The parole under which I have been quietly living at Mr.
Barnhardt's since Monday involved only this restraint: confinement to the
corporate limits of Winchester, and the duty of reporting every morning at ten
o'clock at the office of the Provost Marshal. We have fed on rumors,
speculations, fears, hopes, falsehoods, and sensations, but have felt none of
the constraints of captivity. The parole which I have given to-day is, not to
serve till exchanged, and I may “go at large.”
Mr. Barnhardt, a big Dutchman, who has lived over seventy
years, as he says, “just for good eating,” returned from market Wednesday
morning. “No market,” says he. “Butter forty cents, eggs twenty-five, lamb
twenty; and all because the Confederates is here. I could ha' sot down on the
market-steps and ha' cried, as sure as you sit there in that there cheer.” To-night his nervousness has
reached that point that he has gone to bed “a'most sick and downhearted.” He is
a Union man. “I was born a Union man, I have always been a Union man, and a
Union man I 'll die, and the Devil can't make nothing else of me.”
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 264
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