[132] draped in a blanket washing his only pair of trousers was not uncommon at Macon. At some of the prisons proper facilities were provided, but, oftener, men reverted to the habits of the cave-man. Says Sidney Lanier, in the book already quoted:
For this man's clothes, those three thieves, grease, dirt, and smoke, had drawn lots; but not content with the allotment, all three were evidently contending which should have the whole suit. It appeared likely that dirt would be the happy thief. “Wash 'em?” said this man one day, when the Federal corporal had the impudence to refer to the sacred soil on his clothes— “wash 'em, corp'ral? I'm bound to say 'at you're a damn fool! That mud's what holds 'em together; sticks 'em fast-like! Ef you was to put them do's in water they'd go to nothing just like a piece oa salt!” Inside of these clay-clothes a stalwart frame of a man lived and worked, a fearless soul, which had met death and laughed at it, from the Seven Days to Gettysburg, but which was now engaged in superintending a small manufactory of bone trinkets and gutta-percha rings, the sale of which brought wherewithal to eke out the meager sustenance of the prison ration.The determination to escape held first place with thousands. Where the prison was a stockade such men were always engaged on a tunnel, or else devoted their minds to working out some fantastic plan which would not fail to give them their liberty. Some plotted rebellion against authority, which seldom, however, was carried out. Some became expert psychologists, able to calculate to a nicety how much impertinence any particular officer would endure. Others played with fire by devoting their whole minds to the task of irritating the guards and yet affording them no pretext for punishment. The passion for gambling was even stronger in prison than out. Prisoners staked their food, their clothing, their blankets, their most precious belongings which had escaped the
