"BUTTER ON MY GREENS."
For the convenience and comfort of the soldiers going to and returning from their commands, "Wayside Homes" were established at different points in the Confederacy where free lunches were served by the fair and willing hands of patriotic young ladies living in the vicinity. A uniform of grey was the only passport needed. One of these "Homes" was located at Millen, Ga. Detained there on one occasion, en route to my command at Thunderbolt I was glad to accept their hospitality. Seated at the table enjoying the spread they had prepared one of these fair waiting maids approached me and asked if I would take some butter on my "greens." My gastronomic record as a soldier had been like Joseph's coat, "of many colors." I had eaten almost everything from "cush" and "slapjacks" to raw corn and uncooked bacon. I had made up dough on the top of a stump for a tray and cooked it on a piece of split hickory for an oven. I had eaten salt meat to which the government had good title, and fresh meat to which neither I nor the government had any title, good or bad. But butter on "greens" was a combination new to my experience and as my digestive outfit had, during my school days, been troubled with a dyspeptic trend, I felt compelled to decline such an addition to a dish that had been boiled with fat bacon.
Notwithstanding the absence of my friend Steed the supply of pie that day was short, and with a degree of self-denial, for which I can not now account, I asked for none. A soldier next me at the table, however, filed his application and when our winsome waitress returned, she handed the desert to me and left my neighbor pieless. I could not recall her fair young face as one I had ever seen before, and I had always been noted for my lack of personal comeliness. I was at a loss therefore to understand why the unsolicited discrimination in my favor had been made. A few minutes later the problem was solved. Standing on the porch after the meal had ended, this self-same maiden approached me a little timidly and asked, "When did you hear from your brother Sammie?" She and my younger brother, it seemed, had been schoolmates, and, as I learned afterwards, "sweethearts" as well, and the pie business was no longer a mystery.
If she still lives as maid or matron and this sketch should meet her eye, it gives me pleasure to assure her that the fragrance of her kindly deed though based upon no merit of my own, still lingers lovingly in my memory, like the echo of "faint, fairy footfalls down blossoming ways."