owded Stockade we
had left. The attempts to escape did all engaged in them good, even
though they failed, since they aroused new ideas and hopes, set the blood
into more rapid circulation, and toned up the mind and system both.
I had come away from Andersonville with considerable scurvy manifesting
itself in my gums and feet. Soon these signs almost wholly disappeared.

We also got away from those murderous little brats of Reserves,
who guarded us at Andersonville, and shot men down as they would stone
apples out of a tree. Our guards now were mostly, sailors, from the
Rebel fleet in the harbor--Irishmen, Englishmen and Scandinavians, as
free hearted and kindly as sailors always are. I do not think they ever
fired a shot at one of us. The only trouble we had was with that portion
of the guard drawn from the infantry of the garrison. They had the same
rattlesnake venom of the Home Guard crowd wherever we met it, and shot us
down at the least provocation. Fortunately they only formed a small part
of the sentinels.

Best of all, we escaped for a while from the upas-like shadow of Winder
and Wirz, in whose presence strong men sickened and died, as when near
some malign genii of an Eastern story. The peasantry of Italy believed
firmly in the evil eye. Did they ever know any such men as Winder and
his satellite, I could comprehend how much foundation they could have for
such a belief.

Lieutenant Davis had many faults, but there was no comparison between him
and the Andersonville commandant. He was a typical young Southern man;
ignorant and bumptious as to the most common matters of school-boy
knowledge, inordinately vain of himself and his family, coarse in tastes
and thoughts, violent in his prejudices, but after all with some streaks
of honor and generosity that made the widest possible difference between
him and Wirz, who never had any. As one of my chums said to me:

"Wirz is the most even-tempered man I ever knew; he's always foaming
mad."

This was nearly the truth. I never saw Wirz when he was not angry;
if not violently abusive, he was cynical and sardonic. Never, in my
little experience with him did I detect a glint of kindly, generous
humanity; if he ever was moved by any sight of suffering its exhibition
in his face escaped my eye. If he ever had even a wish to mitigate the
pain or hardship of any man the expression of such wish never fell on my
ear. How a man could move daily through such mise