A letter from Lavinia has come to me all the way from
California. How happy it made me, though written so long ago! Only the 30th of
June! Lavinia has changed, changed. There is a sad, worn-out tone in every
line; it sounds old, as though she had lived years and years ago and was
writing as though she were dead and buried long since. Lavinia, whose letters
used to keep me in sunshine for weeks at a time! Well! no wonder she is sad.
All these dreary years from home, with so faint a hope of ever again seeing it,
and all these sorrows and troubles that have befallen us, combined, are not
calculated to make her happy. But I wish she had kept her cheerful heart. Well,
perhaps it is easier for us to be cheerful and happy, knowing the full extent
of our calamities, than it is for her, knowing so little and having just cause
to fear so much. Courage! Better days are coming! And then I’ll have many a
funny tale to tell her of the days when the Yankees kept us on the qui vive,
or made us run for our lives. It will “tell” merrily; be almost as lively
as those running days were. One of my chief regrets over my helplessness is
that I will not be able to run in the next stampede. I used to enjoy it. Oh,
the days gone by, the dreary days, when, cut off from our own people, and
surrounded by Yankees, we used to catch up any crumb of news favorable to our
side that was smuggled into town, and the Brunots and I would write each other
little dispatches of consolation and send them by little negroes! Those were
dismal days. Yet how my spirits would rise when the long roll would beat, and
we would prepare for flight!
SOURCE: Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's
Diary, p. 325-6
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