CLEANED UP FINANCIALLY.
No train passed next morning and we tramped down the railroad for 12 miles, stopping at Saltillo for the night. None of us were well, the weather was cold and to avoid sleeping on the damp, bare ground we began to reconnoiter for better lodging. By reason possibly of the favorable impression made by the writer on our host at Baldwin, I was made spokesman for the occasion. Knocking at the residence of a Mrs. B. I stated our condition in as impressive language as I could command and emphasized our desire to avoid the exposure of sleeping on the cold, damp ground. To this she replied that she was a widow, living there alone, that she knew nothing of us, and that while she disliked to turn off Confederate soldiers, she could not feel that it would be proper or prudent for her to entertain a company of utter strangers. "Well, madame," I replied, "I appreciate your position and if you feel the slightest hesitancy, we will not insist." "Walk in sir," she replied, "You can stay." She told me afterwards that if I had pressed my appeal she would have turned us away, but that my failure to do so convinced her that we were gentlemen. It may be as well to confess that I had anticipated such an objection and had framed my reply to meet it.
During the evening she told us with quivering lips, of the death of her soldier boy in Virginia, of her sad mission in visiting the battle field to recover his body and lay it away in the old family burying ground, and spoke so feelingly of her attachment to our cause that on retiring to our room I remember that we entertained some fears that an offer of compensation for our entertainment might offend her. The sum total of our financial assets, as I recollect it, was a $20 Confederate bill owned by Will Dabney. On taking our leave next morning we tendered it in payment of our bill, thinking, of course, that she would decline it with thanks, but we had reckoned without our host or at least without our hostess. She accepted it with the remark that it would exactly square the account, and we were turned out on the cold charity of the world without a cent.
'Twas the last of our assets,
Gone glimmering alone.
All its blue-backed companions
Were wasted and gone,
No bill of its kindred
Nor greenback was night,
Not even a "shinplaster"
To spend for pie.
In justice to our kind-hearted hostess, and lest some reader should imagine that her charges were really extravagant, it is proper to say that she had given five hungry soldiers a sumptuous supper and breakfast, had lodged us on snowy feather beds and had accepted in payment what was equivalent to one dollar or less in good money. If the condition of our finances needs any explanation it may be found in the fact that our last pay day had occurred just 12 months and ten days before.
But I am spinning out these little incidents at too great length. Resuming our march we were overtaken by our command and tramped with it to Tupelo, where we remained 12 days. On January 25th we boarded the cars for Meridian, but the train was overloaded and we traveled only 18 miles in 12 hours, not very rapid transit. In order to lighten the load two cars were detached and in one of them Lieut. Goetchius and ten of the Oglethorpes, including the writer chanced to be passengers. After two days' tramp through the "Prairie Lands" of Mississippi, our squad secured transportation, rejoining our command at Meridian, Jan. 29. Thence by rail to McDowell's Landing, by boat to Demopolis, by rail to Selma and by boat to Montgomery, reaching that place 1 p. m., Feb. 1st. The preceding night was a very cold one and as we were deck passengers and no heating arrangements had been provided, a fire was built of fat pine on a pile of railroad iron. Frank Lamar, I remember, sat on the leeward side of the fire with the black smoke pouring into his face all night, and next day could have played the role of negro minstrel without the use of burnt cork. The writer kept his temperature above the freezing point by volunteering as an aid to the fireman in the engine room.
Leaving Montgomery Feb. 2d, we reached Columbus, Ga., late in the afternoon and on our arrival were met by a delegation of ladies, who greeted us with a speech, a song and a supper. My journal, I regret to say, records the fact that the supper was last but not least in the degree of appreciation meted out to the trio by the boys. Passing through Macon Feb. 3d, we arrived at Midway at 2 a. m. of the 4th and remained there a day drawing clothing and blankets. Leaving the railroad we marched through Milledgeville on the 5th, but did not stop to investigate the condition of Gov. Brown's "collard patch." Reaching Mayfield on the 7th we boarded the cars again, lay over at Camak and arrived at Augusta on the evening of the 8th, the brigade going into camp near Hamburg and the Oglethorpes remaining with friends and relatives in the city.
A SAD HOME-COMING.
Sixteen miles away, embowered in a grove of oak and elm, lay the home I had left, holding within the sacred shadow of its walls all that I loved best on earth. For nearly two months no tidings had come to me from them. We had been so constantly on the move that the letters written had never reached me. The latest message received had told me of my father's illness, but its tone gave me hope of his early recovery. Our passage through Augusta gave me the privilege of revisiting the old homestead, but it was a sad home-coming. Twice since I had left it last the family circle had been broken and the shadow of death had fallen on its hearthstone. A few short months before in the autumnal haze of a September day, as sweet a sister as brother ever owned had breathed out her young life just as she was budding into womanhood. And now only a week before I entered its portals again my father, worn out by the added burdens imposed by the absorption of younger physicians in the military service, had been laid away beneath the shadow of the trees in the city of the dead. The reader will pardon, I trust, the filial tribute to his worth that comes unbidden from my heart today. Beyond and above any partial judgment born of the love I bore him, I have always thought him the best and purest man I have ever known. It may be that no human life can claim perfection and yet if his knew aught of fault or blemish in all the years from boyhood to the grave, no human eye could see it. In lofty purpose and in lowly, unremitting faithfulness to duty he lived above the common plane of men, serving his generation by the will of God, doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly in all the paths his Master's feet had trod and dying in the noontide of his usefulness, he left to those who loved him, a name as pure and stainless as the snows that winter's breath have heaped upon his grave.