“AIN’T YOU ASHAMED OF YOU’UNS?”
[Phoebe Y. Pember.]
Directly in front of me sat an old Georgia up-country woman, placidly regarding the box cars full of men on the parallel rails, waiting, like ourselves, to start. She knitted and gazed, and at last inquired “who was them ar’ soldiers, and whar’ was they a-going to?” The information that they were Yankee prisoners startled her considerably. The knitting ceased abruptly (all the old women in the Southern States knitted socks for the soldiers while traveling), and the cracker bonnet of dark brown homespun was thrown back violently, for her whole nervous system seemed to have received a galvanic shock. Then she caught her breath with a long gasp, lifted on high her thin, trembling hand, accompanied by the trembling voice, and made a speech:
“Ain’t you ashamed of you’uns,” she piped. “A-coming down here a-spiling our country, and a-robbing our hen-roosts? What did we ever do to you’uns that you should come a-killing our brothers and sons? Ain’t you ashamed of you’uns? What for do you want us to live with you’uns, you poor white trash? I ain’t got a single nigger that would be so mean as to force himself where he warn’t wanted, and what do we-uns want with you? Ain’t you—” but there came a roar of laughter from both cars, and, shaking with excitement, the old lady pulled down her spectacles, which in the excitement she had pushed up on her forehead, and tried in vain to resume her labors with uncertain fingers.