Hood will not turn and pursue Sherman. Thomas is at his heels with forty thousand men, and can have as many more as he wants for the asking. Between Thomas and Sherman Hood would be crushed. So he was pushing—I do not remember where or what. I know there was no comfort in anything he said.
Serena’s account of money spent: Paper and envelopes, $12.00; tickets to concert, $10.00; tooth-brush, $10.00; total, $32.00.
December 14th.—And now the young ones are in bed and I am wide awake. It is an odd thing; in all my life how many persons have I seen in love? Not a half-dozen. And I am a tolerably close observer, a faithful watcher have I been from my youth upward of men and manners. Society has been for me only an enlarged field for character study.
Flirtation is the business of society; that is, playing at love-making. It begins in vanity, it ends in vanity. It is spurred on by idleness and a want of any other excitement. Flattery, battledore and shuttlecock, how in this game flattery is dashed backward and forward. It is so soothing to self-conceit. If it begins and ends in vanity, vexation of spirit supervenes sometimes. They do occasionally burn their fingers awfully, playing with fire, but there are no hearts broken. Each party in a flirtation has secured a sympathetic listener, to whom he or she can talk of himself or herself—somebody who, for the time, admires one exclusively, and, as the French say, excessivement. It is a pleasant, but very foolish game, and so to bed.
Hood and Thomas have had a fearful fight, with carnage and loss of generals excessive in proportion to numbers. That means they were leading and urging their men up to the enemy. I know how Bartow and Barnard Bee were killed bringing up their men. One of Mr. Chesnut’s sins thrown in his teeth by the Legislature of South Carolina was that he procured the promotion of Gist, “State Rights” Gist, by his influence in Richmond. What have these comfortable, stay-at-home patriots to say of General Gist now? “And how could man die better than facing fearful odds,” etc.
So Fort McAlister has fallen! Good-by, Savannah! Our Governor announces himself a follower of Joe Brown, of Georgia. Another famous Joe.
December 19th.—The deep waters are closing over us and we are in this house, like the outsiders at the time of the flood. We care for none of these things. We eat, drink, laugh, dance, in lightness of heart.
Doctor Trezevant came to tell me the dismal news. How he piled on the agony! Desolation, mismanagement, despair. General Young, with the flower of Hampton’s cavalry, is in Columbia. Horses can not be found to mount them. Neither the Governor of Georgia nor the Governor of South Carolina is moving hand or foot. They have given up. The Yankees claim another victory for Thomas.[127] Hope it may prove like most of their victories, brag and bluster. Can’t say why, maybe I am benumbed, but I do not feel so intensely miserable.
December 27th.—Oh, why did we go to Camden? The very dismalest Christmas overtook us there. Miss Rhett went with us—a brilliant woman and very agreeable. “The world, you know, is composed,” said she, “of men, women, and Rhetts” (see Lady Montagu). Now, we feel that if we are to lose our negroes, we would as soon see Sherman free them as the Confederate Government; freeing negroes is the last Confederate Government craze. We are a little too slow about it; that is all.
Sold fifteen bales of cotton and took a sad farewell look at Mulberry. It is a magnificent old country-seat, with old oaks, green lawns and all. So I took that last farewell of Mulberry, once so hated, now so beloved.