The Fants say all the trouble at the hotel came from our
servants' bragging. They represented us as millionaires, and the Middleton men
servants smoked cigars. Mrs. Reed's averred that he had never done anything in
his life but stand behind his master at table with a silver waiter in his hand.
We were charged accordingly, but perhaps the landlady did not get the best of
us after all, for we paid her in Confederate money. Now that they won't take
Confederate money in the shops here how are we to live? Miss Middleton says
quartermasters' families are all clad in good gray cloth, but the soldiers go
naked. Well, we are like the families of whom the novels always say they are
poor but honest. Poor? Well-nigh beggars are we, for I do not know where my
next meal is to come from.
Called on Mrs. Ben Rutledge to-day. She is lovely,
exquisitely refined. Her mother, Mrs. Middleton, came in. “You are not looking well,
dear? Anything the matter?” “No — but, mamma, I have not eaten a mouthful
to-day. The children can eat mush; I can't. I drank my tea, however.” She does
not understand taking favors, and, blushing violently, refused to let me have
Ellen make her some biscuit. I went home and sent her some biscuit all the
same.
SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 349
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