“O, sir,” I said, “I did not expect so much.”
“You have not yet received what is due you,” this good man replied, and handed me a certificate which he assured me would secure as much more on presentation.
Joy had gone out of my life, and I felt no thrill of that kind; but I can never describe the satisfaction I experienced as I lifted two of those baskets, and saw Telitha grasp the other one, and turned my face homeward.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Decatur women’s struggle for bread—Sweet singing in hard places—Pleasant visitors—I make a trip to Alabama—The news of my brother’s death.
The tug of war was upon us from the mountains to the sea-board, and ingenious was the woman who devised means to keep the wolf, hungry and ravenous, from the door. The depreciation of our currency, and its constant diminution in value, had rendered it an unreliable purchasing commodity, and we had nothing to give in exchange for food. I, therefore, felt that I had literally rubbed against Aladdin’s lamp when I saw much needed food, good and palatable, given in exchange for minie balls, and for any kind of metal convertible into destructive missiles, and I was anxious that others should share the benefit accruing from the lead mines mentioned in a former sketch. In pursuance of this humane desire, I proclaimed its discovery and results from house to house; for, mark you, we had no “Daily Courier,” nor messenger boy to convey the glad tidings to the half-famished women and children in and around Decatur. And if my words could have been changed into diamonds by the magic wand of a fairy, not one of those starving people would have accepted the change of diamonds for bread.
It required only a short time to raise a large company of women, girls and little boys, who were ready to do service for themselves and their country by digging lead with case-knives from mines providentially furnished them. And was it not serving the cause of the Confederacy? I thought so; and never walked with more independent step than when acting as generalissimo of that band of devoted, patriotic women, en route to the “lead mines” around Atlanta. Telitha, too, evidently felt that she was an important adjunct in the mining enterprise, and a conspicuous personage in the scenes being enacted, and emphasized her opinion by strong and suggestive gesticulation. On this occasion she playfully wrenched from my hand the small vessel with which I had supplied myself and which I carried on the former trip, and substituted a larger one, while for herself she got at least a half-bushel measure.
All who remember the month of December, 1864, know that it abounded in clouds and rain and sleet, and was intensely cold in the Confederate States of America; and in the latitude embracing Atlanta, such severity of weather had never been known to the oldest inhabitant. But what mattered it? Each one in that little band of women was connected by a bright link to the illustrious armies that were enduring greater privation and hardship than those to which she was exposed, and counted it a willing oblation upon his country’s altar, and why should she not prove faithful to the end, and suffer the pangs of hunger and privation too?