In our treatment, I think there was a purpose. If so, it may have been from a belief that we should the sooner recover our senses by experiencing as much misery, pain, privation, and sorrow as could be contained within a prison; and, therefore, the authorities rigidly excluded every medical, pious, musical, or literary charity that might have alleviated our sufferings. It was a barbarous age, it is true; but there were sufficient Christian families in Chicago, who, I am convinced, only needed a suggestion, to have formed societies for the relief of the prisoners. And what an opportunity there was for such, to strengthen piety, to promote cheerfulness, soothe political ferocity, and subdue the brutal and vicious passions which possessed those thousands of unhappy youths immured within the horrible pen! Left to ourselves, with absolutely nothing to do but to brood over our positions, bewail our lots, catch the taint of disease from each other, and passively abide in our prison-pen, we were soon in a fair state of rotting, while yet alive. The reaction from the excitement of the battle-field, and the cheerful presence of exulting thousands, was suspended for a few days by travel up the Mississippi, the generosity of lady-sympathisers in St. Louis, and the trip across Illinois; but, after a few days, it set in strong upon us, when once within the bleak camp at Chicago. Everything we saw and touched added its pernicious influence--the melancholy faces of those who were already wearied with their confinement, the numbers of the sick, the premature agedness of the emaciated, the distressing degeneration of manhood, the plaints of suffering wretches, the increasing bodily discomfort from ever-multiplying vermin, which infested every square inch. Within a week, our new draft commenced to succumb under the maleficent influences of our surroundings. Our buildings swarmed with vermin, the dust-sweepings were alive with them. The men began to suffer from bilious disorders; dysentery and typhus began to rage. Day after day my company steadily diminished; and every morning I had to see them carried in their blankets to the hospital, whence none ever returned. Those not yet delirious, or too weak to move unaided, we kept with us; but the dysentery--however they contracted it--was of a peculiarly epidemical character, and its victims were perpetually passing us, trembling with weakness, or writhing with pain, exasperating our senses to such a degree that only the strong-minded could forego some expression of their disgust.