There were some Confederate officers, ready to talk without bitterness of the war, and I was very glad to improve the occasion, having never had the chance of a look from that side the curtain. Anything more grim and humorous than the picture of Southern society during those awful four years I never hope to meet with. The entire want of regular medicines, especially bark, was their greatest trouble in his eyes. In his brigade their remedy for “the shakes” came to be a plaster of raw turpentine, just drawn from the pine woods, laid on down the back. Some one suggested that pills were very portable, and easily imported. “Pills!” he said scornfully; “pills, sir, were as scarce in our brigade as the grace of God in a grog shop at midnight.” Nothing so much brought out to me the horrors of civil war as his account of the perfect knowledge each side had of the plans and doings on the other. A Northern officer, he had since come to know, was leaning against a post within three yards of Jeff. Davis when he made his famous speech announcing the supersession of Joe Johnson as the general fronting Sherman. Sherman had heard it in a few hours, and was acting on the news before nightfall. The most terrible example was that of the mining of the Richmond lines. The defenders knew almost to a foot where the mines were, and when they were to be fired. Breckenbridge’s division, in which he fought, were drawn up in line to repel the attack when the earthworks went up in the air, and the assailants rushed into the great gap which had been made, and which was nearly filled, before they fell back, with the bodies of Northern soldiers. For the last two years, in almost every battle he had all he could do to hold his own against the front attack, knowing and feeling all the while that the enemy was overlapping and massing on both flanks, and that he would have to retire his regiment before they could close. And yet they held together to the last! I pity mothers, too, down South, Altho’ they sat amongst the scorners.