Busy all forenoon getting breakfasts for soldiers, and
filling haversacks. Two young cousins of Mr. P. (Moncures) who have lived most
of their lives in Paris, came, looking as rough and dirty as any of the
soldiers we saw yesterday. They belong to Lee's cavalry, and had straggled
behind. We fed them, mended them up, and they passed on refreshed. I
asked one of them if he could realize that he used to promenade the “Boulevards,” and take his dinner at the “Palais
Royal.” Their father is worth millions. .
. . Yet these young men were just as merry and contented as possible, though
living a life infinitely harder than the worst worked slave. One of them had on
coarse jeans trousers. The cadets are to go on to Buchanan tomorrow morning.
The weather is bitterly cold, the roads very bad, and hard frozen. This day a
twelvemonth poor Randolph was buried.
“Pain in the heart —
pain in the head —
Grief for the living
— grief for the dead!”
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and
Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 174
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