To-morrow we remove to new quarters. The lady's husband,
owning cottage, and who was confined for seven months among lunatics, has
returned, and there is not room for two families. Besides, Mrs. G. thinks she
can do better taking boarders, than by letting the house. What a mistake! Beef
sold yesterday for $1.25 per pound; turkeys, $15. Corn-meal $6 per bushel, and
all other articles at the same rates. No salaries can board families now; and
soon the expense of boarding will exceed the incomes of unmarried men. Owners
and tenants, unless engaged in lucrative business, must soon vacate their
houses and leave the city.
But we have found a house occupied by three widows in Clay
Street. They have no children. They mean to board soon among their relatives or
friends, and then we get the house; in the mean time, they have fitted up two
rooms for us. We should have gone yesterday, but the weather was too bad. The
terms will not exceed the rent we are now paying, and the house is larger. I
espied several fruit trees in the back yard, and a space beyond, large enough for
a smart vegetable garden. How delighted I shall be to cultivate it myself!
Always I have visions of peas, beans, radishes, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes of
my own raising! God bless the widows sent for our relief in this dire
necessity!
Met Judge Reagan yesterday, just from the Council Board. I
thought he seemed dejected. He said if the enemy succeeded in getting command of
the Mississippi River, the Confederacy would be “cut in two;” and he intimated
his preference of giving up Richmond, if it would save Texas, etc. for the
Confederacy. Texas is his adopted State.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 265-6
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