When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren Nelson,
propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature. He
said he meant to be heard, so I walked back with him to the drawing-room. They
are wasting their time dancing attendance on me. I can not help them. Let them
shoulder their musket and go to the wars, like men.
After tea came “Mars Kit” —he said for a talk, but that Mr.
Preston would not let him have, for Mr. Preston had arrived some time before
him. Mr. Preston said “Mars Kit” thought it “bad form” to laugh. After that you
may be sure a laugh from “Mars Kit” was secured. Again and again, he was forced
to laugh with a will. I reversed Oliver Wendell Holmes's good resolution — never
to be as funny as he could. I did my very utmost.
Mr. Venable interrupted the fun, which was fast and furious,
with the very best of bad news! Newbern shelled and burned, cotton,
turpentine—everything. There were 5,000 North Carolinians in the fray, 12,000
Yankees. Now there stands Goldsboro. One more step and we are cut in two. The
railroad is our backbone, like the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, with which
it runs parallel. So many discomforts, no wonder we are down-hearted.
Mr. Venable thinks as we do — Garnett is our most thorough
scholar; Lamar the most original, and the cleverest of our men — L. Q. C. Lamar
— time fails me to write all his name. Then, there is R. M. T. Hunter. Muscoe
Russell Garnett and his Northern wife: that match was made at my house in
Washington when Garnett was a member of the United States Congress.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 143
No comments:
Post a Comment