Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/35

Rh He occupied a small house built of cracker-box boards. In front of his doorway he had a table built of the same material, on which he exposed his various wares for sale, such as pieces of tobacco, cornbread pones, with maybe a pipe or two, ornaments and bric-a-brac made of bone arranged to make the best show possible under his limitations, just as a shopkeeper in Vanity Fair would arrange his goods in his shop window to catch the eye and deplete the pocket of the unwary passerby. Many a pone I did purchase, finding it an agreeable change from baker's bread. Many of the prisoners realized goodly sums of money from the Federal officers in making chessman, rings, breastpins and other articles, out of wood, pieces of bone, and mother-of-pearl.

In about ten days we received an addition to our company of some more Petersburg men among them, Mr. William B. Egerton, taken prisoner in the attack made upon our line a week after, following the affair of the 9th of June. From these prisoners we learned the full particulars of the results of the fight on the 9th of June, and how the city had been saved by Captain Graham's battery and General Hearing's cavalry reaching the heights in time to check General Kautz's advance, and how the city had been stirred up by the deaths of the patriot citizens who had fallen that day in its defence.

Our company shortly after this was divided. The Federals, finding the place was in too crowded a condition, sent off a considerable number of the prisoners to Elmira, in New York State. including the greater part of our people. We parted, as may be supposed, with many expressions of regret. We had been thrown together so much under very trying circumstances that we felt the separation a good deal. It was with intense feeling that those of us who remained heard, from time to time, from new prisoners coming in, of the varying fortunes of the war. A stray copy of the New York Herald or other Northern journal would find its way in. News would also be communicated by the Federals themselves, and though reports coming in this way had to be received cum grano satis is we could form a tolerable