“Some folks is bery good on de talk,
But dey don’t know nuffin ’bout de hebbenly walk.”
They continued on in childish simplicity till their ecstasy broke into shouts of “Cum down Lawd!”—“I’s a comin’ Lawd! Look out for me!”—“I’s a-waitin’ Lawd!”—while the circle whirled in dizzy speed until they sometimes fell exhausted to the ground. All feared the “Voodou-Cunger” woman, and were anxious to propitiate her with a rabbit’s foot and various incantations.
Eloquence, rhythm, oratory and harmony seem inborn among this strange people, who have given to the whole South the soft voice and accent so many of us like to hear.
Under existing conditions it was a relief when Mrs. E—— came from the Masonic Mission in New York and claimed that a mistake had been made in sending me to Point of Rocks, and informed me that I would find work to my liking at City Point.
The following day Mrs. E——, with an ambulance, took me for a day’s rough travel over corduroy roads and ditches and through woods to General Burnside’s 9th Corps headquarters in a clump of trees before Petersburg. The General came out of an inner tent, putting on his coat and apologizing, saying he had been sleeping.
“Why, General, how can you sleep with the shells screaming and exploding so near?”
“Oh,” he replied, laughingly, “this is when I can sleep comfortably. It’s only when I hear musketry that I fear there is mischief brewing.”
A very courteous, handsome, soldierly gentleman was General Burnside.
We then drove a short distance to General O. B. Wilcox’s headquarters, so near Petersburg that, with the General’s glasses, I could distinctly see the people in their houses at their daily work, though the cannons on both sides were replying with a formality as if war was a matter of etiquette. There seemed to be only women in the town, going about their home duties, quite unconscious of shells falling into their doomed city. The General was quite elated at having that day moved his lines forward three-quarters of a mile.