In talking with him one day, he remarked, with a significant grin: "You always say _down_ here, and that your going to go up home; I thought you was going to stay in Dixie?" I took the ignorant boy's teachings thankfully, and was more careful in the use of the words after that lesson.
I might fill a chapter with interesting stories of Richmond life which the boy gave me that were a pleasant relief for me, and served to while away, in my solitary sick bed, my first weeks in Richmond.
I took the opportunity the leisure afforded me of putting in operation a plan for secretly attempting to communicate with my friends in the North. I realized that I should not be able soon to undertake any adventuresome travels, and I could not reach home by any easy stages.
While yet a school boy I had practiced with my playmates a simple system of a cipher; with this, which was the easiest form that I then knew for a basis, I worked out in the form of a letter, that I could pass through to Baltimore on the blockade runners, a secret communication reciting my discoveries at Manassas, etc.
It is an easy matter to arrange a system of cipher communication between any two persons, which will be readily and perfectly understood by them alone, or only by those who have been furnished with a key. In my particular circumstances, however, it was necessary that my letter should be a blind cipher, and so worded as not to excite suspicion, or distrust, and it must, besides, carry the key along with it, concealed of course, as I had not had an opportunity of making a preconcerted arrangement. I had intended to propose this to General Banks at the interview at Harper's Ferry, which, unluckily, did not take place, as I have explained.
The letter that was sent through the blockade is given herewith, as _copied from the original_, and I shall be glad to have the reader look for the secret information it contains before referring to the key, which follows:
"CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, POWHATTAN HOTEL, RICHMOND, VA., August, - - - - - 1861.
"For three weeks I've been quite sick, but am all-right now, and hope, through the kind attention of Southern friends of ours in army, to soon be out again. - - - I will be greatly obliged if you will arrange to have money sent without delay, to pay my bills here, which were incurred on account of this most unfortunate sickness. . - - I am satisfied it's impossible to secure from our Confederate Maryland friends any cash advance, because I know they are all rather short, (having exhausted in getting here about half their money before joining Army. Since I have been absent from my regiment here sick, I have consumed what balance I had along. We are not at-all discouraged, or demoralized; on the contrary, we look forward to great things under Beauregard, who is in front of Washington. - -