Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War

by George Alfred Townsend

Many of the dwellings were guarded by soldiers; but of the resident citizens only the women and the old men remained. I did not need to ask where the young men were exiled. The residue that prayed with their faces toward Richmond, told me the story with their eyes. There was, nevertheless, no melodramatic exhibition of feeling among the bereaved. I did not see any defiant postures, nor hear any melting apostrophies. Marius was not mouthing by the ruins of Carthage, nor even Rachel weeping for her Hebrew children. But there were on every hand manifestations of adherence to the Southern cause, except among a few males who feared unutterable things, and were disposed to cringe and prevaricate. The women were not generally handsome; their face was indolent, their dress slovenly, and their manner embarrassed. They lopped off the beginnings and the ends of their sentences, generally commencing with a verb, as thus: "Told soldiers not to carr' off the rye; declared they would; said they bound do jest what they pleased. Let 'em go!"

The Captain stopped at a spruce residence, approached by a long lane, and on knocking at the porch with his ponderous fist, a woman came timidly to the kitchen window.

"Who's thar?" she said, after a moment.

"Come out young woman," said the Captain, soothingly; "we don't intend to murder or rob you, ma'am!"

There dropped from the doorsill into the yard, not one, but three young women, followed by a very deaf old man, who appeared to think that the Captain's visit bore some reference to the hencoop.

"I wish to buy for the use of the United States Government," said the Captain, "some stacks of hay and corn fodder, that lie in one of your fields."

"The last hen was toted off this morning before breakfast," said the old man; "they took the turkeys yesterday, and I was obliged to kill the ducks or I shouldn't have had anything to eat."

Here Fogg so misdemeaned himself, as to laugh through his nose, and the man Clover appeared to be suddenly interested in something that lay in a mulberry-tree opposite.

"I am provided with money to pay liberally for your produce, and you cannot do better than to let me take the stacks: leaving you, of course, enough for your own horses and cattle."

Here the old man pricked up his ears, and said that he hadn't heard of any recent battle; for his part, he had never been a politician; but thought that both parties were a little wrong; and wished that peace would return: for he was a very old man, and was sorry that folks couldn't let quiet folks' property alone. How far his garrulity might have betrayed him, could be conjectured only by one of the girls taking his hand and leading him submissively into the house.