One of the symptoms speaking badly for the Confederate cause, was the fact that the government was out of materials for the use of its officers, which it could not manage to supply. Thus the printed and ruled tax rolls were all used. There was paper of a kind, but it needed a certain form of ruling, and Mr. Durham asked Robert if he could rule it. Robert said he had not the time, but that I would do it as well as anybody. So paper and rulers and pencils came to me, and from henceforward until the break up, I ruled the sheets for the assessors. Soon after the envelopes of three necessary sizes gave out, and I made the envelopes. And Mr. Durham laughed when I sent in my bill for “specie” payment.
“Barr,” he said, “you would have taken Blue Williams,[5] but the Confederacy can’t fool women with them. I don’t know a woman who has done anything for it, that has not sent her modest little bill for ‘specie.’”
These employments broke in upon my regular life very much, but the “specie” was our domestic salvation. In the household also we were obliged to help ourselves. No candles were to be bought, and we made our own candles. We were 245 as badly off for soap also, that is the soap for washing clothes and kitchen use. I had yet a few boxes of Old Brown Windsor which I had brought with me from England, and also perhaps half a dozen of those semi-transparent balls made, I think, by Pears. Among other utilities I painted a very respectable pack of playing cards. I had bought, with my Newman’s box of water colors, a dozen large sheets of bristol board, which was just the proper thickness. Robert with a sharp shoemaker’s knife cut them even, and exact, and then I painted them. I was quite pleased with this achievement and sent word to Pat O’Gorman and Mr. Simcox, we could have our game of whist once more. I have forgotten what became of this pack, but I think one of these gentlemen took it as a memorial of the evenings in the old log house.
Thus nearly every day there was a makeshift of some kind to devise, and we found out, often with real happiness, that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Robert said it was like living in a Texas log house the island life of the Swiss Family Robinson.
One day when the year was drawing close to Christmas, Robert came home early. As soon as I saw him, I knew there was trouble, and I said, “What is it, Robert?”
“Why, Milly, dear, this house has been sold, and we must leave it before the first. Oh, my dear, I am so sorry!”
I was giving the Sally Lunns their second kneading, and I let the dough fall to the floor. The tears sprang to my eyes, but I tried to bear the loss as well as I could. Indeed I had been half afraid of this very thing, for three nights previously I had dreamed of seeing my furniture on a wagon. I sat down. Robert put his arm round me, and whispered a few hopeful words, and I answered, “It is all right, dear. We have had a fine rest here. We shall never forget it. Do you know where we can rent anything as comfortable?”
“Not yet. Allen tells me, General Haney’s place, just beyond the Capitol will be for rent very soon, but there is nothing at present but the Cartmel place, and if that will not do, we must store our things, and go to the hotel.”
“Then the Cartmel place must do. How can we go into 246 two or three rooms with five little children? Gracious Robert! It was not at all pleasant with two. Where is the Cartmel place?”
“Just above Mrs. Green’s.”