fellows as an old woman would drive away from her hen-roost with a broomstick.  Yet these were estrays from the fiery army which has given our generals so much trouble,—­“Secesh prisoners,” as a bystander told us.  A talk with them might be profitable and entertaining.  But they were tabooed to the common visitor, and it was necessary to get inside of the line which separated us from them.

A solid, square captain was standing near by, to whom we were referred.  Look a man calmly through the very centre of his pupils and ask him for anything with a tone implying entire conviction that he will grant it, and he will very commonly consent to the thing asked, were it to commit hari-kari.  The Captain acceded to my postulate, and accepted my friend as a corollary.  As one string of my own ancestors was of Batavian origin, I may be permitted to say that my new friend was of the Dutch type, like the Amsterdam galiots, broad in the beam, capacious in the hold, and calculated to carry a heavy cargo rather than to make fast time.  He must have been in politics at some time or other, for he made orations to all the “Secesh,” in which he explained to them that the United States considered and treated them like children, and enforced upon them the ridiculous impossibility of the Rebels attempting to do anything against such a power as that of the National Government.

Much as his discourse edified them and enlightened me, it interfered somewhat with my little plans of entering into frank and friendly talk with some of these poor fellows, for whom I could not help feeling a kind of human sympathy, though I am as venomous a hater of the Rebellion as one is like to find under the stars and stripes.  It is fair to take a man prisoner.  It is fair to make speeches to a man.  But to take a man prisoner and then make speeches to him while in durance is not fair.

I began a few pleasant conversations, which would have come to something but for the reason assigned.

One old fellow had a long beard, a drooping eyelid, and a black clay pipe in his mouth.  He was a Scotchman from Ayr, dour enough, and little disposed to be communicative, though I tried him with the “Twa Briggs,” and, like all Scotchmen, he was a reader of “Burrns.”  He professed to feel no interest in the cause for which he was fighting, and was in the army, I judged, only from compulsion.  There was a wild-haired, unsoaped boy, with pretty, foolish features enough, who looked as if he might be about seventeen, as he said he was.  I give my questions and his answers literally.