Frightened at Last.
Seated in loneliness and darkness till the town clock struck eight, every fear that could arise in the brain of a silly woman assailed me. Did the train I was in go to Augusta, and if not, would I be left where I was all night? Was the man who locked me up the mail agent? If he came back and robbed and murdered me, would any one ever miss me? Having had nothing to eat but a couple of biscuits in twenty-four hours, and my brain being, in consequence, proportionately light, imagination seized the reins from common sense, which fled in the presence of utter darkness and loneliness.
At last the key turned in the lock, and the light of a lantern dispelled some of my terrors. The cars started and the agent commenced sorting his letters, first bolting us in securely. A couple of hours passed and my mind was gradually losing its tone of unpleasant doubt as to the wisdom of my proceedings, when my busy companion knocked off work and essayed to play the agreeable. He was communicative in the extreme, giving me his biography, which proved him to be a Connecticut man, and very much dissatisfied with the Confederacy, particularly with the state of the money market. So long as he kept to his personal recollections all was right, but he soon claimed a return of confidence, and grew hourly more patronizing and conversational. His tone and manner, the loneliness of the position, and the impossibility of any fortunate interruption occurring becoming unbearable at last, there is no knowing what I might have ventured to do, in the way of breaking out, if the cars had not fortunately run off the track.
All’s well that ends well.
On we bumped, happily on level ground, for two minutes or more; the engineer entirely unconscious of the fact and no way of communicating with him, as the soldiers were lying over the rope on the top of the cars, so that pulling was in vain. At last a pause, and then a crowd, and then a familiar name was called, most welcome to my ears. I repeated it aloud until the owner was by my side, and the rest of the night was spent in asking questions and receiving information. At daylight he left me to rejoin his command, while we continued on to Augusta.
As usual, when we arrived there no vehicle of any kind met us at the depot, but being the only woman in the cars, the mail driver offered me a seat upon the mail-bags, and as it was raining I accepted, and in this august style reached the hotel by breakfast time. All military suspension ceased here, but there was detention for two hours, and this was enlivened by an amusing episode at the depot.
Up-country Georgia Eloquence.
Directly in front of me sat an old Georgia up-country woman, placidly regarding the box cars full of men on the parallel rails, waiting like ourselves to start. She knitted and gazed, and at last inquired “who was them ar soldiers, and whar was they a-going to?” The information that they were Yankee prisoners startled her considerably. The knitting ceased abruptly (all the old women in the Southern States knitted socks for the soldiers while traveling), and the Cracker bonnet of dark brown homespun was thrown back violently, for her whole nervous system seemed to have received a galvanic shock. Then she caught her breath with a long gasp, lifted on high her thin, trembling hand, accompanied by the trembling voice, and made them a speech:
“Ain’t you ashamed of you-uns,” she piped, “a-coming down here a-spiling our country, and a-robbing our hen-roosts? What did we ever do to you-uns that you should come a-killing our brothers and sons? Ain’t you ashamed of you-uns? What for do you want us to live with you-uns, you poor white trash? I ain’t got a single nigger that would be so mean as to force himself where he warn’t wanted, and what do we-uns want with you? Ain’t you——” but here came a roar of laughter from both cars, and shaking with excitement the old lady pulled down her spectacles, which in the excitement she had pushed up on her forehead, and tried in vain to resume her labors with uncertain fingers.
General Desolation.