Chapter 73

CHRISTMAS--AND THE WAY THE WAS PASSED--THE DAILY ROUTINE OF RATION
DRAWING--SOME PECULIARITIES OF LIVING AND DYING.

Christmas, with its swelling flood of happy memories,--memories now
bitter because they marked the high tide whence our fortunes had receded
to this despicable state--came, but brought no change to mark its coming.
It is true that we had expected no change; we had not looked forward to
the day, and hardly knew when it arrived, so indifferent were we to the
lapse of time.

When reminded that the day was one that in all Christendom was sacred to
good cheer and joyful meetings; that wherever the upraised cross
proclaimed followers of Him who preached "Peace on Earth and good will to
men," parents and children, brothers and sisters, long-time friends, and
all congenial spirits were gathering around hospitable boards to delight
in each other's society, and strengthen the bonds of unity between them,
we listened as to a tale told of some foreign land from which we had
parted forever more.

It seemed years since we had known anything of the kind. The experience
we had had of it belonged to the dim and irrevocable past. It could not
come to us again, nor we go to it. Squalor, hunger, cold and wasting
disease had become the ordinary conditions of existence, from which there
was little hope that we would ever be exempt.

Perhaps it was well, to a certain degree, that we felt so. It softened
the poignancy of our reflections over the difference in the condition of
ourselves and our happier comrades who were elsewhere.

The weather was in harmony with our feelings. The dull, gray, leaden sky
was as sharp a contrast with the crisp, bracing sharpness of a Northern
Christmas morning, as our beggarly little ration of saltless corn meal
was to the sumptuous cheer that loaded the dinner-tables of our Northern
homes.

We turned out languidly in the morning to roll-call, endured silently the
raving abuse of the cowardly brute Barrett, hung stupidly over the
flickering little fires, until the gates opened to admit the rations.
For an hour there was bustle and animation. All stood around and counted
each sack of meal, to get an idea of the rations we were likely to
receive.

This was a daily custom. The number intended for the day's issue were
all brought in and piled up in the street. Then there was a division of
the sacks to the thousands, the Sergeant of each being called up in turn,
and allowed to pick out and carry away one, until all were taken. When
we entered the prison each thousand received, on an average, ten or
eleven sacks a day. Every week saw a reduction in the number, until by
midwinter the daily issue to a thousand averaged four sacks. Let us say
that