There were but few official messages of any importance that I was able to hear; those carried to and fro by the orderlies, and to which I gave my personal attention in a quiet way, would turn out to be generally some Quartermaster's or Commissaries' orders or requisitions, and I became nervous and tired over the strain or tension I had been obliged to maintain in order to overhear the instruments in the midst of the confusion always existing about the place.
As the telegraph table was jammed up tightly against the board wall of the house, under the window, it became my favorite place for loafing when outside of the office. I could sit on the board platform and, with my back against the boards under the window distinctly hear every word that went over the wires, the thin partition between my head and the inside answered as a sounding-board, really helping to convey the signals by vibration.
If the reader is anxious to try an experiment, let him place an ear against even a thick wall and allow some person with a penknife handle to tap or knock ever so softly, but quickly and sharply, in imitation of a telegraph instrument's click, and you will be astonished at the distinctness with which the wall will carry the sound like a telegraph wire.
There was always about the place a lot of idle loafers--Rebel soldiers off duty, who naturally gravitated toward the railroad stations, where the little stores or sutlers were usually to be found, dealing out commissary whisky and tobacco.
Every day, and for every train, there would be crowds of sickly-looking soldiers at the station in care of friends, who were taking them to the trains for their homes. Dear me! I recall it as if it were but yesterday, how the hundreds of poor fellows looked as they were helped aboard the crowded cars by their poor old fathers, or perhaps younger brothers. I always associate in my mind a sick Rebel, with his big eyes and sallow face, with a resemblance to a crazy tramp one sees sometimes nowadays, injured while stealing a ride on a freight train, gazing at everything in a stupid sort of way, clothed in a pair of butternut pants and coat, and big gray blanket over his shoulders even in that August sun. I saw lots of them go away from Manassas that I felt sure would never return to trouble us. They were not all sick, not by any means; some of the chaps that gathered about our place were about as lively and fractious as one meets at an Irish picnic.