A hot morning in July found us at City Point before sunrise, waiting for the Saratoga, one of a bi-weekly line of two steam-boats, now coming from Richmond on its way to New York. The Saratoga and her consort, the Niagara, had the right of way at that time with no competitors, and could take their own time without let or hindrance. They travelled the path now traversed by the many fine ships of the Old Dominion Line, and travelled it alone except for an occasional Clyde boat or two.
As we waited, our noisy little engine puffed away impatiently. The conductor hoped for a possible passenger for his return trip to Petersburg, and had arrived at the terminus of his short road too soon.
City Point—lately a place of strategic importance, where the great ships of the Federal army had anchored, where Mr. Lincoln had been entertained by General Grant, where General Butler had long made his headquarters—was now silent and deserted. Two years before the last of General Butler's gunboats had steamed away. Not a shade tree, not a "shanty," remained to mark the occupation of the Federal troops. An unsheltered platform afforded the only place for a traveller to rest while waiting for the boat, unless he could content himself with the dust-covered seats in the forlorn little car and the limited view from the narrow, dirty car window. Out on the platform, seated on his own boxes, the traveller could see the sweep of the noble James River, broadened here into a sea as it took into its bosom the muddy waters of the Appomattox. Landward there was little to be seen except an unbroken waste of dusty road and untilled field.
At a little distance a thin line of smoke indicated a small log cabin and the presence of inhabitants. Outside the hut there was a "patch" of corn and cabbages, and a watermelon vine sprawled about, searching for the sweet waters wherewithal to fill the plump green melons it had brought forth. A suspicious hen was leading her brood as far from the engine as possible, and a pig in an odoriferous pen was leaping on the sides of his stye and clamoring for his breakfast. Presently a languid negro woman emerged from the cabin, and stooping over the cabbages, selected a large leaf, which she proceeded to bind with a strip of cloth around her forehead. She sauntered toward us and remarked that it was "gwine to be a mighty hot day." She had risen early, she said, to see the boat pass. Her son Jim was kitchen boy on the Saratoga, and not allowed to leave the boat, but she could see him and "tell 'im howdy." She "cert'nly thought Sis Hannah lucky to git to go Nawth" (Hannah was rather rueful and teary, having just parted from a Jim of her own). "She would cert'nly go Nawth" herself if she wasn't "'bleeged to stay at the Pint on account of the pig an' chickens an' things." She was like the two old maids in Dickens's funny story, who lived in the greatest discomfort in a crowded quarter on the Thames, but could not even consider the possibility of moving—which they could well afford to do—because of the trouble of moving "the library," a small collection of books which any able-bodied market-woman could easily have carried in her basket.
My own movables were really of less importance than those of my new acquaintance. Hers represented the entire furnishing of a home—a home sufficient for her needs. Mine were the melancholy wreckage of a home which had been enriched with such treasures as are collected in a prosperous and happy life: only what had been saved by a good neighbor and a faithful servant from the sacking of our house at Cottage Farm—a few damaged books, a box of sacred silver, and one trunk, which sufficed for my own garments and for the slender wardrobes of my children. I was on my way to keep house in New York with a service of silver and a few rain-and-mud-stained books which had been picked up on the farm by our good John.
My heart was heavier than my boxes, as I waited for the boat. All the sad foreboding letters my general had written me rose up to fill me with doubt and alarm. He had rented a furnished house and had paid the first quarter of the $1800 it was to cost us. That sum seemed to me simply enormous, but he had spent weeks in hunting throughout the length and breadth of New York for the humble little home of his imagination. This house was far out on an avenue in Brooklyn. I was afraid of it! I was apprehensive that a very large hole indeed had been made in the $2000. Moreover, my heart was sick in leaving Virginia—dear old Virginia, for which I cherished the inordinate affection so sternly forbidden by the Apostle. Six years of sorrow and disaster had borne fruit. "Truly," I thought:—
"All backward as I cast my e'e
Seems dark and drear:
And forward though I canna' see
I doubt and fear."