My Day: Reminiscences of a Long Life

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

Charles Campbell, the historian, lived near us, at the Anderson Seminary. He cleared out the large coal cellar, which was fortunately dry, spread rugs on the floor, and furnished it with lounges and chairs. There we took refuge in utter darkness when the firing was unbearable. My next-door neighbor, Mr. Thomas Branch, piled bags of sand around his house and thus made it bomb-proof. One day a shell struck one of my chimneys and buried itself, hissing, at the front door. Away we went to Mr. Campbell's bomb-proof cellar, and there we remained until the paroxysmal shelling ceased.

One night, after a long, hot day, we were so tired we slept soundly. I was awakened by Eliza Page, standing trembling beside me. She pulled me out of bed and hurriedly turned to throw blankets around the children. The furies were let loose! The house was shaking with the concussion from the heavy guns. We were in the street, on our way to our bomb-proof cellar, when a shell burst not more than twenty-five feet before us. Fire and fragments rose like a fountain in the air and fell in a shower around us. Not one of my little family was hurt—and strange to say, the children were not terrified!

Another time a shell fell in our own yard and buried itself in the earth. My baby was not far away in her nurse's arms. The little creature was fascinated by the shells. The first word she ever uttered was an attempt to imitate them. "Yonder comes that bird with the broken wing," the servants would say. The shells made a fluttering sound as they traversed the air, descending with a frightful hiss. When they exploded in mid-air, a puff of smoke, white as an angel's wing, would drift away, and the particles would patter down like hail. At night the track of the shell and its explosion were precisely similar to our Fourth of July rockets, except that they were fired, not upward, but in a slanting direction,—not aimed at the stars, but aimed at us! I never felt afraid of them! I was brought up to believe in predestination. Courage, after all, is much a matter of nerves. My neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Meade, and Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, agreed with me, and we calmly elected to remain in town. There was no place of safety accessible to us. Mr. Branch removed his family, and, as far as I knew, none other of my friends remained throughout the summer.

Not far from our own door ran a sunken street, with the hill, through which it was cut, rising each side of it. Into this hill the negroes burrowed, hollowing out a small space, where they sat all day on mats, knitting, singing, and selling small cakes made of sorghum and flour, and little round meat pies.

The antiphonal songs, with their weird melody, still linger in my memory. At night above the dull roar of the guns, the keen hiss of the shells as they fell, the rattle and rumble of the army wagons, a strong voice from the colony of hillside huts would ring out:—

	"My brederin do-o-n't be weary,
	De angel brought de tidin's down.
	Do-o-n't be weary
	For we're gwine home!
	"I want to go to heaven!
(Answer)	Yas, my Lawd!
	I want to see my Jesus!
(Answer)	Yas, my Lawd!
(Chorus)	My brederin do-o-n't be weary,
	De angel brought de tidin's down.
	Do-o-n't be weary
	For we're gwine home."

The sorghum cakes were made to perfection in our own kitchen, but the meat pies were fascinating. I might have been tempted to invest in them but for a slight circumstance. I saw a dead mule lying on the common, and out of its side had been cut a very neat, square chunk of flesh!

With all our starvation we never ate rats, mice, or mule meat. We managed to exist on peas, bread, and sorghum. We could buy a little milk, and we mixed it with a drink made from roasted and ground corn. The latter, in the grain, was scarce. Mr. Campbell's children picked up the grains wherever the army horses were fed, washed, dried, and pounded them for food.

My little boys never complained, but Theo, who had insisted upon returning to me from his uncle's safe home in the country, said one day: "Mamma, I have a queer feeling in my stomach! Oh, no! it doesn't ache the least bit, but it feels like a nutmeg grater."

Poor little laddie! His machinery needed oiling. And pretty soon his small brother fell ill with fever. My blessed Dr. Withers obtained a permit for me to get a pint of soup every day from the hospital, and one day there was a joyful discovery. In the soup was a drumstick of chicken!