A Diary From Dixie Part 12

The Wayside Hospital2 is duly established at the 1. Henry M. Rice, United States Senator from Minnesota, who had emigrated to that State from Vermont in 1835.

2. Of ameliorations in modern warfare, Dr. John T. Darby said in addressing the South Carolina Medical a.s.sociation, Charleston, in 1873: "On the route from the army to the general hospital, wounds are dressed and soldiers refreshed at wayside homes; and here be it said with justice and pride that the credit of originating this system is due to the women of South Carolina. In a small room in the capital of this State, the first Wayside Home was founded; and during the war, some seventy-five thousand soldiers were relieved by having their wounds dressed, their ailments attended, and very frequently by being clothed through the patriotic services and good offices of a few untiring ladies in Columbia. From this little nucleus, spread that grand system of wayside hospitals which was established during our own and the late European wars."

206 Columbia Station, where all the railroads meet. All honor to Mrs. Fisher and the other women who work there so faithfully! The young girls of Columbia started this hospital. In the first winter of the war, moneyless soldiers, sick and wounded, suffered greatly when they had to lie over here because of faulty connections between trains. Rev. Mr. Martin, whose habit it was to meet trains and offer his aid to these unfortunates, suggested to the Young Ladies' Hospital a.s.sociation their opportunity; straightway the blessed maidens provided a room where our poor fellows might have their wounds bound up and be refreshed. And now, the "Soldiers' Rest" has grown into the Wayside Hospital, and older heads and hands relieve younger ones of the grimmer work and graver responsibilities. I am ready to help in every way, by subscription and otherwise, but too feeble in health to go there much.

Mrs. Browne heard a man say at the Congaree House, "We are breaking our heads against a stone wall. We are bound to be conquered. We can not keep it up much longer against so powerful a nation as the United States. Crowds of Irish, Dutch, and Scotch are pouring in to swell their armies. They are promised our lands, and they believe they will get them. Even if we are successful we can not live without Yankees." "Now," says Mrs. Browne, "I call that man a Yankee spy." To which I reply, "If he were a spy, he would not dare show his hand so plainly."

"To think," says Mrs. Browne, "that he is not taken up. Seward's little bell would tinkle, a guard would come, and the Grand Inquisition of America would order that man put under arrest in the twinkling of an eye, if he had ventured to speak against Yankees in Yankee land."

General Preston said he had "the right to take up any * * *

207 one who was not in his right place and send him where he belonged." "Then do take up my husband instantly. He is sadly out of his right place in this little Governor's Council." The general stared at me and slowly uttered in his most tragic tones, "If I could put him where I think he ought to be!" This I immediately hailed as a high compliment and was duly ready with my thanks. Upon reflection, it is borne in upon me, that he might have been more explicit. He left too much to the imagination.

Then Mrs. Browne described the Prince of Wales, whose manners, it seems, differ from those of Mrs. - , who arraigned us from morn to dewy eve, and upbraided us with our ill-bred manners and customs. The Prince, when he was here, conformed at once to whatever he saw was the way of those who entertained him. He closely imitated President Buchanan's way of doing things. He took off his gloves at once when he saw that the President wore none. He began by bowing to the people who were presented to him, but when he saw Mr. Buchanan shaking hands, he shook hands, too. When smoking affably with Browne on the White House piazza, he expressed his content with the fine cigars Browne had given him. The President said: "I was keeping some excellent ones for you, but Browne has got ahead of me." Long after Mr. Buchanan had gone to bed, the Prince ran into his room in a jolly, boyish way, and said: "Mr. Buchanan, I have come for the fine cigars you have for me."

As I walked up to the Prestons', along a beautiful shaded back street, a carriage pa.s.sed with Governor Means in it. As soon as he saw me he threw himself half out and kissed both hands to me again and again. It was a whole-souled greeting, as the saying is, and I returned it with my whole heart, too. "Good-by," he cried, and I responded "Good-by." I may never see him again. I am not sure that I did not shed a few tears.

General Preston and Mr. Chesnut were seated on the * * *

208 piazza of the Hampton house as I walked in. I opened my batteries upon them in this scornful style: "You cold, formal, solemn, overly-polite creatures, weighed down by your own dignity. You will never know the rapture of such a sad farewell as John Means and I have just interchanged. He was in a hack," I proceeded to relate, "and I was on the sidewalk. He was on his way to the war, poor fellow. The hackman drove steadily along in the middle of the street; but for our gray hairs I do not know what he might have thought of us. John Means did not suppress his feelings at an unexpected meeting with an old friend, and a good cry did me good. It is a life of terror and foreboding we lead. My heart is in my mouth half the time. But you two, under no possible circ.u.mstances could you forget your manners."

Read Russell's India all day. Saintly folks those English when their blood is up. Sepoys and blacks we do not expect anything better from, but what an example of Christian patience and humanity the white "angels" from the West set them.

The beautiful Jewess, Rachel Lyons, was here to-day. She flattered Paul Hayne audaciously, and he threw back the ball.

To-day I saw the Rowena to this Rebecca, when Mrs. Edward Barnwell called. She is the purest type of Anglo-Saxon - exquisitely beautiful, cold, quiet, calm, lady-like, fair as a lily, with the blackest and longest eyelashes, and her eyes so light in color some one said "they were the hue of cologne and water." At any rate, she has a patent right to them; there are no more like them to be had. The effect is startling, but lovely beyond words.

Blanton Duncan told us a story of Morgan in Kentucky. Morgan walked into a court where they were trying some Secessionists. The Judge was about to p.r.o.nounce sentence, but Morgan rose, and begged that he might be allowed to call some witnesses. The Judge asked who were his * * *

209 witnesses. "My name is John Morgan, and my witnesses are 1,400 Confederate soldiers."

Mrs. Izard witnessed two instances of patriotism in the caste called "Sandhill lackeys." One forlorn, chill, and fever-freckled creature, yellow, dirty, and dry as a nut, was selling peaches at ten cents a dozen. Soldiers collected around her cart. She took the cover off and cried, "Eat away. Eat your fill. I never charge our soldiers anything." They tried to make her take pay, but when she steadily refused it, they cheered her madly and said: "Sleep in peace. Now we will fight for you and keep off the Yankees." Another poor Sandhill man refused to sell his cows, and gave them to the hospital.

210

XII. FLAT ROCK, N. C.

August 1,1862 - August 8,1862 FLAT ROCK, N. C., August 1,1862. - Being ill I left Mrs. McMahan's for Flat Rock.1 It was very hot and disagreeable for an invalid in a boarding-house in that climate. The La Bordes and the McCord girls came part of the way with me.

The cars were crowded and a lame soldier had to stand, leaning on his crutches in the thoroughfare that runs between the seats. One of us gave him our seat. You may depend upon it there was no trouble in finding a seat for our party after that. Dr. La Borde quoted a cla.s.sic anecdote. In some Greek a.s.sembly an old man was left standing. A Spartan gave him his seat. The Athenians cheered madly, though they had kept their seats. The comment was, "Lacedemonians practice virtue; Athenians know how to admire it."

Nathan Davis happened accidentally to be at the station at Greenville. He took immediate charge of Molly and myself, for my party had dwindled to us two. He went with us to the hotel, sent for the landlord, told him who I was, secured good rooms for us and saw that we were made 1. Flat Rock was the summer resort of many cultured families from the low countries of the South before the war. Many attractive houses had been built there. It lies in the region which has since become famous as the Asheville region, and in which stands Biltmore.

211 comfortable in every way. At dinner I entered that immense dining-room alone, but I saw friends and acquaintances on every side. My first exploit was to repeat to Mrs. Ives Mrs. Pickens's blunder in taking a suspicious att.i.tude toward men born at the North, and calling upon General Cooper to agree with her. Martha Levy explained the grave faces of my auditors by saying that Colonel Ives was a New Yorker. My distress was dire.

Louisa Hamilton was there. She told me that Captain George Cuthbert, with his arm in a sling from a wound by no means healed, was going to risk the shaking of a stagecoach; he was on his way to his cousin, William Cuthbert's, at Flat Rock. Now George Cuthbert is a type of the finest kind of Southern soldier. We can not make them any better than he is. Before the war I knew him; he traveled in Europe with my sister, Kate, and Mary Withers. At once I offered him a seat in the comfortable hack Nathan Davis had engaged for me.

Molly sat opposite to me, and often when I was tired held my feet in her lap. Captain Cuthbert's man sat with the driver. We had ample room. We were a dilapidated company. I was so ill I could barely sit up, and Captain Cuthbert could not use his right hand or arm at all. I had to draw his match, light his cigar, etc. He was very quiet, grateful, gentle, and, I was going to say, docile. He is a fiery soldier, one of those whose whole face becomes transfigured in battle, so one of his men told me, describing his way with his company. He does not blow his own trumpet, but I made him tell me the story of his duel with the Mercury's reporter. He seemed awfully ashamed of wasting time in such a sc.r.a.pe.

That night we stopped at a country house half-way toward our journey's end. There we met Mr. Charles Lowndes. Rawlins Lowndes, his son, is with Wade Hampton.

First we drove, by mistake, into Judge King's yard, our * * *

212 hackman mistaking the place for the hotel. Then we made Farmer's Hotel (as the seafaring men say).

Burnet Rhett, with his steed, was at the door; horse and man were caparisoned with as much red and gold artillery uniform as they could bear. He held his horse. The stirrups were Mexican, I believe; they looked like little sidesaddles. Seeing his friend and crony, George Cuthbert, alight and leave a veiled lady in the carriage, this handsome and undismayed young artillerist walked round and round the carriage, talked with the driver, looked in at the doors, and at the front. Suddenly I bethought me to raise my veil and satisfy his curiosity. Our eyes met, and I smiled. It was impossible to resist the comic disappointment on his face when a woman old enough to be George Cuthbert's mother, with the ravages of a year of gastric fever, almost fainting with fatigue, greeted his vision. He instantly mounted his gallant steed and pranced away to his fiance. He is to marry the greatest heiress in the State, Miss Aiken. Then Captain Cuthbert told me his name.

At Kate's, I found Sally Rutledge, and then for weeks life was a blank; I remember nothing. The illness which had been creeping on for so long a time took me by the throat. At Greenville I had met many friends. I witnessed the wooing of Barny Heyward, once the husband of the lovely Lucy Izard, now a widower and a bon parti. He was there nursing Joe, his brother. So was the beautiful Henrietta Magruder Heyward, now a widow, for poor Joe died. There is something magnetic in Tatty Clinch's large and l.u.s.trous black eyes. No man has ever resisted their influence. She says her virgin heart has never beat one throb the faster for any mortal here below - until now, when it surrenders to Barny. Well, as I said, Joseph Heyward died, and rapidly did the bereaved beauty shake the dust of this poor Confederacy from her feet and plume her wings for flight across the water.

213 [Let me insert here now, much later, all I know of that brave spirit, George Cuthbert. While I was living in the winter of 1863 at the corner of Clay and Twelfth Streets in Richmond, he came to see me. Never did man enjoy life more. The Preston girls were staying at my house then, and it was very gay for the young soldiers who ran down from the army for a day or so. We had heard of him, as usual, gallantly facing odds at Sharpsburg.1 And he asked if he should chance to be wounded would I have him brought to Clay Street.

He was shot at Chancellorsville,2 leading his men. The surgeon did not think him mortally wounded. He sent me a message that "he was coming at once to our house." He knew he would soon get well there. Also that "I need not be alarmed; those Yankees could not kill me." He asked one of his friends to write a letter to his mother. Afterward he said he had another letter to write, but that he wished to sleep first, he felt so exhausted. At his request they then turned his face away from the light and left him. When they came again to look at him, they found him dead. He had been dead for a long time. It was bitter cold; wounded men lost much blood and were weakened in that way; they lacked warm blankets and all comforts. Many died who might have been saved by one good hot drink or a few mouthfuls of nouris.h.i.+ng food.

One of the generals said to me: "Fire and reckless courage like Captain Cuthbert's are contagious; such men in an 1. The battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, one of the bloodiest of the war, was fought in western Maryland, a few miles north of Harper's Ferry, on September 16 and 17, 1862, the Federals being under McClellan, and the Confederates under Lee.

2. The battle of Chancellorsville, where the losses on each side were more than ten thousand men, was fought about fifty miles northwest of Richmond on May 2, 3, and 4, 1863. The Confederates were under Lee and the Federals under Hooker. In this battle Stonewall Jackson was killed.

214 army are invaluable; losses like this weakened us, indeed." But I must not linger longer around the memory of the bravest of the brave - a true exemplar of our old rgime, gallant, gay, unfortunate. - M. B. C.]

August 8th. - Mr. Daniel Blake drove down to my sister's in his heavy, substantial English phaeton, with stout and strong horses to match. I went back with him and spent two delightful days at his hospitable mansion. I met there, as a sort of chaplain, the Rev. Mr. - . He dealt unfairly by me. We had a long argument, and when we knelt down for evening prayers, he introduced an extemporaneous prayer and prayed for me most palpably. There was I down on my knees, red-hot with rage and fury. David W. said it was a clear case of hitting a fellow when he was down. Afterward the fun of it all struck me, and I found it difficult to keep from shaking with laughter. It was not an edifying religious exercise, to say the least, as far as I was concerned.

Before Chancellorsville, was fatal Sharpsburg.1 My friend, Colonel Means, killed on the battle-field; his only son, Stark, wounded and a prisoner. His wife had not recovered from the death of her other child, Emma, who had died of consumption early in the war. She was lying on a bed when they told her of her husband's death, and then they tried to keep Stark's condition from her. They think now that she misunderstood and believed him dead, too. She threw something over her face. She did not utter one word. She remained quiet so long, some one removed the light shawl which she had thrown over her head and found 1. During the summer of 1862, after the battle of Malvern Hill and before Sharpsburg, or Antietam, the following important battles had taken place: Harrison's Landing, July 3d and 4th; Harrison's Landing again, July 31st; Cedar Mountain, August 9th; Bull Run (second battle), August 29th and 30th, and South Mountain, September 14th.

215 she was dead. Miss Mary Stark, her sister, said afterward, "No wonder! How was she to face life without her husband and children? That was all she had ever lived for." These are sad, unfortunate memories. Let us run away from them.

What has not my husband been doing this year, 1862, when all our South Carolina troops are in Virginia? Here we were without soldiers or arms. He raised an army, so to speak, and imported arms, through the Trenholm firm. He had arms to sell to the Confederacy. He laid the foundation of a niter-bed; and the Confederacy sent to Columbia to learn of Professor Le Conte how to begin theirs. He bought up all the old arms and had them altered and repaired. He built s.h.i.+ps. He imported clothes and shoes for our soldiers, for which things they had long stood sorely in need. He imported cotton cards and set all idle hands carding and weaving. All the world was set to spinning cotton. He tried to stop the sale of whisky, and alas, he called for reserves - that is, men over age, and he committed the unforgivable offense of sending the sacred negro property to work on fortifications away from their owners' plantations.

216

XIII. PORTLAND, ALA.

July 8, 1863 - July 30, 1863 PORTLAND, Ala., July 8, 1863. - My mother ill at her home on the plantation near here - where I have come to see her. But to go back first to my trip home from Flat Rock to Camden. At the station, I saw men sitting on a row of coffins smoking, talking, and laughing, with their feet drawn up tailor-fas.h.i.+on to keep them out of the wet. Thus does war harden people's hearts.

Met James Chesnut at Wilmington. He only crossed the river with me and then went back to Richmond. He was violently opposed to sending our troops into Pennsylvania: wanted all we could spare sent West to make an end there of our enemies. He kept dark about Vallandigham.1 I am sure we could not trust him to do us any good, or to do the Yankees any harm. The Coriola.n.u.s business is played out.

As we came to Camden, Molly sat by me in the cars. She touched me, and, with her nose in the air, said: "Look, Missis." There was the inevitable bride and groom - at least so I thought - and the irrepressible kissing and lolling against each other which I had seen so often before. I was rather astonished at Molly's prudery. but there was a touch 1. Clement Baird Vallandigham was an Ohio Democrat who represented the extreme wing of Northern sympathizers with the South. He was arrested by United States troops in May, 1863, court-martialed and banished to the Confederacy. Not being well received in the South, he went to Canada, but after the war returned to Ohio.

217 in this scene which was new. The man required for his peace of mind that the girl should brush his cheek with those beautiful long eyelashes of hers. Molly became so outraged in her blue-black modesty that she kept her head out of the window not to see! When we were detained at a little wayside station, this woman made an awful row about her room. She seemed to know me and appealed to me; said her brother-in-law was adjutant to Colonel K - , etc.

Molly observed, "You had better go yonder, ma'am, where your husband is calling you." The woman drew herself up proudly, and, with a toss, exclaimed: "Husband, indeed! I'm a widow. That is my cousin. I loved my dear husband too well to marry again, ever, ever!" Absolutely tears came into her eyes. Molly, loaded as she was with shawls and bundles, stood motionless, and said: "After all that gwine-on in the kyars! O, Lord, I should a let it go 'twas my husband and me! n.i.g.g.e.r as I am."

Here I was at home, on a soft bed, with every physical comfort; but life is one long catechism there, due to the curiosity of stay-at-home people in a narrow world.

In Richmond, Molly and Lawrence quarreled. He declared he could not put up with her tantrums. Unfortunately I asked him, in the interests of peace and a quiet house, to bear with her temper; I did, said I, but she was so good and useful. He was shabby enough to tell her what I had said at their next quarrel. The awful reproaches she overwhelmed me with then! She said she "was mortified that I had humbled her before Lawrence."

But the day of her revenge came. At negro b.a.l.l.s in Richmond, guests were required to carry "pa.s.ses," and, in changing his coat Lawrence forgot his pa.s.s. Next day Lawrence was missing, and Molly came to me laughing to tears. "Come and look," said she. "Here is the fine gentleman tied between two black n.i.g.g.e.rs and marched off to jail." She laughed and jeered so she could not stand without holding on to the window. Lawrence disregarded her * * *

218 and called to me at the top of his voice: "Please, ma'am, ask Mars Jeems to come take me out of this. I ain't done nothin'."

As soon as Mr. Chesnut came home I told him of Lawrence's sad fall, and he went at once to his rescue. There had been a fight and a disturbance at the ball. The police had been called in, and when every negro was required to show his "pa.s.s," Lawrence had been taken up as having none. He was terribly chopfallen when he came home walking behind Mr. Chesnut. He is always so respectable and well-behaved and stands on his dignity.

I went over to Mrs. Preston's at Columbia. Camden had become simply intolerable to me. There the telegram found me, saying I must go to my mother, who was ill at her home here in Alabama. Colonel Goodwyn, his wife, and two daughters were going, and so I joined the party. I telegraphed Mr. Chesnut for Lawrence, and he replied, forbidding me to go at all; it was so hot, the cars so disagreeable, fever would be the inevitable result. Miss Kate Hampton, in her soft voice, said: "The only trouble in life is when one can't decide in which way duty leads. Once know your duty, then all is easy."

I do not know whether she thought it my duty to obey my husband. But I thought it my duty to go to my mother, as I risked nothing but myself.

We had two days of an exciting drama under our very noses, before our eyes. A party had come to Columbia who said they had run the blockade, had come in by flag of truce, etc. Colonel Goodwyn asked me to look around and see if I could pick out the suspected crew. It was easily done. We were all in a sadly molting condition. We had come to the end of our good clothes in three years, and now our only resource was to turn them upside down, or inside out, and in mending, darning, patching, etc.

Near me on the train to Alabama sat a young woman in a traveling dress of bright yellow; she wore a profusion * * *

219 of curls, had pink cheeks, was delightfully airy and easy in her manner, and was absorbed in a flirtation with a Confederate major, who, in spite of his nice, new gray uniform and two stars, had a very Yankee face, fresh, clean-cut, sharp, utterly unsunburned, florid, wholesome, handsome. What more in compliment can one say of one's enemies? Two other women faced this man and woman, and we knew them to be newcomers by their good clothes. One of these women was a German. She it was who had betrayed them. I found that out afterward.

The handsomest of the three women had a hard, Northern face, but all were in splendid array as to feathers, flowers, lace, and jewelry. If they were spies why were they so foolish as to brag of New York, and compare us unfavorably with the other side all the time, and in loud, shrill accents? Surely that was not the way to pa.s.s unnoticed in the Confederacy.

A man came in, stood up, and read from a paper, "The surrender of Vicksburg."1 I felt as if I had been struck a hard blow on the top of my head, and my heart took one of its queer turns. I was utterly unconscious: not long, I dare say. The first thing I heard was exclamations of joy and exultation from the overdressed party. My rage and humiliation were great. A man within earshot of this party had slept through everything. He had a greyhound face, eager and inquisitive when awake, but now he was as one of the seven sleepers.

Colonel Goodwyn wrote on a blank page of my book (one of De Quincey's - the note is there now), that the sleeper was a Richmond detective.

1. Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863. Since the close of 1862, it had again and again been a.s.saulted by Grant and Sherman. It was commanded by Johnston and Pemberton, Pemberton being in command at the time of the surrender. John C. Pemberton was a native of Philadelphia, a graduate of West Point, and had served in the Mexican War.

220 Finally, hot and tired out, we arrived at West Point, on the Chattahoochee River. The dusty cars were quite still, except for the giggling flirtation of the yellow gown and her major. Two Confederate officers walked in. I felt mischief in the air. One touched the smart major, who was whispering to Yellow Gown. The major turned quickly. Instantly, every drop of blood left his face; a spasm seized his throat; it was a piteous sight. And at once I was awfully sorry for him. He was marched out of the car. Poor Yellow Gown's color was fast, but the whites of her eyes were lurid. Of the three women spies we never heard again. They never do anything worse to women, the high-minded Confederates, than send them out of the country. But when we read soon afterward of the execution of a male spy, we thought of the "major."

At Montgomery the boat waited for us, and in my haste I tumbled out of the omnibus with Dr. Robert Johnson's a.s.sistance, but nearly broke my neck. The thermometer was high up in the nineties, and they gave me a stateroom over the boiler. I paid out my Confederate rags of money freely to the maid in order to get out of that oven. Surely, go where we may hereafter, an Alabama steamer in August lying under the bluff with the sun looking down, will give one a foretaste, almost an adequate idea, of what's to come, as far as heat goes. The planks of the floor burned one's feet under the bluff at Selma, where we stayed nearly all day - I do not know why.

Met James Boykin, who had lost 1,200 bales of cotton at Vicksburg, and charged it all to Jeff Davis in his wrath, which did not seem exactly reasonable to me. At Portland there was a horse for James Boykin, and he rode away, promising to have a carriage sent for me at once. But he had to go seven miles on horseback before he reached my sister Sally's, and then Sally was to send back. On that lonely riverside Molly and I remained with dismal swamps on every side, and immense plantations, the white people * * *

221 few or none. In my heart I knew my husband was right when he forbade me to undertake this journey.

There was one living thing at this little riverside inn- a white man who had a store opposite, and oh, how drunk he was! Hot as it was, Molly kept up a fire of pine knots. There was neither lamp nor candle in that deserted house. The drunken man reeled over now and then, lantern in hand; he would stand with his idiotic, drunken glare, or go solemnly staggering round us, but always bowing in his politeness. He nearly fell over us, but I sprang out of his way as he asked, "Well, madam, what can I do for you?"

Shall I ever forget the headache of that night and the fright, My temples throbbed with dumb misery. I sat upon a chair, Molly on the floor, with her head resting against my chair. She was as near as she could get to me, and I kept my hand on her. "Missis," said she, "now I do believe you are scared, scared of that poor, drunken thing. If he was sober I could whip him in a fair fight, and drunk as he is I kin throw him over the banister, ef he so much as teches you. I don't value him a b.u.t.ton!"

Taking heart from such brave words I laughed. It seemed an eternity, but the carriage came by ten o'clock, and then, with the coachman as our sole protector, we poor women drove eight miles or more over a carriage road, through long lanes, swamps of pitchy darkness, with plantations on every side.

The house, as we drew near, looked like a graveyard in a nightmare, so vague and phantom-like were its outlines.

I found my mother ill in bed, feeble still, but better than I hoped to see her. "I knew you would come," was her greeting, with outstretched hands. Then I went to bed in that silent house, a house of the dead it seemed. I supposed I was not to see my sister until the next day. But she came in some time after I had gone to bed. She kissed me quietly, without a tear. She was thin and pale, but her voice was calm and kind.

222 As she lifted the candle over her head, to show me something on the wall, I saw that her pretty brown hair was white. It was awfully hard not to burst out into violent weeping. She looked so sweet, and yet so utterly brokenhearted. But as she was without emotion, apparently, it would not become me to upset her by my tears.

Next day, at noon, Hetty, mother's old maid, brought my breakfast to my bedside. Such a breakfast it was! Delmonico could do no better. "It is ever so late, I know," to which Hetty replied: "Yes, we would not let Molly wake you." "What a splendid cook you have here." "My daughter, Tenah, is Miss Sally's cook. She's well enough as times go, but when our Miss Mary comes to see us I does it myself," and she courtesied down to the floor. "Bless your old soul," I cried, and she rushed over and gave me a good hug.

She is my mother's factotum; has been her maid since she was six years old, when she was bought from a Virginia speculator along with her own mother and all her brothers and sisters. She has been pampered until she is a rare old tyrant at times. She can do everything better than any one else, and my mother leans on her heavily. Hetty is d.i.c.k's wife; d.i.c.k is the butler. They have over a dozen children and take life very easily.

Sally came in before I was out of bed, and began at once in the same stony way, pale and cold as ice, to tell me of the death of her children. It had happened not two weeks before. Her eyes were utterly without life; no expression whatever, and in a composed and sad sort of manner she told the tale as if it were something she had read and wanted me to hear: "My eldest daughter, Mary, had grown up to be a lovely girl. She was between thirteen and fourteen, you know. Baby Kate had my sister's gray eyes; she was evidently to be the beauty of the family. Strange it is that here was one of my children who has lived and has gone and you * * *

223 have never seen her at all. She died first, and I would not go to the funeral. I thought it would kill me to see her put under the ground. I was lying down, stupid with grief when Aunt Charlotte came to me after the funeral with this news: 'Mary has that awful disease, too.' There was nothing to say. I got up and dressed instantly and went to Mary. I did not leave her side again in that long struggle between life and death. I did everything for her with my own hands. I even prepared my darling for the grave. I went to her funeral, and I came home and walked straight to my mother and I begged her to be comforted; I would bear it all without one word if G.o.d would only spare me the one child left me now."

Sally has never shed a tear, but has grown twenty years older, cold, hard, careworn. With the same rigidity of manner, she began to go over all the details of Mary's illness. "I had not given up hope, no, not at all. As I sat by her side, she said: 'Mamma, put your hand on my knees; they are so cold.' I put my hand on her knee; the cold struck to my heart. I knew it was the coldness of death." Sally put out her hand on me, and it seemed to recall the feeling. She fell forward in an agony of weeping that lasted for hours. The doctor said this reaction was a blessing; without it she must have died or gone mad.

While the mother was so bitterly weeping, the little girl, the last of them, a bright child of three or four, crawled into my bed. "Now, Auntie," she whispered, "I want to tell you all about Mamie and Katie, but they watch me so. They say I must never talk about them. Katie died because she ate blackberries, I know that, and then Aunt Charlotte read Mamie a letter and that made her die, too. Maum Hetty says they have gone to G.o.d, but I know the people saved a place between them in the ground for me."

Uncle William was in despair at the low ebb of patriotism out here. "West of the Savannah River," said he, * * *

224 "it is property first, life next, honor last." He gave me an excellent pair of shoes. What a gift! For more than a year I have had none but some dreadful things Armstead makes for me, and they hurt my feet so. These do not fit, but that is nothing; they are large enough and do not pinch anywhere. I have absolutely a respectable pair of shoes!!

Uncle William says the men who went into the war to save their negroes are abjectly wretched. Neither side now cares a fig for these beloved negroes, and would send them all to heaven in a hand-basket, as Custis Lee says, to win in the fight.

General Lee and Mr. Davis want the negroes put into the army. Mr. Chesnut and Major Venable discussed the subject one night, but would they fight on our side or desert to the enemy? They don't go to the enemy, because they are comfortable as they are, and expect to be free anyway.

When we were children our nurses used to give us tea out in the open air on little pine tables scrubbed as clean as milk-pails. Sometimes, as d.i.c.k would pa.s.s us, with his slow and consequential step, we would call out, "Do, d.i.c.k, come and wait on us." "No, little missies, I never wait on pine tables. Wait till you get big enough to put your legs under your pa's mahogany."

I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself, perched on his knife-board. He won't look at me now; but looks over my head, scenting freedom in the air. He was always very ambitious. I do not think he ever troubled himself much about books. But then, as my father said, d.i.c.k, standing in front of his sideboard, has heard all subjects in earth or heaven discussed, and by the best heads in our world. He is proud, too, in his way. Hetty, his wife, complained that the other men servants looked finer in their livery. "Nonsense, old woman, a butler never demeans himself to wear livery. He is always in plain clothes." Somewhere he had picked that up.

225 He is the first negro in whom I have felt a change. Others go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion showing, and yet on all other subjects except the war they are the most excitable of all races. Now d.i.c.k might make a very respectable Egyptian Sphinx, so inscrutably silent is he. He did deign to inquire about General Richard Anderson. "He was my young master once," said he. "I always will like him better than anybody else."

When d.i.c.k married Hetty, the Anderson house was next door. The two families agreed to sell either d.i.c.k or Hetty, whichever consented to be sold. Hetty refused outright, and the Andersons sold d.i.c.k that he might be with his wife. This was magnanimous on the Andersons' part, for Hetty was only a lady's-maid and d.i.c.k was a trained butler, on whom Mrs. Anderson had spent no end of pains in his dining-room education, and, of course, if they had refused to sell d.i.c.k, Hetty would have had to go to them. Mrs. Anderson was very much disgusted with d.i.c.k's ingrat.i.tude when she found he was willing to leave them. As a butler he is a treasure; he is overwhelmed with dignity, but that does not interfere with his work at all.