te money for one of ours, when he told
me frankly that he expected to go to Vicksburg--then within our
lines--to buy medicine for the use of their army.

"Do you think it possible to do this?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," he responded; "I have done so several times already, and
there is no trouble about it."

In a moment it flashed across my mind that here was a chance to get a
letter through to my loved ones at home, and I said to him:

"Would you have the kindness to take a letter through for me and mail it
to my wife when you get to Vicksburg?"

"Oh, certainly," he said; "I can do that just as well as not."

With bounding heart I tore a leaf out of my pocket diary and wrote a few
lines to my wife, saying that I was all right, telling her to keep up
her courage and that all would yet be well.

I gave the precious scrap of paper to the gentleman--without an
envelope, as a matter of necessity--_and my wife received it all right_
from Vicksburg, where it had been enclosed in an envelope and mailed.

I remember this kind-hearted gentleman with much gratitude, and, as the
receipt of the letter would indicate that he got through as expected,
the fact has always been to me a source of satisfaction beyond that of
personal benefit.

This experience, as well as the one to follow, is recorded all the more
readily because the kindnesses received during our sojourn in Rebeldom
were not expected, at least by me.

On our return to the stockade, after an escape elsewhere described, an
incident occurred which gave me greater faith in human nature than I had
possessed up to that time.

We were pretty well used up by our constant traveling, were having
little to eat, and I was not feeling very well; perhaps looking even
worse than I felt.

Thinking that a cup of milk would be at once a benefit and a positive
luxury to me, one morning, just after daylight and before we had broken
camp for the day's march under our guards, I made up my mind to visit a
house near our resting place and ask for the drink to which my palate
had been a stranger for about two years. I was scarcely a presentable
object, being barefooted, my pants frayed out up to my knees and hanging
in shreds below, my coat-tails cut off at the waist, my feet wrapped in
the detached fragments of my coat, and I wore a white wool hat, given me
by the "Johnnies," as the best they had, that drooped so much as to
necessitate doubling it up like a "turnover" pie. In this plight