CHAPTER XV.   Diplomacy   129   CHAPTER XVI.   Making Progress   139   CHAPTER XVII.   A Puzzle, and Incidents   148   CHAPTER XVIII.   Experiences   158   CHAPTER XIX.   Good Luck and Bad   169   CHAPTER XX.   In the Toils   177   CHAPTER XXI.   Another Return Trip   186   CHAPTER XXII.   Foraging, and a New Prison   196   CHAPTER XXIII.   To Camp Ford and Joy   207   CHAPTER XXIV.   Liberty at Last   219

 

 

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ILLUSTRATIONS.

Captain S. A. Swiggett,		Frontispiece.
General F. M. Drake,		18
Lieutenant Walter S. Johnson,		39
Adjutant S. K. Mahon,		69
Captain J. B. Gedney,		79
Captain Thomas M. Fee,		89
Captain Charles Burnbaum,		94
Captain J. P. Rummel,		115
Captain B. F. Miller,		167
Sergeant E. B. Rocket,		189

 

 

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The Bright Side of Prison Life.

 

 

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARIES.

My first appearance in the United States was made on the 19th of May, A. D. 1834. I have no recollection of this important event, but am reliably informed that the given date is correct, and that Dorchester county, Maryland, was the locality. At that time I had no premonition of my future life in a rebel prison, and if anyone had told me of the fourteen months which were to be spent mostly in such a manner I should have paid no attention whatever.

The year 1855 found me in Blakesburg, Iowa, after having lived in Indiana during the three years following my removal from Maryland.

In 1856 occurred my marriage to Miss Eliza H. Van Cleve, and no man could be more happily wedded. For thirty-eight years, until her recent death, on April 13, 1894, our life was as much of a honeymoon as it is possible for a well-mated couple to make it.

I had learned