John G. B. Adams, Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment

[109] some more, said he reckoned I would,--and I did. At night we lay down on the hard floor and tried to sleep, but were so hungry we could not. Besides our hunger we had many other things to contend with. When we entered the room we thought it was vacant but were mistaken, for we discovered that it was inhabited by “very many curious things that crawl about and fly on wings.”

Morning came at last. We got up, washed in an old tank in one corner of the room, wiped our faces on our shirts, and waited for breakfast. While waiting I went to the window to look out. In a second I found myself on the floor and heard the report of a musket. The guard in front had fired at me, but a comrade had seen him as he brought up his piece and had pulled me down. Had he not done so some other fellow would have written this story.

About ten o'clock rations came in and we eagerly fell in to receive them. They consisted of a piece of corn bread as large as a quarter of a brick and twice as hard, bean soup, and a very small piece of rotten bacon. How to draw the bean soup was the question, as we had nothing to draw it in. Lieutenant McGinnis was in rear of me. He said he must have some soup, and, taking a broken pane of glass, he fell in and the line moved on. When it came my turn the negro who issued the rations dipped in his gill dipper and I held out my hands. He turned it in. The soup ran through my fingers, but I secured a few beans. McGinnis held out his pane of glass and drew four rations, one on each corner. We did not touch the bacon. Hungry as we were the smell satisfied us. We went upstairs and sat down to dinner. I ate half my bread, and thinking it unwise to make a pig of myself at my first banquet in Richmond, placed the rest on the window