"Your loving
"Agnes."
"P. S.—I attended Mrs. Davis's last reception. There was a crowd, all in evening dress. You see, as we don't often wear our evening gowns, they are still quite passable. I wore the gray silk with eleven flounces which was made for Mrs. Douglas's last reception, and by the bye, who do you think was at the battle of Williamsburg, on General McClellan's staff? The Prince de Joinville who drank the Rose wine with you at the Baron de Limbourg's reception to the Japs. Doesn't it all seem so long ago—so far away? The Prince de Joinville escorted me to one of the President's levees—don't you remember?—and now I attend another President's levee and hear him calmly telling some people that rats, if fat, are as good as squirrels, and that we can never afford mule meat. It would be too expensive, but the time may come when rats will be in demand.
"Dearly,
"Agnes."
The Emancipation Proclamation did not create a ripple of excitement among the colored members of our households in Virginia. Of its effect elsewhere I could not judge. As to fighting, our own negroes never dreamed of such a thing. The colored troops of the North were not inferior, we were told, in discipline and courage to other soldiers; but the martial spirit among them had its exceptions. A Northern writer has recorded an interview with a negro who had run the blockade and entered the service of a Federal officer. He was met on board a steamer, after the battle of Fort Donelson, on his way to a new situation, and questioned in regard to his experience of war.[17]
"Were you in the fight?"
"Had a little taste of it, sah."
"Stood your ground, of course."
"No, sah! I run."
"Not at the first fire?"
"Yes, sah, an' would a' run sooner ef I knowed it was a-comin'!"