en
knife-blade a spoon from a block of hard wood. Sporadic wood-splitting
is going on, and cooking appears to be one of the fine arts. An hour
daily of oral exercises in French, German, Spanish, Latin, or Italian,
under competent teachers, after the Sauveur or Berlitz method, amused
and to some extent instructed many. Our cavalry adjutant, Dutch Clark,
so called from his skill in the "Pennsylvania Dutch" dialect made
perhaps a hundred familiar with the morning salutation, "_Haben Sie gut
geschlafen?_" ("Have you slept well?") Lieut. Henry Vander Weyde, A. D.
C., 1st Div., 6th Corps, the artist chum of our principal German
instructor, amused many by his pencil portraits of "Slim Jim," the
nondescript "roll-call sergeant" of uncertain age and gender; also of
some of the sentries, and one or two of his fellow prisoners. A worn-out
pack of fifty-two cards, two or three chess and checker boards of our
manufacture, and twenty-four rudely carved checker-men and thirty-two
fantastic chess-men, furnished frequent amusement to those who
understood the games.

On an average once in two days we received about one o'clock what was
called soup. We were told, and we believed it to be true, that all the
rich nitrogenous portion had been carefully skimmed off for use
elsewhere; not thrown away as the fresh maid threw the "scum" that
formed on top of the milk!

The topic of most frequent discussion was the prospect of an exchange of
prisoners. Our would-be German conversationalists never forgot to ask,
"_Haben Sie etwas gehoerten von Auswechseln der Gefangenen?_" ("Have you
heard anything of exchange of prisoners?") It was hard to believe that
our government would leave us to die of starvation.

At the close of the soup hour and after another turn at sweeping, almost
every officer again sat down or sat up to rid himself of the _pediculidae
vestimenti_. We called it "skirmishing"; it was rather a pitched battle.
The humblest soldier and the brevet major-general must daily strip and
fight. Ludicrous, were it not so abominable, was this mortifying
necessity. No account of prison life in Danville would be complete
without it. Pass by it hereafter in sorrow and silence, as one of those
duties which Cicero says are to be done but not talked about.

The occupations of the morning are now largely resumed, but many prefer
to lie quiet on the floor for an hour.

An interesting incident that might happen at any time is the arrival in
prison o