FROM THE OTHER SIDE.
A UNION SOLDIER’S TRIBUTE TO A SOUTHERN WOMAN’S BOOK.
Evanston, Ill., December 30th, 1895.
Mary A. H. Gay:
Dear Madam: Allow me to thank you for giving to the world inside home life in the South during the war. All histories of the war that have been written have been confined to battles and movements of armies, which are so likened to the histories of other wars that when you have read one you may say that you have read them all. But yours gives a local and romantic description of real life, and I feel like congratulating you and calling the scenes in which you played so important a part the heyday of your existence. I take it you were the daughter, pampered and cuddled child, of rich and influential people, and had it not been for the war you would have been raised with much pomp, arrogance and importance of family, which, in the very nature of your surroundings, would have destroyed all the finer and nobler traits which want and misery have developed into a grand, noble, self-sacrificing and heroic woman. And although you portray the scenes freighted with misery, want and desolation, yet they were halcyon days to one like you, romantic, energetic, patriotic and self-sacrificing, and now, as you are passing down the shady lane of life, you live in the memories of the past, the part you played in the heroic struggle, and the noble womanhood developed; and the assurance that you did well your part in the great tragedy strews roses and garlands along the path of your declining years.
“I follow you through all these stirring scenes; I sit beside you in your hours of gloom and blighted hopes; I follow you beside the ox-cart that drew its freight of human misery; I walk with you into the woody retreats and sit beside you upon the banks of the limpid stream and mix my tears with yours; I tramp with you over the scenes of desolation; I sorrow with you over the death of Toby; I mourn with you over the sudden death of noble Thomie; I sit beside the death-bed of your sainted mother and mingle my tears with yours; I gladly accompany you on your weary tramp with your much-loved ‘Yankee’ or Johnnie Reb; I gather with you the leaden missiles of death to buy food for starving friends and fellow-sufferers; I pass with you through all the scenes that are freighted with hope, love, despair and expectation; I am your friend and sympathizer in all your misfortunes, and yet I am one of those ‘accursed’ Yankee soldiers who have been the bane of your life.
“The strange blending of pathos and diplomacy on pages 91 and 92 may be said to be amusingly expressive. Chapter 13 is intensely interesting, dramatic and romantic; still I see no reason that I should speak of these isolated passages, for the whole book is equally interesting, and would foreshadow for it a large sale in the North if properly handled. As to the mechanical construction of the book, I am much pleased with your language, as it is free from Carlylism and ostentatious English, which mars so much of the writings of many of our modern authors. I hold that when a book is overloaded with this disgusting use of the dictionary it is what Goldsmith terms ‘display of book learned skill.’
“The book was kindly sent me by a lady friend in Atlanta, Mrs. Delbridge, and I hope when I visit Atlanta again I may have the pleasure of meeting the authoress that nature has endowed with such wonderful power of description.”
Most respectfully,
Charles Aikin.