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Andersonville — Volume 4 by John McElroy
page 93 of 190 (48%)
to get another gun, but his fit subsided before he obtained it.




CHAPTER LXXIII.

CHRISTMAS--AND THE WAY THE WAS PASSED--THE DAILY ROUTINE OF RATION
DRAWING--SOME PECULIARITIES OF LIVING AND DYING.

Christmas, with its swelling flood of happy memories,--memories now
bitter because they marked the high tide whence our fortunes had receded
to this despicable state--came, but brought no change to mark its coming.
It is true that we had expected no change; we had not looked forward to
the day, and hardly knew when it arrived, so indifferent were we to the
lapse of time.

When reminded that the day was one that in all Christendom was sacred to
good cheer and joyful meetings; that wherever the upraised cross
proclaimed followers of Him who preached "Peace on Earth and good will to
men," parents and children, brothers and sisters, long-time friends, and
all congenial spirits were gathering around hospitable boards to delight
in each other's society, and strengthen the bonds of unity between them,
we listened as to a tale told of some foreign land from which we had
parted forever more.

It seemed years since we had known anything of the kind. The experience
we had had of it belonged to the dim and irrevocable past. It could not
come to us again, nor we go to it. Squalor, hunger, cold and wasting
disease had become the ordinary conditions of existence, from which there
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