away like an icicle on a Spring day, and he grew so thin that his hight seemed preternatural.  We called him “Flagstaff,” and cracked all sorts of jokes about putting an insulator on his head, and setting him up for a telegraph pole, braiding his legs and using him for a whip lash, letting his hair grow a little longer, and trading him off to the Rebels for a sponge and staff for the artillery, etc.  We all expected him to die, and looked continually for the development of the fatal scurvy symptoms, which were to seal his doom.  But he worried through, and came out at last in good shape, a happy result due as much as to anything else to his having in Chester Hayward, of Prairie City, Ill.,—­one of the most devoted chums I ever knew.  Chester nursed and looked out for George with wife-like fidelity, and had his reward in bringing him safe through our lines.  There were thousands of instances of this generous devotion to each other by chums in Andersonville, and I know of nothing that reflects any more credit upon our boy soldiers.

There was little chance for any one to accumulate flesh on the rations we were receiving.  I say it in all soberness that I do not believe that a healthy hen could have grown fat upon them.  I am sure that any good-sized “shanghai” eats more every day than the meager half loaf that we had to maintain life upon.  Scanty as this was, and hungry as all were, very many could not eat it.  Their stomachs revolted against the trash; it became so nauseous to them that they could not force it down, even when famishing, and they died of starvation with the chunks of the so-called bread under their head.  I found myself rapidly approaching this condition.  I had been blessed with a good digestion and a talent for sleeping under the most discouraging circumstances.  These, I have no doubt, were of the greatest assistance to me in my struggle for existence.  But now the rations became fearfully obnoxious to me, and it was only with the greatest effort—­pulling the bread into little pieces and swallowing each, of these as one would a pill—­that I succeeded in worrying the stuff down.  I had not as yet fallen away very much, but as I had never, up, to that time, weighed so much as one hundred and twenty-five pounds, there was no great amount of adipose to lose.  It was evident that unless some change occurred my time was near at hand.

There was not only hunger for more food, but longing with an intensity beyond expression for alteration of some kind in the rations.  The changeless monotony of the miserable saltless bread, or worse mush, for days, weeks and months, became unbearable.  If those wretched mule teams had only once a month hauled in something different—­if they had come in loaded with sweet potatos, green corn or wheat flour, there would be thousands of men still living who now slumber beneath those melancholy pines.  It would have given something to look forward to, and remember when past.  But to know each day that the gates would open to admit the same distasteful apologies for food took away the appetite and raised one’s gorge, even while famishing for something to eat.