No strong man, is a healthy man

from the athlete in the circus who lifts pieces of artillery and catches cannon balls, to the exhibition swell in a country gymnasium.  If my theory is not a sufficient explanation of this, there is nothing to prevent the reader from building up one to suit him better.

CHAPTER XXII.

Difference between Alabamians and Georgians—­death of “Poll Parrott” —­A good joke upon the guard—­A brutal rascal.

There were two regiments guarding us—­the Twenty-Sixth Alabama and the Fifty-Fifth Georgia.  Never were two regiments of the same army more different.  The Alabamians were the superiors of the Georgians in every way that one set of men could be superior to another.  They were manly, soldierly, and honorable, where the Georgians were treacherous and brutal.  We had nothing to complain of at the hands of the Alabamians; we suffered from the Georgians everything that mean-spirited cruelty could devise.  The Georgians were always on the look-out for something that they could torture into such apparent violation of orders, as would justify them in shooting men down; the Alabamians never fired until they were satisfied that a deliberate offense was intended.  I can recall of my own seeing at least a dozen instances where men of the Fifty-Fifth Georgia Killed prisoners under the pretense that they were across the Dead Line, when the victims were a yard or more from the Dead Line, and had not the remotest idea of going any nearer.

The only man I ever knew to be killed by one of the Twenty-Sixth Alabama was named Hubbard, from Chicago, Ills., and a member of the Thirty-Eighth Illinois.  He had lost one leg, and went hobbling about the camp on crutches, chattering continually in a loud, discordant voice, saying all manner of hateful and annoying things, wherever he saw an opportunity.  This and his beak-like nose gained for him the name of “Poll Parrot.”  His misfortune caused him to be tolerated where another man would have been suppressed.  By-and-by he gave still greater cause for offense by his obsequious attempts to curry favor with Captain Wirz, who took him outside several times for purposes that were not well explained.  Finally, some hours after one of Poll Parrot’s visits outside, a Rebel officer came in with a guard, and, proceeding with suspicious directness to a tent which was the mouth of a large tunnel that a hundred men or more had been quietly pushing forward, broke the tunnel in, and took the occupants of the tent outside for punishment.  The question that demanded immediate solution then was: 

“Who is the traitor who has informed the Rebels?”