The pinching cold cured me of my repugnance to wearing dead men’s clothes, or rather it made my nakedness so painful that I was glad to cover it as best I could, and I began foraging among the corpses for garments.  For awhile my efforts to set myself up in the mortuary second-hand clothing business were not all successful.  I found that dying men with good clothes were as carefully watched over by sets of fellows who constituted themselves their residuary legatees as if they were men of fortune dying in the midst of a circle of expectant nephews and nieces.  Before one was fairly cold his clothes would be appropriated and divided, and I have seen many sharp fights between contesting claimants.

I soon perceived that my best chance was to get up very early in the morning, and do my hunting.  The nights were so cold that many could not sleep, and they would walk up and down the streets, trying to keep warm by exercise.  Towards morning, becoming exhausted, they would lie down on the ground almost anywhere, and die.  I have frequently seen so many as fifty of these.  My first “find” of any importance was a young Pennsylvania Zouave, who was lying dead near the bridge that crossed the Creek.  His clothes were all badly worn, except his baggy, dark trousers, which were nearly new.  I removed these, scraped out from each of the dozens of great folds in the legs about a half pint of lice, and drew the garments over my own half-frozen limbs, the first real covering those members had had for four or five months.  The pantaloons only came down about half-way between my knees and feet, but still they were wonderfully comfortable to what I had been—­or rather not been—­wearing.  I had picked up a pair of boot bottoms, which answered me for shoes, and now I began a hunt for socks.  This took several morning expeditions, but on one of them I was rewarded with finding a corpse with a good brown one —­army make—­and a few days later I got another, a good, thick genuine one, knit at home, of blue yarn, by some patient, careful housewife.  Almost the next morning I had the good fortune to find a dead man with a warm, whole, infantry dress-coat, a most serviceable garment.  As I still had for a shirt the blouse Andrews had given me at Millen, I now considered my wardrobe complete, and left the rest of the clothes to those who were more needy than I.

Those who used tobacco seemed to suffer more from a deprivation of the weed than from lack of food.  There were no sacrifices they would not make to obtain it, and it was no uncommon thing for boys to trade off half their rations for a chew of “navy plug.”  As long as one had anything—­especially buttons—­to trade, tobacco could be procured from the guards, who were plentifully supplied with it.  When means of barter were gone, chewers frequently became so desperate as to beg the guards to throw them a bit of the precious nicotine.  Shortly after our arrival at Florence, a prisoner on the East Side approached one of the Reserves with the request: