starn,” indicating a small red streak, which was “the star-spangled banner, Oh, long may it wa-a-ve,” etc. I confess to embracing the staff when I got aboard, and realized that Jeff. Davis himself couldn’t take me away without a fight. But before they let us go aboard there was a long and to us incomprehensible delay of nearly two hours, during which we lay on the grass just above the landing and watched the boat, the flag, and the blue uniforms, with longing eyes. [We learned afterward that Captain Peacock, while strutting up and down the wharf in full Confederate uniform, had been recognized by one of the deck hands who had belonged to his former New York regiment. The said deck hand pointed him out to a friend, with the remark, “Look at his forehead, and you’ll see traitor written there.” This being overheard by Mr. Peacock, he demanded an apology for the insult, swearing that, if refused, he would march us all back to the Libby. How they pacified him I don’t know, but at the end of two hours he had cooled off enough to let us go aboard. I was the first who received permission to go, whereat I bounced on to my one foot and two crutches, picked up my blanket, and charged down the hill. The rebel sentry, who hadn’t yet got his orders to pass us, charged bayonets on me for an instant, but, on a sign from Peacock, shouldered arms again; and the next moment I was embracing the flag-staff, as afore mentioned. The Sanitary Commission received us with open arms and some delicious milk-punch, and in a few minutes we were under full steam out of rebeldom, Sergeant Holloway and I leaning on the guards, watching the foam fly past, and singing, sotto voce,—“We’re going home, we’re going home, we’re going home to die no more!”

We were two days on board the flag-of-truce boat. The next cot to mine was occupied by a man of a Massachusetts regiment, taken at the first Bull Run. He was almost a skeleton, and the worst case of chills and fever I ever saw. The second day being a shake day, he couldn’t eat his rations, and offered them to me. He said he thought he was dying. “But,” said he, “I don’t complain now I’ve got out of hell, and I shall live long enough to get back into God’s country and die there, which is all I’ve been praying for for months.”]

Monday.—Aboard the “Commodore,” off Fortress Monroe, waiting for orders, which have just come, for Washington. And here we are at Washington, waiting orders again. When I find myself once more a free man in Willard’s Hotel, I shall turn down the leaf of my experiences as prisoner of war to the rebels.

Now for philosophy. Captain gone ashore, and fearful rumors pervade the boat about Annapolis, New York, etc. Well, it can be but a day or two, and we are out of rebeldom. I’ve kept well so— [“Far” would have been the next word, but marching orders intervened, and the next entry, in big letters at the bottom of the page, reads] A free man at Willard’s!

And the first act of the free man aforesaid was to purchase some underclothes at the furnishing store, which luckily had not closed for the night, and to proceed therewith to the bath-room, where hot water and soap speedily restored that self-respect which is so difficult to retain after one is conscious of not being the only inhabitant of one’s garments. The next day, I drew my pay and replaced my ragged blouse, bullet-pierced trowsers, and torn Confederate cap (given me on the field to replace my broad-brimmed felt, which a Georgia gentleman fancied), by the jauntiest uniform clothes I could find, after which I sallied out on the avenue; and the first man I met was the captain of the “Commodore,” who at first insisted that I was mistaken, as he had never seen me before in his life; and only my crutches and wounded foot at last convinced him that I was the same man who had talked to him about Harry Russell, the day before. The next day, it was just the other way. Smart young officer rushes up: “Hallo, Captain Quincy! thought it must be you. How are you?” “Well,” said I, “I’m glad you thought it was I; but whether it’s you or not I’m sure I don’t know, for I should say I had never set eyes on you before.” “What, you don’t know the man you identified yesterday?” And it turned out to be a lieutenant of a Western regiment, and fellow-prisoner, all of whose clothing in the Libby consisted of shirt, trowsers, and army blanket pinned over his shoulders. Arriving in Washington, without a cent, I had identified him at the pay department, while still in his blanket, from which chrysalis the all-potent greenback had evoked as shiny a blue-and-brass butterfly as any on the avenue.

This concludes my prison history. I was never again taken, though coming pretty near it once or twice in Louisiana, where, as an officer of colored troops, my experiences might have been much more severe than those above recounted. If the story has interested former comrades or assisted in drawing closer the link which binds together the survivors of the old regiment, I can only rejoice that the committee asked me to relate it to you.