"I do hate to write you bad news just now when you should be so happy with our dear General, but, really and truly, I don't at all like the looks of things here. Sheridan is at Ashland. And General Sherman has finished up North Carolina, and is in Virginia!
"I made an excursion through some of the Main Street stores last week—and recognized some of Mrs. Davis's things. I learned that she had placed a great many articles at the dry-goods stores for sale and had sold her horses. And now comes the surprising news, that she has left the city with her family. What does all this mean? Some of the girls here have taken their jewellery to the Treasury Department, giving it to help redeem the currency. I am sure they are welcome to all mine!"
On the morning of April 2 we were all up early that we might prepare and send to Dr. Claiborne's Hospital certain things we had suddenly acquired. An old farmer friend of my husband had loaded a wagon with peas, potatoes, dried fruit, hominy, and a little bacon, and had sent it as a welcoming present. We had been told of the prevalence of scurvy in the hospitals, and had boiled a quantity of hominy, and also of dried fruit, to be sent with the potatoes for the relief of the sick.
My husband said to me at our early breakfast:—
"How soundly you can sleep! The cannonading was awful last night. It shook the house."
"Oh, that is only Fort Gregg," I answered. "Those guns fire incessantly. I don't consider them. You've been shut up in a casemate so long you've forgotten the smell of powder."
Our father, who happened to be with us that morning, said:—
"By the bye, Roger, I went to see General Lee, and told him you seemed to be under the impression that if your division moves, you should go along with it. The General said emphatically: 'That would be violation of his parole, Doctor. Your son surely knows he cannot march with the army until he is exchanged.'"
This was a great relief to me, for I had been afraid of a different construction.
After breakfast I repaired to the kitchen to see the pails filled for the hospital, and to send Alick and John on their errand.