House and clothes—­efforts to erect A suitable residence—­difficulties attending this—­varieties of Florentine architecture—­waiting for dead men’s clothes—­craving for tobacco.

We were put into the old squads to fill the places of those who had recently died, being assigned to these vacancies according to the initials of our surnames, the same rolls being used that we had signed as paroles.  This separated Andrews and me, for the “A’s” were taken to fill up the first hundreds of the First Thousand, while the “M’s,” to which I belonged, went into the next Thousand.

I was put into the Second Hundred of the Second Thousand, and its Sergeant dying shortly after, I was given his place, and commanded the hundred, drew its rations, made out its rolls, and looked out for its sick during the rest of our stay there.

Andrews and I got together again, and began fixing up what little we could to protect ourselves against the weather.  Cold as this was we decided that it was safer to endure it and risk frost-biting every night than to build one of the mud-walled and mud-covered holes that so many, lived in.  These were much warmer than lying out on the frozen ground, but we believed that they were very unhealthy, and that no one lived long who inhabited them.

So we set about repairing our faithful old blanket—­now full of great holes.  We watched the dead men to get pieces of cloth from their garments to make patches, which we sewed on with yarn raveled from other fragments of woolen cloth.  Some of our company, whom we found in the prison, donated us the three sticks necessary to make tent-poles —­wonderful generosity when the preciousness of firewood is remembered.  We hoisted our blanket upon these; built a wall of mud bricks at one end, and in it a little fireplace to economize our scanty fuel to the last degree, and were once more at home, and much better off than most of our neighbors.

One of these, the proprietor of a hole in the ground covered with an arch of adobe bricks, had absolutely no bed-clothes except a couple of short pieces of board—­and very little other clothing.  He dug a trench in the bottom of what was by courtesy called his tent, sufficiently large to contain his body below his neck.  At nightfall he would crawl into this, put his two bits of board so that they joined over his breast, and then say:  “Now, boys, cover me over;” whereupon his friends would cover him up with dry sand from the sides of his domicile, in which he would slumber quietly till morning, when he would rise, shake the sand from his garments, and declare that he felt as well refreshed as if he had slept on a spring mattress.

There has been much talk of earth baths of late years in scientific and medical circles.  I have been sorry that our Florence comrade if he still lives—­did not contribute the results of his experience.