from the rain and wind.  Let them be given not to exceed a pint of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood about the size of an ordinary stick for a cooking stove to cook it with.  Then let such weather prevail as we ordinarily have in the North in November—­freezing cold rains, with frequent days and nights when the ice forms as thick as a pane of glass.  How long does he think men could live through that?  He will probably say that a week, or at most a fortnight, would see the last and strongest of these ten thousand lying dead in the frozen mire where he wallowed.  He will be astonished to learn that probably not more than four or five thousand of those who underwent this in Florence died there.  How many died after release—­in Washington, on the vessels coming to Annapolis, in hospital and camp at Annapolis, or after they reached home, none but the Recording Angel can tell.  All that I know is we left a trail of dead behind us, wherever we moved, so long as I was with the doleful caravan.

Looking back, after these lapse of years, the most salient characteristic seems to be the ease with which men died.  There, was little of the violence of dissolution so common at Andersonville.  The machinery of life in all of us, was running slowly and feebly; it would simply grow still slower and feebler in some, and then stop without a jar, without a sensation to manifest it.  Nightly one of two or three comrades sleeping together would die.  The survivors would not know it until they tried to get him to “spoon” over, when they would find him rigid and motionless.  As they could not spare even so little heat as was still contained in his body, they would not remove this, but lie up the closer to it until morning.  Such a thing as a boy making an outcry when he discovered his comrade dead, or manifesting any, desire to get away from the corpse, was unknown.

I remember one who, as Charles II. said of himself, was —­“an unconscionable long time in dying.”  His name was Bickford; he belonged to the Twenty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, lived, I think, near Findlay, O., and was in my hundred.  His partner and he were both in a very bad condition, and I was not surprised, on making my rounds, one morning, to find them apparently quite dead.  I called help, and took his partner away to the gate.  When we picked up Bickford we found he still lived, and had strength enough to gasp out: 

“You fellers had better let me alone.”  We laid him back to die, as we supposed, in an hour or so.

When the Rebel Surgeon came in on his rounds, I showed him Bickford, lying there with his eyes closed, and limbs motionless.  The Surgeon said: 

“O, that man’s dead; why don’t you have him taken out?”

I replied:  “No, he isn’t.  Just see.”  Stooping, I shook the boy sharply, and said: 

“Bickford!  Bickford!!  How do you feel?”

The eyes did not unclose, but the lips opened slowly, and said with a painful effort: