This case was a type of many others. Some young men, among the hundreds of thousands that enlisted in the Northern and Southern armies, failed adequately to count the cost of what they so enthusiastically undertook to do. Two young men of St. Louis, who enlisted in the Confederate army, were doing duty under Price, in Missouri. November had come with its chilling storms of rain and sleet; and without a tent they were compelled to spend a night in the shelterless field. They had gathered some logs and sticks and were endeavoring, as the gusts of wind swept over them, to light a fire; but their kindling was wet and the wind would quickly blow out their matches. Shivering with cold that seemed to pierce to the very marrow of their bones, looking in blank despair on those wet sticks and logs, one of them said: “Joe, soldiering is not what it is cracked up to be. It is just hell, and I am going to get out of it as soon as I can.” Still he was an ardent Southerner, but just for a little his burning zeal was damped and cooled by a chill November rain. But my chief experiences were with Confederate prisoners. While the disloyal of my own denomination abhorred my politics and exercised at best a rather strained and attenuated brotherly love towards me, when, for any cause, they were so unfortunate as to get into prison, they often urgently appealed to me for succor. Out on the Gravois road, a few miles west of the city, lived a Baptist preacher. He had sandy hair, a florid face, a muscular frame, and was about six feet in height. While rough in his manners, he was a man of great force. Brought up, or as he said, “raised,” in Mississippi, he was an uncompromising rebel. Late in the autumn of 1861, up in the State, at the town of Mexico, in a dark night, he swiftly rode on horseback through the lines of the Federal troops stationed there, and as he did so holloed: “Hurrah for Jeff Davis.” He was tracked to his home and arrested. He appeared at my door about nine o’clock in the morning, in a buggy, sitting between two United States officers. One of them rang my bell and I went out to see their prisoner. While he heartily despised me for my loyalty, he had evidently concluded that I was just the man to help him in his dire extremity. I asked the officers on what charge he had been arrested. They said that they had not been informed. I then asked him the same question, and he said that he did not know. He told no lie, but at the same time he could have very accurately guessed. Still, he could not have been reasonably expected to incriminate himself before the officers who had him in charge. He blubbered over his sad plight and entreated me to intercede with the provost marshal on his behalf. His tears, however, were not on account of his misdemeanor; he evidently cried because he had been caught. Nevertheless, I told him that I would do what I could for him.