“Of my sixpence nothing like fivepence was left to purchase food for the day. Indeed not fourpence. For there was washing, mending, soap, flour for hair-powder, shoes, stockings, shirts, stocks and gaiters, pipe-clay and several other things, all to come out of the miserable sixpence!… The whole week’s food was not a bit too much for one day. It is not disaffection, it is not a want of fidelity to oaths, that makes soldiers desert, one time out of ten thousand; it is hunger, which will break through stone walls; and which will, therefore, break through oaths and the danger of punishment. We had several recruits from Norfolk (our regiment was the West Norfolk); and many of them deserted from sheer hunger. They were lads from the plough-tail. All of them tall; for no short men were then taken. I remember two that went into a decline and died during the year; though when they joined us they were fine hearty young men. I have seen them lay in their berths, many and many a time, actually crying on account of hunger. “The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table.… I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter-time it was rarely that I could get any evening light but that of the fire; and only _my turn_ even of that.… To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of half-starvation: I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the _farthing_ that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now; I had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money, not expended for us at market, was _twopence a week_ for each man. I remember (and well I may!) that upon one occasion I, after all absolutely necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a red-herring in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that I had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.”