University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

To go into a prison of war is in all respects to be
born over.

For, of the men in all the prisons of the late war,
it might be said, as of births in the ordinary world, —
they came in and went out naked. Into the prison at
Point Lookout, Maryland, were born, at a certain time,
of poor and probably honest parents, twelve thousand
grown men. Their inheritance with which they had to
begin life de novo was the capability of body or soul
wherewith each happened to be endowed at the moment
of this second birth. And so, in this far little world,
which was as much separated from the outer world as
if it had been in the outer confines of space, it was
striking to see how society immediately resolved itself
into those three estates which invariably constitute it
elsewhere.

For there were here, first, the aristocrats, who lived
well but did not labor; second, the artisans, who lived
well by laboring; third, the drones, who starved by not
laboring. Moreover one could find here all the subdivisions
of these great classes which occur in the regions

of crowded civilization. For instance, of the aristocrats,
there were the true-gentlemanly sort, the insulting-obtrusive
sort, the philanthropic sort, the fast sort; of the
artisans, there were the sober-citizenly sort, the mind-your-own-business-and-I-mine
sort, the gloomy, brooding-over-oppression
sort, the cheerful workers, the geniuses,
together with those whose labor was spiritual, such
as the teachers of French, and arithmetic, and music,
including those who lived by their wits in the bad sense;
and of the drones, the kind who swear that the world
owes them a living, but who are too lazy to collect
the debt; the sentimental-vulgar kind, whose claims are
based upon a well-turned leg or a heavy moustache, and
are consequently not appreciated by a practical world;
the self-deprecatory sort, who swear that Nature has
been unkind in endowing them, and who then must
starve for consistency's sake or forswear themselves;
and lastly, the large class of out-and-out unmitigated
drones, who, some say, serve the mere purpose of inanimate
clay chinked into the cracks of this great log-cabin
which we all inhabit, and who, poor men! must endure
much bad weather on the wrong side of the house.

Was there then no difference between life in the
prison and life in the world?

It is to be answered, — none, generically; the difference
was one of degree merely.

For instance, if our every-day world had a catechism,
its first question, What is the chief end of man? might
be answered, “The chief end of man is either end of
Pennsylvania Avenue.” Whereas this question in the
prison-world catechism would be answered, “The chief
end of man is the West End”; — which at Point Lookout

was (for the pleasure of the paradox-loving) at the
eastern extremity of the Peninsula.

In the one case the aim was to be President or Congressman,
with honor and luxury; in the other, the aim
was to get into a cracker-box cabin, where rain and
vermin were not free of the house, as they were in the
tents in which ten out of the twelve thousand resided.

So, the stature of the men and the burning of their
passions remained the same inside the prison as out of
it, only the objects of these passions and exertions were
immeasurably diminished in number and dignity. To
Philip Sterling this was the terrible feature in the
prison-changed behavior of his old army friends. They
did not crowd to shake joyful hands with him and hear
the news from outside, but met him with smiles that
had in them a sort of mournful greasiness, as if to say:
Ah, old boy, mighty poor eating in here! Their handshakes
were not vigorous, their souls did not run down
and meet Philip's at the finger-tips. How could they?
These same souls were too busy in devising ways and
means to quiet the stomachs and intestines, — a set of
dependents who show their born inferiority to the soul
by always crying out to it when they are in distress,
and by always endeavoring to dethrone it when they
have waxed fat on its labor.

Some such thoughts crossed Philip's mind, as on the
loveliest morning of May, a few days after his night in
the cell at Fortress Monroe, he found himself inside
the great gate of the prison at Point Lookout. He had
recognized and spoken to some friends as they passed
by, but had not yet left the rank in which his squad of
seventy fellow-captives had been drawn up after being
marched into the prison.

A Federal sergeant told them off into smaller squads.
Philip stood in the last.

— “Four, five, six, seven, eight,” finished the sergeant.
“Plenty o' room in eleventh division. Corporal,
Eleventh!”

“Here, sir.”

“Here 's your squad. March 'em down.”

“Forward,” said the corporal, placing himself with
the front file.

Passing a row of small A tents presently, the corporal
looked at his book.

“Tent fifteen; think there 's four men in it. Let 's
see.” He thrust his head into the low opening. “How
many in here?”

“'Bout a million, countin' lice and all!” responded a
voice, whose tone blent in itself sorrow, anger, hunger,
and the sardonic fearlessness of desperation.

“Guess they want another man in, if you don't,” said
the corporal, with a pleasant smile. “You, Number
Four, what 's your name?”

“Philip Sterling.”

“Bunk here. Rest, forward,” — and the corporal
passed on with his squad, writing, as he went, the name
in his book.

A long, cadaverous man sat outside the door of Philip's
tent, sunning himself. He was bare to the middle,
but held a ragged shirt on his knees, toward which he
occasionally made gestures very like those of a compositor
setting type.

“'Fords me a leetle amusement,” said he, looking up
with a sickly smile toward Philip. “Jest gittin' well o'
the feever: cain't git about much yet!”

Sick at heart, Sterling made no reply, but entered
the tent. Just inside the entrance stood a low bench,
which held a rat-tail file, a beef-bone, a half-dozen gutta
percha buttons, a piece of iron barrel-hoop, two oyster
shells, and a pocket-knife. Cross-legged on the ground
before it, sat a huge individual, who was engaged in
polishing, with a rag and the grease of bacon, a gutta-percha
ring which he held with difficulty on the tip of
his little finger.

For this man's clothes, those three thieves, grease,
dirt, and smoke, had drawn lots; but not content with
the allotment, all three were evidently contending which
should have the whole suit. It appeared likely that
dirt would be the happy thief.

“Wash 'em!” said this man one day when the Federal
corporal had the impudence to refer to the sacred
soil on his clothes — “wash 'em? corp'ral! I 'm bound
to say 'at you 're a dam fool! That mud 's what holds
'em together; sticks 'em fast, — like! Ef you was to
put them clo's in water they 'd go to nothin' jest like a
piece o' salt!”

As inside of these clay-clothes a stalwart frame of a
man lived and worked, so, inside this stalwart clay-frame
lived and worked a fearless soul, which had met
death and laughed at it, from the Seven-days to Gettysburg,
but which was now engaged in superintending a
small manufactory of bone trinkets and gutta-percha
rings, the sale of which brought wherewithal to eke out
the meagre sustenance of the prison ration.

Sterling threw down his blanket.

“This corner occupied?”

“Wa'al — yes, a leetle, you may say. I should

judge thar was about some sebben or eight thousand
livin' thar now. You need n't mind them tho'; they
won't keer ef you sleep thar,” observed the huge ring-maker.

“They are very kind, indeed.”

“Sorry I cain't offer you a cheer; jest now loaned out
all the cheers.”

Sterling squatted tailor-wise upon his blanket, placed
his chin in his hand, and prepared to go into a terrible
sentimental review of the utter loneliness of his position.
Suddenly, however, the ludicrous phase of the
situation came over him. He smiled, then chuckled,
and at last burst into a long, uproarious laugh.

The eye of the ring-maker twinkled. His lip quivered.
He thrust his head through the opening of the
tent and ejected from his mouth a surprising quantity of
tobacco-juice. It was his manner of laughing. Beyond
this he made no sign.

“Hello, Sterling, where are you?” shouted a cheery
voice outside.

Philip showed a merry face through the door, and
recognized an old “Ours.”

“By the poker, but you are merry for a man that's
just come to Point Lookout! As a general thing we
may say here,

And of all men in the world you, who were always a
sort of melancholy Jacques! Have you, like him,
heard a fool moralling on the times?” he continued,
shaking Philip's hand, and directing their walk toward
the head of the division.

“Aye, that have I,” replied Sterling.

“We must get you out o' that hole in the 11th div.
some way. Let's see; I think I saw an advertisement
yesterday on the bulletin-board yonder, of a
fellow in the 3d that wanted to sell out. Let 's walk
up and see.”

The bulletin-board was surrounded by a thick crowd,
to whom a lucky man on the inside was reading, in a
loud voice, a long list of names from a paper tacked to
the plank.

“Letters from Dixie,” said Sterling's friend.

They placed themselves on the outer edge of the circle,
and gradually moved in toward the centre.

“Do you notice a man over on the other side of the
crowd yonder, pushing and struggling this way, with his
gaze fixed on you?” said Sterling, to his friend. “His
eye has a snaky glare in it. He has n't lost sight of
you for ten minutes. Got something against you, has n't
he?”

“He is my Nemesis. Every morning at nine o'clock,
I come to the bulletin-board. Every morning at nine
o'clock he meets me here, and demands of me a” —

“What?”

“A chew of tobacco! He commenced it two months
ago. He has not missed a morning since. One day I
attempted to dodge him. I sought cover behind every
tent successively in the encampment. My meanderings
must have been between five and ten miles in length.
I thought I had succeeded. Breathless, but with a
proud smile of triumph on my countenance, I walked
slowly down the street, when he emerged dignifiedly
from behind the next tent, and with disdainful composure

inquired if I had ary chaw of terbacker about my
clo'es. Since then I have resigned myself. He is a
fate!”

“The Fates, then, have learned to chew tobacco, also!
eheu! what would Pius Æneas have said to see them
using spittoons in Hades?”

They were now at the board. It was covered with
a thousand strips of paper, bearing in all manner of
chirographies a thousand items of information. Mr.
A. had changed his residence from No. 3, 4th division,
to No. 7, 10th division; Mr. B. had a corner to let in
his shop, “splendid stand for the unwanted bean-soup
trade”; J. Shankins had a blanket “which he would
swop it fur a par of britches, pleese caul at,” &c.; the
negro minstrels, in big red letters, announced “an entire
change of programme, at 5 o'clock, G. M. Admission
ten cents. No Confederate money received at the
door”; L. Crabbe advertised to meet the eye of his
brother, M. Crabbe, who, if in the prison, would call at,
&c.; Jaines Haxley inquired “ef any gentleman in the
64th regiment seed his son with his own eyes killed at
the Sharpsburg fite”; a facetious individual, blushing
to reveal his name, and therefore writing over Anonymous,
perpetrated the enormous joke of “Help wanted,
to assist me in eating my rations. None need apply
except with the most unexceptionable reference”; to
which was appended the replies of a hundred different
applicants for the situation; a sardonic gentleman inquired
“if Dixie and the Yanks was still a-havin' high
words. Let dogs delight,” &c., &c.; J. Shelpole had
drawd a par of shues, but one of thum was number six
an' wun was No. 10, and “wished to know ef enny gentleman

had a shue, size number 10, please call at,”
&c., &c.

“Here it is at last!” said Sterling. The legend ran,
“Fur privit reesons,” (— “to wit,” interposed Phil's
companion, “a plug of tobacco, or the equivalent thereof
in bread, bean-soup, cash, or other commodities,”) “the
undersined will swop places, fur a little boot, with eny
gentleman in the 11th division. Pleese call at, &c., 3d
division. Call soon and git a bargin.

“Sined J. Threepits.”

“He's your man, Phil. Let's go right up and see
him.”

“But how do you do it? when my corporal calls the
roll” —

“All you 've got to do is to answer to the euphonious
appellation of Threepits, while Mr. T. will respond to
the call for Sterling. The corporal won't know the
difference. I can't deny but Mr. Threepits, in the matter
of names, will slightly get the advantage in the
swap. But it's a very good thing here to have two
names; inasmuch as you stand two chances, when the
exchange-lists are read out, to go back to Dixie. You
must take care, however, that both of you don't answer
to the same name, — a circumstance which has several
times occurred, and caused no little pleasure to the
sharp-witted authorities, as affording a pretext to remand
the disappointed prisoner back to his hole.”