It is astonishing what a quantity of fresh air has been
consumed by me since I formed that wise resolution. The supply must be largely
increased, to keep up with the demand; perhaps that is the cause of all these
clouds and showers; I must be making a severe drain on the economy of heaven.
From breakfast to dinner I remain on the balcony, and read aloud several
chapters of the “Mémoires”
of Dumas, by way of practice. A dictionary lies by me, and I suffer no word to
pass without a perfect definition. Then comes my French grammar, which I study
while knitting or sewing, which takes very nearly until dinner-time. After
that, I do as I please, either reading or talking, until sunset when we can
ride or walk; the walk being always sweetened with sugarcane. The evening we
always spend on the balcony. Is that grand air enough? O mon teint!
je serai joliment brune!
We three girls occupy the same room, since Gibbes's arrival,
and have ever so much fun and not half enough sleep. I believe the other two
complain of me as the cause; but I plead not guilty. I never was known to laugh
aloud, no matter how intense might have been my mirth; “it won't come,” as
Gibbes murmured last night while reading aloud Artemus Ward's last letter, when
we discovered it was suppressed laughter, rather than suppressed pain, that
caused him to writhe so. On the other hand, Anna and Miriam laugh as loud and
lustily as daughters of the Titans — if the respectable gentlemen had
daughters. I confess to doing more than half the talking, but as to the laugh
that follows, not a bit. Last night I thought they would go wild, and I too
laughed myself into silent convulsions, when I recited an early effusion of my
poetic muse for their edification. Miriam made the bedstead prance, fairly, while
Anna's laugh sounded like a bull of Bashan with his head in a bolster case.
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 254-5
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