that I dared to, just to see what each was like, and to be able to say afterwards that I had partaken of it; all these bewildering delights of the first realization of what a boy has read and wondered much over, and longed for, would dance their rout and reel through my somnolent brain.  Then I would awake to find myself a half-naked, half-starved, vermin-eaten wretch, crouching in a hole in the ground, waiting for my keepers to fling me a chunk of corn bread.

Naturally the boys—­and especially the country boys and new prisoners —­talked much of victuals—­what they had had, and what they would have again, when they got out.  Take this as a sample of the conversation which might be heard in any group of boys, sitting together on the sand, killin lice and talking of exchange: 

Tom—­“Well, Bill, when we get back to God’s country, you and Jim and John must all come to my house and take dinner with me.  I want to give you a square meal.  I want to show you just what good livin’ is.  You know my mother is just the best cook in all that section.  When she lays herself out to get up a meal all the other women in the neighborhood just stand back and admire!”

Bill—­“O, that’s all right; but I’ll bet she can’t hold a candle to my mother, when it comes to good cooking.”

Jim—­“No, nor to mine.”

John—­(with patronizing contempt.) “O, shucks!  None of you fellers were ever at our house, even when we had one of our common weekday dinners.”

Tom—­(unheedful of the counter claims.) I hev teen studyin’ up the dinner I’d like, and the bill-of-fare I’d set out for you fellers when you come over to see me.  First, of course, we’ll lay the foundation like with a nice, juicy loin roast, and some mashed potatos.

Bill—­(interrupting.) “Now, do you like mashed potatos with beef?  The way may mother does is to pare the potatos, and lay them in the pan along with the beef.  Then, you know, they come out just as nice and crisp, and brown; they have soaked up all the beef gravy, and they crinkle between your teeth—­”

Jim—­“Now, I tell you, mashed Neshannocks with butter on ’em is plenty good enough for me.”

John—­“If you’d et some of the new kind of peachblows that we raised in the old pasture lot the year before I enlisted, you’d never say another word about your Neshannocks.”

Tom—­(taking breath and starting in fresh.) “Then we’ll hev some fried Spring chickens, of our dominick breed.  Them dominicks of ours have the nicest, tenderest meat, better’n quail, a darned sight, and the way my mother can fry Spring chickens——­”

Bill—­(aside to Jim.) “Every durned woman in the country thinks she can ‘spry ching frickens;’ but my mother—–­”