deavoring to extinguish the flames, and for a time it
looked as though another terrible conflagration was inevitable.

When a well directed shell would drop in, and explode where the firemen
were at work and scatter them, we would send up a cheer that must have
been heard where the flames were raging.

Citizens gathered upon the flat roofs of their dwellings and watched the
conflict, between the Charleston firemen on one side, and the crackling
flames and General Gilmore's batteries on Morris Island, on the other.

I saw a man and woman upon their roof near the burning building, and when
the shells began to drop in pretty thick and fast, and some of them most
uncomfortably near to where they stood, the gentleman seemed to suddenly
think of some duty he was obliged to attend to below, while the lady
pluckily staid it out. The wonderful accuracy with which General Gilmore
sent those immense projectiles into any part of the city, from his
batteries on Morris Island, five miles away, was simply astonishing. He
seemed to be able to drop them just where he pleased and there was no
time, day or night, when the citizens of that doomed city had not good
reason to expect that they might receive one of Gilmore's compliments, as
we used to call them. While we were waiting in the Broad Street House for
the order to start for Columbia, after we had got all packed up, the
officers commenced writing their names on the wall near where they had
slept, and being in rather a poetical mood just then, I took my pencil and
wrote on the wall in the corner where my quarters had been, the following:

I have slept in this corner for many a night,
A prisoner of war in a pitiful plight,
I have ate my corn dodger, my bacon and rice,
And have skirmished my shirt and my drawers for lice.

Here's health to Jeff Davis and bad may it be,
May mercy and pardon afar from him flee,
May he find, when too late, to his sorrow and cost,
That not only the Confederacy, but Heaven he's lost.

CHAPTER XXIX.

EXCHANGE ON THE BRAIN.

Many of the prisoners were afflicted to a greater or less extent, with
what was termed exchange on the brain.

This disease would manifest itself in various ways, and different persons
would be differently affected by it.

I remember numerous cases of this malady, (for it really was a malady) in
the different prisons. Persons thus afflicted, would improve every
opportunity to inform themselves of the pr