Our niece, Mary Page, came for me to go with her on a
shopping expedition. It makes me sad to find our money depreciating so much,
except that I know it was worse during the old Revolution. A merino dress cost
$150, long cloth $5.50 per yard, fine cotton stockings $6 per pair;
handkerchiefs, for which we gave fifty cents before the war, are now $5. There
seems no scarcity of dry-goods of the ordinary kinds; bombazines, silks, etc.,
are scarce and very high; carpets are not to be found — they are too large to
run the blockade from Baltimore, from which city many of our goods come.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 242-3
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