ising, how much we accomplished in a few weeks towards making
ourselves comfortable. Bone or wood was carved into knives, forks,
spoons, buttons, finger-rings, masonic or army badges, tooth-picks,
bosom pins, and other ornaments; corn-cobs were made into smoking
pipes; scraps of tin or sheet-iron were fashioned into plates for eating
or dishes for cooking; shelves were made by tying long wood splinters
together; and many "spittoons," which were soon rendered superfluous,
because the two entire rooms were transformed into vast spittoons, were
inverted, and made useful as seats which we called sofas.

Many ingeniously wrought specimens of Yankee ingenuity were sold
clandestinely to the rebel guards, who ventured to disobey strict
orders. No skinflint vender of wooden nutmegs, leather pumpkin-seeds,
horn gunflints, shoe-peg oats, huckleberry-leaf tea, bass-wood cheeses,
or white-oak hams, ever hankered more for a trade. Besides the products
of our prison industry, they craved watches, rings, gold chains, silver
spurs, gilt buttons, genuine breast-pins, epaulets; anything that was
not manufactured in the Confederacy. Most of all, they longed for
greenbacks in exchange for rebel currency. So in one way or another many
of us contrived to get a little money of some sort. With it we could buy
of the sutler, who visited us from time to time, rice, flour, beans,
bacon, onions, dried apple, red peppers, sorghum syrup, vinegar, etc.

Perhaps the best result of our engaging in handicraft work was the
relief from unspeakable depression of spirits. Some of us saw the
importance of making diversion on a large scale. To this end we planned
to start a theatre. Major Wm. H. Fry, of the 16th Pa. Cavalry, who knew
all about vaudeville in Philadelphia, was a wise adviser. Young Gardner,
who had been an actor, heartily joined in the movement. I procured a
worn-out copy of Shakespeare. It seemed best to begin with the
presentation of the first act in _Hamlet_. Colonel Smith and other rebel
officers promised to aid us. We assigned the parts and commenced
studying and rehearsing. Gardner was to be Hamlet; Lieut.-Col. Theodore
Gregg, 45th Pa., was to be Claudius, the usurping king; the smooth-faced
Capt. William Cook was to be the queen-mother Gertrude; Capt. W. F.
Tiemann, 159th N. Y., was to personate Marcellus; Lieut. C. H. Morton of
Fairhaven, Mass., I think, was Horatio; and I, having lost about forty
pounds of flesh since my capture--it was