The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured men sank down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial influences, and fell first under the combined effects of home-sickness, exposure and the privations of army life.

The slender, withy boys, as supple and weak as cats, had apparently the nine lives of those animals.

There were few exceptions to this rule in the army--there were none in Andersonville.
I can recall few or no instances where a large, strong, "hearty" man lived through a few months of imprisonment.

The survivors were invariably youths, at the verge of manhood,--slender, quick, active, medium-statured fellows, of a cheerful temperament, in whom one would have expected comparatively little powers of endurance.
The theory which I constructed for my own private use in accounting for this phenomenon I offer with proper diffidence to others who may be in search of a hypothesis to explain facts that they have observed.

It is this: a.