Their horror at the appearance of their place of incarceration was beyond expression.  At one moment they could not comprehend that we dirty and haggard tatterdemalions had once been clean, self-respecting, well-fed soldiers like themselves; at the next they would affirm that they knew they could not stand it a month, in here we had then endured it from four to nine months.  They took it, in every way, the hardest of any prisoners that came in, except some of the ‘Hundred-Days’ men, who were brought in in August, from the Valley of Virginia.  They had served nearly all their time in various garrisons along the seacoast—­from Fortress Monroe to Beaufort—­where they had had comparatively little of the actual hardships of soldiering in the field.  They had nearly always had comfortable quarters, an abundance of food, few hard marches or other severe service.  Consequently they were not so well hardened for Andersonville as the majority who came in.  In other respects they were better prepared, as they had an abundance of clothing, blankets and cooking utensils, and each man had some of his veteran bounty still in possession.

It was painful to see how rapidly many of them sank under the miseries of the situation.  They gave up the moment the gates were closed upon them, and began pining away.  We older prisoners buoyed ourselves up continually with hopes of escape or exchange.  We dug tunnels with the persistence of beavers, and we watched every possible opportunity to get outside the accursed walls of the pen.  But we could not enlist the interest of these discouraged ones in any of our schemes, or talk.  They resigned themselves to Death, and waited despondingly till he came.

A middle-aged One Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up his quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest.  Reasonably intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable mechanic before entering the Army.  He was evidently a very domestic man, whose whole happiness centered in his family.

When he first came in he was thoroughly dazed by the greatness of his misfortune.  He would sit for hours with his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees, gazing out upon the mass of men and huts, with vacant, lack-luster eyes.  We could not interest him in anything.  We tried to show him how to fix his blanket up to give him some shelter, but he went at the work in a disheartened way, and finally smiled feebly and stopped.  He had some letters from his family and a melaineotype of a plain-faced woman—­his wife—­and her children, and spent much time in looking at them.  At first he ate his rations when he drew them, but finally began to reject, them.  In a few days he was delirious with hunger and homesick ness.  He would sit on the sand for hours imagining that he was at his family table, dispensing his frugal hospitalities to his wife and children.

Making a motion, as if presenting a dish, he would say: