And another was silly little Mr. Butler, my little golden
calf. What a — don't call names! I owe him a grudge for “cold hands,” and the
other day, when I heard of his being wounded at Shiloh, I could not help
laughing a little at Tom Butler’s being hurt. What was the use of throwing a
nice, big cannon ball, that might have knocked a man down, away on that poor
little fellow, when a pea from a popgun would have made the same impression?
Not but what he is brave, but little Mr. Butler is so soft.
Then there was that rattle-brain Mr. Trezevant who, commencing
one subject, never ceased speaking until he had touched on all. One evening he
came in talking, and never paused even for a reply until he bowed himself out,
talking still, when Mr. Bradford, who had been forced to silence as well as the
rest, threw himself back with a sigh of relief and exclaimed, “This man talks
like a woman!” I thought it the best description of Mr. Trezevant’s
conversation I had ever heard. It was all on the surface, no pretensions to
anything except to put the greatest possible number of words of no meaning in
one sentence, while speaking of the most trivial thing. Night or day, Mr. Trezevant
never passed home without crying out to me, “Ces jolis yeux bleus!” and if the parlor were
brightly lighted so that all from the street might see us, and be invisible to
us themselves, I always nodded my head to the outer darkness and laughed, no
matter who was present, though it sometimes created remark. You see, I knew the
joke. Coming from a party escorted by Mr. Butler, Miriam by Mr. Trezevant,1
we had to wait a long time before Rose opened the door, which interval I
employed in dancing up and down the gallery — followed by my cavalier —
singing, —
“Mes jolis yeux bleus,
Bleus comme les cieux,
Mes jolis yeux bleus
Ont ravi son âme,” etc.;
which naïve
remark Mr. Butler, not speaking French, lost entirely, and Mr. Trezevant
endorsed it with his approbation and belief in it, and ever afterwards called
me “Ces jolis yeux bleus.”
_______________
1 Note added at the time: “O propriety! Gibbes
and Lydia were with us too.”
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 8-10; Charles East, Sarah
Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman, p. 41-3
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