"Oh, but there is reason. You have suffered more than the rest. You have been driven from your home! Your house has been sacked. George knows all about you. I have brought a basket for you—tea, coffee, sugar, crackers."
"I cannot accept it, I am sorry."
"But what are you going to do? Are you going to starve?"
"Very likely," I said, "but somehow I shall not very much mind!"
"Oh, this is too utterly, utterly dreadful!" said the lady as she left the room. The next day the ration was changed. Fresh meat, coffee, sugar, and canned vegetables were issued to all the women of Petersburg. The first morning they were received I met the wife of General Weisiger trudging along with a basket. "Going for your rations?" I asked her. "No indeed! I'm going, with the only five dollars I have in the world, to the sutler's! I shall buy, as far as it goes, currants, citron, raisins, sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, spice—"
"Mercy! Are you to open a grocery?"
"Not a bit of it"—solemnly—"I'm going to make a fruit cake!"
Less, one might think, should have contented a starving woman! The little incident is characteristic of the Southern woman's temperament. She can lie as patiently as another under the heel of a hard fate, but the moment the heel is lifted she is ready for a festival.
All the citizens who had been driven away now began to return—among them the owners of the house I was occupying, and I was compelled to return to Cottage Farm. General Hartsuff, to whom I applied for a guard, said at once:—
"It is impossible for you to go to Cottage Farm; there are fifty or more negroes on the place. You cannot live there."