Perhaps there was never anywhere else so varied a collection of curios for the adornment of the person as I had assembled for a trousseau. I had gowns remodeled from court robes more than a century old, relics of grandmothers and great-grandmothers; frocks of home-woven material, striped with vegetable dyes gathered from the woods, and trimmed with a passementerie made of various kinds of seeds, such as canteloupe, laces knit from fine-spun flax, tatting and crocheted trimmings, and buttons carved from peach-stones.
One of my bonnets was made of the lacy lining that grows on the inside of a gourd, called my dish-cloth bonnet because the soft fabric was used also for the less ornamental kitchen purpose. In the absence of the more widely known varieties of millinery I used the silky milkweed balls for white roses and made bunches of grapes from picked cotton covered with fleek-skin and tinted. A bonnet of gray straw, plaited and dyed by the servants, poke-shaped and with pink roses inside the brim, was especially becoming. My bridal present from my pastor's wife was a very wide collar of tatting and embroidery.
The wedding robe left nothing to be desired, for it was of white satin and exquisite shimmering lace, made at a center of fashion. In passing I may remark that the possession of a real wedding dress, new and stylish, was a distinction that carried with it a sense of obligation to the community at large, and my bridal gown graced a number of weddings after my own. It was last worn by one of the most beautiful girls of the Confederacy who, a few days later, exchanged its snowy folds for the sables of widowhood when the bridegroom was brought home dead from the battlefield. Thus tragically shadowed the dress around which clustered so many happy memories, so many tender sentiments, and so many sorrowful recollections, was laid away with reverent hands, never again to glimmer with soft sheen through the misty folds of the bridal veil.
XVI BUTLER BOTTLED UP
My Soldier was at this time assigned to the Department of North Carolina, with headquarters at Petersburg, Virginia, commanding all that part of Virginia between James River on the north and Cape Fear River on the south, reaching eastward to the Federal lines around Suffolk and westward to the Black Water and Chowan, including all the troops in that region.
After our bridal visits to kinspeople we returned to Petersburg where we found that our friends, in spite of the restrictions of war, had arranged beautiful rooms for us, decorating them luxuriantly with flowers and fitting them up handsomely.
Among the many who helped to make my life happy in Petersburg was Major Charles Pickett, the General's Assistant Adjutant General (the "Little Major," as he was affectionately called by the soldiers). When my Soldier introduced him to me as his "little brother" he immediately became my "little brother," too, and thus he was in my life and my heart through all the years that he remained on earth. He walked slightly lame from a wound received at Frazier's Farm. So anxious was he to get into the fight that he disobeyed orders to report for staff duty in Richmond and went into the battle instead. When he was shot he begged his comrades not to carry him off the field but to leave him his flag that he might die under its folds. But he lived through what was known among the men as "the battle the little Major fought down at Frazier's Farm," and thus I came into possession of "my little brother." Soon afterward he married Miss Elizabeth Smith of Washington, and brought us a dear sister who was my companion in the rare sunshine and the many storms of war.
All this region was historic and held thrilling memories of the battles of bygone days. As we rode over the ground we talked of the old-time conflicts and my Soldier said that he would have been glad to be in all wars that were for a just cause. I had been taught that the Mexican war was without such justification, and asked his opinion.