THE SOUTH LIKE AN ASH-CAKE.
At the end of 1864, the Confederacy was scotched if not quite killed. Sherman had halved it by striking into Savannah. East Tennessee and southwest Virginia were cut by Stoneman. Alabama and Mississippi were traversed by Grierson and Wilson. In sum, the new map resembled that of a territory charted off into sections.
President Lincoln said that its face put him in mind of a weary traveler in the West, who came at night to a small log cabin. The homesteader and his wife said they would put him up, but had not a bite of victuals to offer him. He accepted the truss of litter and was soon asleep. But he was awakened by whispers letting out that in the fire ashes a hoe-cake was baking. The woman and her mate were merry over how they had defrauded the stranger of the food. Feeling mad at having been sent to bed supperless--uncommon mean in that part--he pretended to wake up and came forth to sit at the dying fire. He pretended, too, that he was ill from worry.
"The fact is, my father, when he died, left me a large farm. But I had no sooner taken possession of it than mortgages began to appear. My farm was situated like this----" He took up the loggerhead poker to illustrate, drawing lines in the ashes so as to enclose the ash-cake. "First one man got so much of it one side," he cut off a side of the hidden dough. "Then another brought in a mortgage and took off another piece there. Then another here, and another there! and here and there"--drawing the poker through the ashes to make the figure plain--"until," he said, "there was nothing of the farm left for anybody--which, I presume is the case with your cake!"
"And, I reckon," concluded Mr. Lincoln, "that the prospect is now very good of the South being as cut up as the ash-cake!"--(Telegraph Manager A. Chandler.)