We older prisoners buoyed ourselves up continually with hopes of escape or exchange.

We dug tunnels with the persistence of beavers, and we watched every possible opportunity to get outside the accursed walls of the pen.

But we could not enlist the interest of these discouraged ones in any of our schemes, or talk.
They resigned themselves to Death, and waited despondingly till he came.
A middle-aged One Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up his quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest.

Reasonably intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable mechanic before entering the Army.

He was evidently a very domestic man, whose whole happiness centered in his family.
When he first came in he was thoroughly dazed by the greatness of his misfortune.