From this same journal I take the following, written after Missouri’s return to the school she was teaching in Bartow county:
“Sabbath morning, June 14th. Went to Cartersville to church. Some time elapsed before preaching commenced. A soldier came in, sat down rather behind me, then, rising, approached me. It was Thomie. I soon found (for we did talk in church) that he had an order to join Kirby Smith, with a recommendation from Bragg that he be allowed to recruit for his regiment. Fortunately there was a vacant seat in the carriage, so he went out home with us. Monday 15th, Thomie left. I rode with him a little beyond the school-house, then took my books and basket, and with one kiss, and, on my part, a tearful good-bye, we parted. As I walked slowly back, I felt so lonely. He had been with me just long enough for me to realize a brother’s kind protection, and now he’s torn away, and I’m again alone. I turned and looked. He was driving slowly along—he turned a corner and was hidden from my view. Shall I see him no more? Or shall we meet again? God only knows. After a fit of weeping, and one earnest prayer for him, I turned my steps to my little school.”
And thus our brother went back to Texas, and gladly, too, for was not his Mary there?
Of Thomie’s recall to join his command at Dalton; of his arrival at home the next February, on his way to “the front;” of his participation in the hard-fought battles that contested the way to Atlanta; and of his untimely death at the fatal battle of Franklin, Tennessee, I may speak hereafter.
Even in the spring and summer of 1863, the shadows began to deepen, and to hearts less sanguine than mine, affairs were assuming a gloomy aspect. I notice in this same journal from which I have quoted the foregoing extracts, the following:
“Our fallen braves, how numerous! Among our generals, Zollicoffer, Ben McCulloch, Albert Sidney Johnston, and the saintly, dauntless Stonewall Jackson, are numbered with the dead; while scarcely a household in our land does not mourn the loss of a brave husband and father, son or brother.”
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME SOCIAL FEATURES.