here was a vacancy. I was carried there on a stretcher, and was so sick
that I had to be fed.

Soon after my entrance into the hospital Caleb Rector was brought in.
His home was on the turnpike between Middleburg and Upperville. He had a
scorching fever, and was soon delirious. I put my hand on him, and the
heat almost burned me. One day a nurse took a wet towel and put it on
his forehead. Although he was unconscious, I saw a smile play over his
face, and as the nurse was bending over him he reached up one hand
and caught the nurse by the hair; then pulling his head down, and
lifting the wet towel with his other hand, tried to put it on the
nurse's forehead. That act revealed the character of the man. He was
open-hearted and generous, and the cool towel on his forehead was so
pleasant to him that he wanted the nurse to share it with him.

[Illustration: GEN. A.P. HILL,

Commanding a corps of Lee's army. Killed just before the final
surrender.]

The nurses were all men, chosen from among the prisoners. I never saw a
woman the whole time I was in prison.

The hospitals were long tents, each holding about 30 cots. As soon as a
patient died, he was taken out to the dead-house, the sheets changed,
and another brought in.

When I was first taken there I remarked to my neighbor that I did not
think that was very healthy (meaning the placing of a new patient at
once on a bed that was still warm from the body that had just been
removed). He replied that the bed that I was on had been occupied by a
smallpox patient, and I was put on it a few minutes after the patient
was taken out.

However, there was a separate hospital for contagious diseases, and the
patient was removed as soon as the disease developed.

Most of those who went into the hospital died. The dead were all carried
at once to the dead-house on stretchers, and once a day a two-horse
wagon came in, and their bodies were laid in it like so much cord wood,
uncoffined, taken out and buried in long trenches. The trenches were
seven feet wide and three feet deep, and the bodies were laid across the
trench side by side and covered with earth.

I had been in prison about four months when news came that the two
Governments had agreed upon an exchange of prisoners; it only included
the sick in the hospitals. Of course, every patient in the hospital was
on the anxious bench and wondering whether he would be included among
the fortunate ones. Some days afterward a cor