Friday, April 3, 2015

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: April 23, 1862

On April 23, 1840, I was married, aged seventeen; consequently on the 31st of March, 1862, I was thirty-nine. I saw a wedding to-day from my window, which opens on Trinity Church. Nanna Shand married a Doctor Wilson. Then, a beautiful bevy of girls rushed into my room. Such a flutter and a chatter. Well, thank Heaven for a wedding. It is a charming relief from the dismal litany of our daily song.

A letter to-day from our octogenarian at Mulberry. His nephew, Jack Deas, had two horses shot under him; the old Colonel has his growl, “That's enough for glory, and no hurt after all.” He ends, however, with his never-failing refrain: We can't fight all the world; two and two only make four; it can't make a thousand; numbers will not lie. He says he has lost half a million already in railroad bonds, bank stock, Western notes of hand, not to speak of negroes to be freed, and lands to be confiscated, for he takes the gloomiest views of all things.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 158

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