“The Yankees introduced some new fashions in other things besides clothes that I remember vividly, one being canned fruit. I had never seen any canned fruit before the Yankees came. Perhaps we had had canned fruit, but I do not remember it. Pleasant innovations in food were like to leave lasting impressions on one who had been living on next to nothing for an indefinite period.”
The mystery of her purchase of the alpaca skirt and the little bonnet is solved by her journal:
“I am prospering with my needlework. I sew early and late. My friends who are better off give me work, paying me as generously as they can. Mammy Jane has sold some of my embroideries to Northern ladies. Many ladies, widows and orphans, are seeking employment as teachers. The great trouble is that so few people are able to engage them or to pay for help of any kind. Still, we all manage to help each other somehow.
“Nannie, our young bride, is raising lettuce, radish, nasturtiums, in her back yard for sale. She is painting her house herself (with her husband’s help). She is going to give the lettuce towards paying the church debt. She has nothing else to give. I think I will raise something to buy window-panes for this house. Window-panes patched with paper are all the fashion in this town.
“The weather is very hot now. After supper, we go up on Gamble’s Hill, our fashionable cooling-off resort, to get a breath of fresh air; then come back and work till late in the night. O, for a glimpse of the mountains! a breath of mountain air! But I can only dream of the Greenbrier White and the Old Sweet Springs!
“Last night, on Gamble’s Hill, we observed near us a party whom we recognized by accent and good clothes as Northerners. One of the ladies, looking down on our city, said: ‘Behold the fruits of secession!’ Below us in the moonlight lay Richmond on her noble river, beautiful in spite of her wounds. A gentleman spoke: ‘Massachusetts thought of seceding once. I am sorry for these people.’ How I wanted to shout: ‘Behold the fruits of invasion!’ But, of course, I did not. I thanked our advocate with my eyes.”
A few had a little store laid up previous to the evacuation. A short time before that, the Confederate Government was selling some silver coin at $1 for $60 in notes; at Danville, it was sold for $70; and thrifty ones who could, bought.
Women who had been social queens, who had had everything heart could wish, and a retinue of servants happy to obey their behests and needing nothing, now found themselves reduced to harder case than their negroes had ever known, and gratefully and gracefully availed themselves of the lowliest tasks by which they might earn enough to buy a dress for the baby, a pair of shoes for little bare feet, coffee or tea or other luxury for an invalid dear one, or a bit of any sort of food to replenish a nearly empty larder.
The first greenbacks were brought to one family by a former dining-room servant. His mistress, unable to pay him wages, had advised him to seek employment elsewhere. At the end of a week, he returned, saying: “Mistiss, here is five dollahs. I’m makin’ twenty dollahs a month, an’ rations, waitin’ on one uh de Yankee officers. I’ll bring you my wages evvy week.” “John,” she said, “I don’t know how to take it, for I don’t see how I can ever pay it back.” He knew she was in dire straits. “You took care uh me all my life, Mistiss, an’ learnt me how to work. I orter do whut I kin fuh you.” Seeing her still hesitate: “You got property, you kin raise money on presen’y. Den you kin pay me back, but I’d be proud ef you wouldn’ bother yo’se’f.” Could her son have done more? The Old South had many negroes as good and true. Was the system altogether wrong that developed such characters?
Some of our people had Northern friends and relatives who contrived money to them. Mrs. Gracebridge was one of the fortunate; and everybody was glad. No one deserved better of fate or friends. She had entertained many refugees, was the most hospitable soul in the world. Had her table been large enough to seat the world, the world would have been welcome. From her nephew, living in New York, an officer of the United States Navy came with a message and money.