The Creek was the great meeting point for all inside the Stockade.  All able to walk were certain to be there at least once during the day, and we made it a rendezvous, a place to exchange gossip, discuss the latest news, canvass the prospects of exchange, and, most of all, to curse the Rebels.  Indeed no conversation ever progressed very far without both speaker and listener taking frequent rests to say bitter things as to the Rebels generally, and Wirz, Winder and Davis in particular.

A conversation between two boys—­strangers to each other who came to the Creek to wash themselves or their clothes, or for some other purpose, would progress thus: 

First Boy—­“I belong to the Second Corps,—­Hancock’s, [the Army of the Potomac boys always mentioned what Corps they belonged to, where the Western boys stated their Regiment.] They got me at Spottsylvania, when they were butting their heads against our breast-works, trying to get even with us for gobbling up Johnson in the morning,”—­He stops suddenly and changes tone to say:  “I hope to God, that when our folks get Richmond, they will put old Ben Butler in command of it, with orders to limb, skin and jayhawk it worse than he did New Orleans.”

Second Boy, (fervently :) “I wish to God he would, and that he’d catch old Jeff., and that grayheaded devil, Winder, and the old Dutch Captain, strip ’em just as we were, put ’em in this pen, with just the rations they are givin’ us, and set a guard of plantation niggers over ’em, with orders to blow their whole infernal heads off, if they dared so much as to look at the dead line.”

First Boy—­(returning to the story of his capture.) “Old Hancock caught the Johnnies that morning the neatest you ever saw anything in your life.  After the two armies had murdered each other for four or five days in the Wilderness, by fighting so close together that much of the time you could almost shake hands with the Graybacks, both hauled off a little, and lay and glowered at each other.  Each side had lost about twenty thousand men in learning that if it attacked the other it would get mashed fine.  So each built a line of works and lay behind them, and tried to nag the other into coming out and attacking.  At Spottsylvania our lines and those of the Johnnies weren’t twelve hundred yards apart.  The ground was clear and clean between them, and any force that attempted to cross it to attack would be cut to pieces, as sure as anything.  We laid there three or four days watching each other—­just like boys at school, who shake fists and dare each other.  At one place the Rebel line ran out towards us like the top of a great letter ‘A.’  The night of the 11th of May it rained very hard, and then came a fog so thick that you couldn’t see the length of a company.  Hancock thought he’d take advantage of this.  We were all turned out very quietly about four o’clock in the morning.  Not a bit of noise was allowed.  We even had to take off our canteens and tin cups, that they might not rattle against our bayonets.  The ground was so wet that our footsteps couldn’t be heard.  It was one of those deathly, still movements, when you think your heart is making as much noise as a bass drum.