ned
in a Stall--Dreadful Gloom--Routine of a Day--Suffering
at Night--Friends Exchanged--Newspapers--Burnside--Pecuniary
Perplexities--Captain Webster--Escape
Prevented--Try Again on Christmas Night--Betrayed--Fearful
Danger Avoided. 247-266

CHAPTER XVI.

Letter sent Home--Alarming Pestilence--Our Quarters
Changed--Rowdyism--Fairy Stories--Judge Baxter--Satanic
Strategy--Miller's History--An Exchange with a
Dead Man--Effect of Democratic Victories--Attempt to
Make us Work--Digging out of a Cell--Worse than the
Inquisition--Unexpected Interference--List from "Yankee
Land"--Clothing Stolen--Paroled--A Night of Joy--Torch-light
March--On the Cars--The Boat--Reach
Washington--Receive Medals, Money, and Promotion--Home. 267-288

INTRODUCTION.

While our absent brothers are battling on the field, it is becoming
that the friends at home should be eager for the minutest particulars
of the camp-life, courage and endurance of the dear boys far away; for
to the loyal lover of his country every soldier is a brother.

The narrative related on the following pages is one of extraordinary
"daring and suffering," and will excite an interest in the public mind
such as has rarely, if ever, arisen from any personal adventures
recorded on the page of history.

WILLIAM PITTENGER, the oldest of a numerous family, was born in
Jefferson county, Ohio, January 31st, 1840. His father, THOMAS
PITTENGER, is a farmer, and trains his children in the solid
experiences of manual labor. His mother is from a thinking familyhood
of people, many of whom are well known in Eastern Ohio as pioneers in
social and moral progress--the MILLS'S. WILLIAM learned to love his
country about as early as he learned to love his own mother; for his
first lessons were loyalty and liberty, syllabled by a mother's lips.
Even before the boy could read, he knew in outline the history of our
nation's trials and triumphs, from the days of Bunker Hill, forward to
the passing events of the latest newspaper chronicling,--all of which
facts were nightly canvassed around the cabin-hearth.

Although he was an adept in all branches of learning, yet, in school
days, as now, young PITTENGER had two favorite studies; and they
happened to be the very ones in the prosecution of which his teachers
could aid him scarcely at all--History and Astronomy. But, in the face
of discouragement, with the aid only of accidental helps,