I hear to-day that the Brunots have returned to Baton Rouge,
determined to await the grand finale there. They, and two other families, alone
remain. With these exceptions, and a few Dutch and Irish who cannot leave, the
town is perfectly deserted by all except the Confederate soldiers. I wish I was
with them! If all chance of finding lodgings here is lost, and mother remains
with Lilly, as she sometimes seems more than half inclined, and Miriam goes to
Linwood, as she frequently threatens, I believe I will take a notion, too, and
go to Mrs. Brunot! I would rather be there, in all the uncertainty, expecting
to be shelled or burnt out every hour, than here. Ouf! what a country! Next
time I go shopping, I mean to ask some clerk, out of curiosity, what they do
sell in Clinton. The following is a list of a few of the articles that
shopkeepers actually laugh at you if you ask for: Glasses, flour, soap, starch,
coffee, candles, matches, shoes, combs, guitar-strings, bird-seed,—in short,
everything that I have heretofore considered as necessary to existence. If any
one had told me I could have lived off of cornbread, a few months ago, I would
have been incredulous; now I believe it, and return an inward grace for the
blessing at every mouthful. I have not tasted a piece of wheat-bread since I
left home, and shall hardly taste it again until the war is over.
I do not like this small burg. It is very straggling and
pretty, but I would rather not inhabit it. We are as well known here as though
we carried our cards on our faces, and it is peculiarly disagreeable to me to
overhear myself spoken about, by people I don't know, as “There goes Miss
Morgan,” as that young man, for instance, remarked this morning to a crowd,
just as I passed. It is not polite, to say the least.
Will Carter was here this morning and told me he saw
Theodore Pinckney in the streets. I suppose he is on his way home, and think he
will be a little disappointed in not finding us at Linwood as he expects, and
still more so to hear he passed through the very town where we were staying,
without knowing it.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 212-3
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