"So you have had a taste of Union prisons, eh?" asked Senator Baker, who spoke feelingly--his "Recollections of Johnson's Island" had just made its appearance. "Just a leetle might of a taste, Senator; nothing like your experience, though. You see, it was this way with me. I was captured by a pretty good sort of a fellow--a big, husky, soft-hearted chap who wouldn't hurt a flea. That's him over there," pointing to Senator Bull, "and he has held me prisoner ever since. He ran up against me at Chickamauga." "Well?" said Senator Baker expectantly. "Tell them the whole story, Sammy," said Senator Bull, as several of the party drew their chairs up closer to the private secretary; "tell them the whole story; it will kill time, anyway." "Yes," continued Mr. Ridley, "I was taken prisoner, and it all came of my foolishness and scorn for the enemy. We boys of the --th Arkansas thought any Johnny Reb could whip five Yanks, and it made us kind of careless-like, I reckon. I was a raw country lad when the war broke out, as tough a specimen as ever Jefferson County turned loose on the unsuspecting public, but I wasn't much worse than the rest of the boys who loafed around Todd's livery stable swapping lies, chawing tobacco, and setting the nation to rights. We were all full of fight when the Sumter news came, and anxious to get in it; and I saw a heap of it, too, before I made the acquaintance of Nathan Bull. "There was some lively skirmishing on the morning of September twentieth, sixty-three, before the armies got together in earnest. It was real comical to see the boys tearing up their love-letters and playing-cards just before going into battle. The roads and fields were speckled with the scraps just like a snowfall on the stage, as I reckon all of you have seen in plays like 'Alone in London,' and the 'Banker's Daughter.' It was in one of those preliminary set-tos that somehow my company strayed away, and left me up in the woods with a bullet in my leg. I was looking around for some place where I could lie down and nurse myself a bit, and at the same time keep clear of the shells and other things flying around. The air was full of them--making a noise like 'Whar-izz-yer?' 'Whar-izz-yer?' Haven't you often heard that sound, Senator? Some poor devil hears it once _too_ often, every now and then, doesn't he?