“There’s nothing for you to find,” I informed him, as I pulled a bureau drawer open for his inspection.
He waved it away with scorn. “I,” he repeated, touching his breast, “am good Secesh. Don’t want to see nothin’. Don’t you say nothin’—I’m good Secesh as you is, sis.”
I led the way into the next room to be searched, he following, asseverating in tipsy whispers, “Good Secesh as you is, sis,” every few minutes.
We found little Ruf Pagett cleaning his gun.
“Better hide that, sonny,” said our friend, glancing around. “That other fellow out there, he’ll take it from you. But I won’t take it from you. I won’t take nothin’. I’m good Secesh as you is, bud. Hide your gun, bud.”
Down-stairs our friends were having a harder time. The men who went through their rooms searched everywhere, and tumbled their things around outrageously. I could hear Mrs. Sampson quarreling. They went away, but returned to search again. She said she wouldn’t stand it—she would report them. She saw General Weitzel and made her complaint, and he told her that the men were stragglers and had no authority for what they had done. If they could be found they would be punished. Before this time the fire had been brought under control. Houses not a square from us had been in flames. What saved us was an open space between us and the nearest house which had been on fire, and wet blankets. Mrs. Fry’s son had had wet blankets spread over our roof for protection, and we had also kept wet blankets hung in our windows. At one time, however, cinders and smoke had blown into my room till the air was stifling and the danger great.
A niece of my husband’s, a beautiful girl of eighteen, who had been ill with typhoid fever, had to be carried out of a burning house that night and laid on a cot in the street. She died in the street and I heard of other sick persons who died from the terror and exposure of that time.
As night came on many people were wandering about without shelter, amid blackened ruins. In the Square numbers were huddled for the night under improvised shelter or without any protection at all. But profound quiet reigned—the quiet of desolation as well as of order. The city had been put under martial law as soon as the Federals took possession; order and quiet had been quickly established and were well preserved. Our next-door neighbors were so quiet that with only a wall between we sometimes forgot their presence.
I must tell of one person who did not weep because the Yankees had come. That was a little girl in the house who clapped her hands and danced all around.
“The Yankees have come! the Yankees have come!” she shouted, “and now we’ll get something to eat. I’m going to have pickles and molasses and oranges and cheese and nuts and candy until I have a fit and die.”