Even in these piping times of peace (peace as far as our own borders are concerned, at any rate)—there is a relish in a war story. And when the scene is laid right here in Georgia, in Decatur, in Atlanta; when familiar names come up in the course of the narrative, and familiar events are pictured by an honest eye-witness; when all through the little volume you feel the truthfulness of the writer, and know that the incidents she narrates happened just so; when, too, you see the writer herself—see her to be an old lady now, who really was a heroine in her young days; and then read the simple, personal narrative—now stirring, as the battle-guns sound—now touching, as some dear one falls; with all this combination of interest, a war story claims and holds the attention.
Such is the little book, called “Life in Dixie,” written by Miss Mary Gay, and telling of those stirring times in and about Atlanta, back yonder in the sixties.
There are some vivid pictures in that modest little volume, as well as some interesting facts. Miss Gay was in the thick of the strife, and tells what she saw in those dark days.
Among the well-known characters, associated with the recorded events, we find Mrs. L. P. Grant, Mr. and Mrs. Posey Maddox, Dr. J. P. Logan and many others.
A most interesting fact disclosed in those pages is the surprising one that two sisters of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln married Alabama officers in the Confederate army; there is recorded the public presentation, by those two ladies, of an elegant silk banner made for a gallant young company in Georgia’s daughter-State. Thus conspicuous were those women in the Southern Confederacy, while their sister and her dearest interests lay on the other side.
Another matter of history which will be interesting to the present generation of readers, however much we may have read of the mammoth prices for the necessaries of life in those hard days, is the following list of articles, with the cost thereof in Confederate money, bought by Miss Gay, after a ride of forty miles to obtain them:
One bushel of meal, $10.00; four bushels of corn, $40.00; fifteen pounds of flour, $7.50; four pounds of dried apples, $5.00; one and a half pounds of butter, $6.00; a bushel of sweet potatoes, $6.00; three gallons of syrup, $15.00; for shoeing the horse, $25.00; for a night’s lodging for self and horse, at Mrs. Born’s, $10.00.
Then, the vehicle in which the trip for these supplies was made!
It was contrived by “Uncle Mack,” a dusky hero of those times. “It was a something he had improvised which baffled description,” writes Miss Gay, “and which, for the sake of the faithful service I obtained from it, I will not attempt to describe. Suffice it to say that it carried living freight over many a bridge; and in honor of this, I will call it a wagon.”
The horse, which the author herself captured to draw this remarkable vehicle, was equally remarkable, and his subsequent history is one of the most interesting bits of narrative in the book. I wish I could give it all in Miss Gay’s own words, but my space does not admit of that.