I was laughing and crying all the time he was talking. When I pulled off boot and shoe I found that he had spoken the truth in jest when he said he had been walking barefoot nearly all the way. His feet were sore. I had some good shoes for him, and I got out an old civilian suit that he had worn before the war. It didn’t fit him now and looked antiquated, but he donned it with great satisfaction.
Then we went out shopping. It was shopping in a city of ruins. As we walked along the streets there were smoking pits on each side of us. Here and there the remnants of what had been a store enabled us to purchase shoes at one place and the materials for two white shirts at another, and to our great joy we found a hat for which he paid two dollars, United States money.
We had nothing on which to begin life over again, but we were young and strong, and began it cheerily enough. We are prosperous now, our heads are nearly white; little grandchildren cluster about us and listen with interest to grandpapa’s and grandmamma’s tales of the days when they “fought and bled and died together.” They can’t understand how such nice people as the Yankees and ourselves ever could have fought each other. “It doesn’t seem reasonable,” says Nellie the third, who is engaged to a gentleman from Boston, where we sent her to cultivate her musical talents, but where she applied herself to other matters, “it doesn’t seem reasonable, grandmamma, when you could just as easily have settled it all comfortably without any fighting. How glad I am I wasn’t living then! How thankful I am that ‘Old Glory’ floats alike over North and South, now!”
And so am I, my darling, so am I!
But for us—for Dan and me—we could almost as easily give up each other as those terrible, beloved days. They are the very fiber of us.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.