3. Then come with your knight so true, and down with the boys that’s dressed in blue. Farewell to hoe-cake an’ hominy, Richmond and Montgomery. I’ll lick the damn Yankees, an’ marry you.
4. Here’s a heart, I reckon, as firm’s a rock; no truer ever beat neath a gray or blue frock. So come, my love, and haste away. We’ll moor our bark in New York Bay, when I end this fighting work.
Your true lover,
J. Parsloe.
The next has been in print, and was written by Major McKnight, while a prisoner. “He was a poet, musician, and joker, and used to run from grave to gay, from lively to severe, on almost all mottoes. He was an especial favorite with his guard, the Union boys.”
My Love and I.
My love reposes in a rosewood frame;
A bunk have I;
A couch of feath’ry down fills up the same;
Mine’s straw, but dry.
She sinks to rest at night without a sigh;
With waking eyes I watch the hours creep by.
My love her daily dinner takes in state;
And so do I;
The richest viands flank her plate;
Coarse grub have I.
Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake;
I pump my drink from Erie’s limpid lake.
My love has all the world at will to roam;
Three acres I;
She goes abroad, or quiet sits at home;
So cannot I.
Bright angels watch around her couch at night;
A Yank, with loaded gun, keeps me in sight.
A thousand weary miles stretch between
My love and I;
To her, this wintry night, cold, calm, serene,
I waft a sigh,
And hope, with all my earnestness of soul,
To-morrow’s mail may bring me my parole.
There’s hope ahead: we’ll one day meet again,
My love and I;
We’ll wipe away all tears of sorrow then;
Her love-lit eye
Will all my many troubles then beguile,
And keep this wayward reb from Johnson’s Isle.
STUCK!
A Scriptural Conundrum.
The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of Sherman’s army. One day one of these human “charcoal sketches” was driving a pair of contrary mules hitched to a cart loaded with foraging stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, “Now dat Clem ax me dat cundrum to bodder dis nigger, and I done just make it out. ‘Why ar Moses like er cotton-gin?’ I done see. I mighty ’fraid I hab to gib dat up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin’?”