Everything passed off very pleasantly. When dinner was announced, taking the arm of General Grant, I led the way to the dining-room. Mrs. General Stone took the arm of General McPherson, General Stone having already gone into the dining-room to help us up. The stairs being torn away, and the ascent being made on two planks that stood at an angle of forty-five degrees, he reached down his hands and helped us up. When the two great commanders reached the dining-room, they stood for some time by the broken walls and stairs, and discussed shells as destructive missiles, and speculated as to which battery sent that shell crashing through the house. They finally decided that it came from one of Admiral Porter’s gunboats.
The dinner followed, and was most thoroughly enjoyed. All the praise I had given our cook she justified in that grandest effort of her life.
Aunt Dinah held the door a little ajar so that she could see and hear all that was going on in the dining-room. She said to me afterwards, with a satisfied chuckle, “Oh! Laws a massa, didn’t dey praise my cooken! I never felt so big in my life. Seems to me I’se one of the biggest cooks in the world.”
The professional waiters were skilled and graceful, even though a napkin over a tin platter was used as a tray.
Aunt Dinah said very confidentially afterwards to me,—
“You see, honey, ’twould neber hab done to hab our niggahs done it. T’ey’d been most scar’t to death, and sure to spill something. It won’t do to hab common niggahs waten on high an’ mighty folks like big ginnels.”
The guests enjoyed the dinner and the after visit. The siege; the surrender; the terms of parole; the condition of the people who had been shut up in the city during the siege; their life in the caves; the condition of the hospitals; and “what next?” were freely discussed in that frank and easy way that characterized General Grant when he was surrounded by a group of friends he could trust.
When the two great generals took their leave, every colored person in the neighborhood knew that the smaller man was General Grant, and they were watching to get another glimpse of him. Both generals thanked us for inviting them, and assured us that it was the most restful, home-like visit they had enjoyed since the war began.
It was my privilege to dine with them on several occasions after that, and to dine with General Grant at the White House during his presidential terms; but there was not the enthusiasm and novelty on those occasions that clustered around the dinner and visit in the shell-wrecked house after the fall of Vicksburg.
General and Mrs. Stone live at their old home in Mount Pleasant, Iowa; but the two great captains of the Union hosts are gone—McPherson falling in the midst of the struggle on the bloody field of strife near Atlanta, Ga., and Grant, after passing through untold perils, passing peacefully away, and even in death immortalizing Mount McGregor.