The only way of getting it was to stand around the gate for hours until a guard off duty could be coaxed or hired to accompany a small party to the woods, to bring back a load of such knots and limbs as could be picked up.

Our chief persuaders to the guards to do us this favor were rings, pencils, knives, combs, and such trifles as we might have in our pockets, and, more especially, the brass buttons on our uniforms.

Rebel soldiers, like Indians, negros and other imperfectly civilized people, were passionately fond of bright and gaudy things.
A handful of brass buttons would catch every one of them as swiftly and as surely as a piece of red flannel will a gudgeon.

Our regular fee for an escort for three of us to the woods was six over-coat or dress-coat buttons, or ten or twelve jacket buttons.

All in the mess contributed to this fund, and the fuel obtained was carefully guarded and husbanded.
This manner of conducting the wood business is a fair sample of the management, or rather the lack of it, of every other detail of prison administration.