we could not catch we
carry with us_!"

About eight o'clock the cry is heard from the southwest end of the room,
"Fall in for roll-call! fall in!" to which several would impudently add,
"Here he comes! here he is!" A tall, slim, stooping, beardless,
light-haired phenomenon, known as "the roll-call sergeant," enters with
two musketeers. We officers having formed in two ranks on the northwest
side of the room, he passes down the front from left to right slowly
counting. Setting down the number in a memorandum book, he commands in a
squeaky feminine voice, "Break ranks," which most of us have already
done. Much speculation arose as to the nature and status of this
singular being. His face was smooth and childlike, yet dry and wrinkled,
so that it was impossible to tell whether he was fifteen or fifty. A
committee was said to have waited upon him, and with much apparent
deference asked him as to his nativity, his age, and whether he was
human or divine, married or single, man or woman. They said he answered
sadly, "Alas! I'm no angel, but a married man, thirty-seven years old,
from South Carolina. I have three children who resemble me."

Immediately after roll-call, corn bread is brought in for breakfast. It
is in large squares about two feet in length and breadth, the top of
each square being marked for cutting into twenty or twenty-five rations.
Colonel Hooper and Capt. D. Tarbell receive the whole from the rebel
commissary, and then distribute to each mess its portion. The mess
commissary endeavors to cut it into equal oblong loaves. To make sure of
a fair distribution, one officer turns his back, and one after another
lays his hand upon a loaf and asks, "Whose is this?" The officer who has
faced about names some one as the recipient.

Clear the way now for sweepers. From one end of the room to the other
they ply their coarse wooden brooms. Some officers are remarkably neat,
and will scrape their floor space with pieces of glass from the broken
windows; a few are listless, sullen, utterly despondent, regardless of
surroundings, apparently sinking into imbecility; the majority are
taking pains to keep up an appearance of respectability.

Many who have been kept awake through the night by cold or rheumatism
now huddle around the stoves and try to sleep. Most of the remainder, as
the weeks pass, glide into something like a routine of occupations. For
several weeks I spent an hour or two every day carving with a brok