Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/202

162 here to see me, and we had a woman's long talk about everything in general and nothing in particular.

Since morning the clouds have cleared away, and the sun has deigned to look upon our drenched camp, with its yellow light. Seven of the One Hundred and Ninth boys on their way home, have been in to see me to-day. I wish I were a soldier that I might avail myself of a furlough; but then I don't think I should particularly like being shut up on my return in the "Bull Pen," for fear I might run away again.

A disgrace to the service; it ought to be riddled, and the material burned, a funeral pyre for the countless host of swarming lice which devour the inmates alive. If Government sanctions the keeping open of that pen, where deserters, prisoners, convicts, and sick men returned from furlough, are put in together, then Government ought to be ashamed of itself, and wipe it out with all speed.

They must have a fine opinion of the courage and honor of enlisted men, when they throw them into that unclean, lousy place to harden towards their keepers. Were I a man, and a soldier, and on return from a furlough, with no crime for which I was held responsible, put into that den, I would shoot somebody when I got out—that I know. I would be avenged in some way. Men who volunteered for the salvation of their country to be treated thus like cattle, and worse than cattle!