In the colony escaped from the shells and huddled together around General Lee were two very humble poor women who often visited me. One of them was the proud owner of a cow, "Morning-Glory," which she contrived to feed from the refuse of the camp kitchens, receiving in return a small quantity of milk, to be sold at prices beyond belief. I never saw Morning-Glory, but I often heard her friendly echo to the lowing of my little Rose, morning and evening. Being interpreted, it might have been found to convey an expression of surprise that either was still alive, so slender was their allowance of food.

One day I espied, coming down the dusty road, the limp, sunbonneted figure of Morning-Glory's mistress. She sank upon the nearest chair, pushed back her calico bonnet, and revealed a face blurred with tears and hair dishevelled beyond the ordinary.

"Good morning, Mrs. Jones! Come to the fire! It's a cold morning."

"No'm, I ain't cole! It's—it's" (sobbing)—"it's Mornin'-Glory!"

"Not sick? If she is, I'll—"

"No'm, Mornin'-Glory ain't never goin' to be sick no mo'."

"Oh, Mrs. Jones! Not dead!"

"Them pickets kep' me awake all las' night, an' I 232got up in the night an' went out to see how Mornin'-Glory was gettin' on, an' she—she—she look at me jus' the same! An' I slep' soun' till after sun-up, and when I got my pail an' went out to milk her—thar was her horns an hufs!"

The poor woman broke down completely in telling me the ghastly story. "Oh, how wicked! How was it possible to take her off and nobody hear?" I exclaimed in great wrath.

"I don't know, Mis' Pryor, nothin' but what I tells you. Talk to me 'bout Yankees! Soldiers is soldiers, an' when you say that, you jus' as well say devils is devils."

My other poor neighbor had long been a pensioner on my father. She was a forlorn widow with many children, hopeless and helpless. My father was in despair when she turned up "to git away from the shellin'." She found a small untenanted house near us and set up an establishment which was supported altogether by boarding an occasional soldier on sick leave, and taking his rations as her pay. Like Mrs. Jones, she was a frequent visitor to my fireside. One morning, after some unusual demonstrations of coy shyness, she blurted out: "I knows fo' I begin what you goin' to say! You goin' to tell me Ma'y Ann is a fool, an' I won't say you ain't in the rights of it."

"Well, what is Mary Ann's folly? I thought she had grown up to be a sensible girl."

"Sensible! Ma'y Ann! Them pretty gals is never sensible! No'm. Melissy Jane is the sensible one o' my chillun. I tole Ma'y Ann she didn't have 233nothin' fitten to be ma'ied in, an' she up an' say she know Mis' Pryor ain' goin' to let one o' her pa's chu'ch people git ma'ied in rags."

"I certainly will not, Mrs. Davis! Mary Ann, I suppose, is to marry the soldier you've been taking care of. Tell her she may look to me for a wedding-dress. When is it to be?"

"Just as Dr. Pryor says—to-morrow if convenient."

I immediately overhauled the bundle of Washington finery and found a lavender Pina, or "pineapple" muslin, not yet prepared for sale. This was a delicate gown, trimmed with lavender silk, and with angel sleeves lined with white silk. This I sent to the prospective bride—considering her needs and station, a most unsuitable wedding garment, but all I had! I managed to make a contribution to the wedding supper, a large pumpkin I extorted from John, who had "found" it. Melissy Jane, homely enough to be brilliantly "sensible," appeared to take charge of the present,—the most slatternly, unlovely, and altogether unpromising of the poor white class I had ever seen; and my father, in view of the great good fortune coming to the forlorn family in the acquisition of an able-bodied, whole-hearted Confederate soldier, made no delay in performing the marriage ceremony. About a week afterward Mrs. Davis, limper than ever, more depressed than ever, reappeared.

"I hope nobody's sick?" I inquired.

"No'm, the chilluns is as peart as common. Ma'y Ann don't seem no ways encouraged. 'Pears like she's onreconciled." 234 "Why, what ails poor Mary Ann?"

"Yas'm—he's lef' her! Jus' took hisself off and never say nuthin'. We-all don't even know what company owns him."

"Mrs. Davis!" I exclaimed, in great indignation, "this is not to be tolerated. That man is to be found and made to do his duty. I can manage it!"

"I don't know as I keers to ketch 'im," sighed the poor woman. "Ef you capters them men erginst ther will, they'll git away ergin—sho! Let 'im go long! He ain't paid me a cent or a ration of meat an' meal sence he was ma'ied. Anyhow," she proudly added, "Ma'y Ann is ma'ied! Folks can't fling it up to 'er now as she's a ole maid,"—which proves that maternal ambitions are peculiar to no condition of life.

Looking back, and living over again these stern times, it seems to me little short of a miracle that we actually did exist upon the slender portion of food allotted us. We could rarely see, from one day to another, just how we were to be fed. "Give us this day our daily bread"—this petition was our sole reliance. And as surely as the day would come,

"He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,"

would prove to us that we were of more value in His sight than many sparrows.

General Lee passed my door every Sunday morning on his way to a little wooden chapel 235nearer his quarters than St. Paul's Church. I have a picture of him in my memory, in his faded gray overcoat and slouch hat, bending his head before the sleet on stormy mornings. Sometimes his cousin, Mrs. Banister, could find herself warranted by circumstances to invite him to dine with her. Once she received from a country friend a present of a turkey, and General Lee consented to share it with her. She helped him at dinner to a moderate portion, for there was only one turkey—like Charles Lamb's hare—and many friends! Mrs. Banister observed the general laying on one side of his plate part of his share of the turkey, and she regretted his loss of appetite. "Madam," he explained, "Colonel Taylor is not well, and I should be glad to be permitted to take this to him."

After an unusually mild season, John bethought himself of the fishes in the pond and streams, but not a fishhook was for sale in Richmond or Petersburg. He contrived, out of a cunning arrangement of pins, to make hooks, and sallied forth with my boys. But the water was too cold, or the fish had been driven down-stream by the firing. The usual resource of the sportsman with an empty creel—a visit to the fishmonger—was quite out of the question. There was no fishmonger any more.

Under these circumstances you may imagine my sensation at receiving the following note:—

"My dear Mrs. Pryor: General Lee has been honored by a visit from the Hon. Thomas Connolly, Irish M.P. from Donegal. 236 "He ventures to request you will have the kindness to give Mr. Connolly a room in your cottage, if this can be done without inconvenience to yourself."

Certainly I could give Mr. Connolly a room; but just as certainly I could not feed him! The messenger who brought me the note hastily reassured me. He had been instructed to say that Mr. Connolly would mess with General Lee. I turned Mr. Connolly's room over to John, who soon became devoted to his service. The M.P. proved a most agreeable guest, a fine-looking Irish gentleman with an irresistibly humorous, cheery fund of talk. He often dropped in at our biscuit toasting, and assured us that we were better provided than the commander-in-chief.

"You should have seen 'Uncle Robert's' dinner to-day, madam! He had two biscuits, and he gave me one."

Another time Mr. Connolly was in high feather.

"We had a glorious dinner to-day! Somebody sent 'Uncle Robert' a box of sardines."

General Lee, however, was not forgotten. On fine mornings quite a procession of little negroes, in every phase of raggedness, used to pass my door, each one bearing a present from the farmers' wives of buttermilk in a tin pail for General Lee. The army was threatened with scurvy, and buttermilk, hominy, and every vegetable that could be obtained was sent to the hospital.

Mr. Connolly interested himself in my boys' Latin studies. 237 "I am going home," he said, "and tell the English women what I have seen here: two boys reading C?sar while the shells are thundering, and their mother looking on without fear."

"I am too busy keeping the wolf from my door," I told him, "to concern myself with the thunderbolts."

The wolf was no longer at the door! He had entered and had taken up his abode at the fireside. Besides what I could earn with my needle, I had only my father's army ration to rely upon. My faithful John foraged right and left, and I had reason to doubt the wisdom of inquiring too closely as to the source of an occasional half-dozen eggs or small bag of corn. This last he would pound on a wooden block for hominy. Meal was greatly prized for the reason that wholesomer bread could be made of it than of wheaten flour,—meal was no longer procurable, but we were never altogether without flour. As I have said, we might occasionally purchase for five dollars the head of a bullock from the commissary, every other part of the animal being available for army rations. By self-denial on our own part we fondly hoped we could support our army and at last win our cause. We were not, at the time, fully aware of the true state of things in the army. Our men were so depleted from starvation that the most trifling wound would end fatally. Gangrene would supervene, and then nothing could be done to prevent death. Long before this time, at Vicksburg, Admiral Porter found that many a dead soldier's haversack yielded nothing but a handful of parched 238corn. We were now enduring a sterner siege. The month of January brought us sleet and storm. Our famine grew sterner every day. Seasons of bitter cold weather would find us without wood to burn, and we had no other fuel. I commenced cutting down the choice fruit trees in the grounds,—and General Wilcox managed to send me a load of rails from a fence, hitherto spared by the soldiers. Poor little Rose could yield only one cupful of milk, so small was her ration; but we ne............