Home again! But, ah!
how changed a home!
All but God is
changing day by day.
Changed are we, and
changed our home, in everything but loving hearts. We are all here; nobody
killed in battle; nobody dead from disease. Have we not something, after all,
to be thankful for? Now Johnny must go to college and exchange the arts of war
for the arts of peace.
Judge Aldrich took
charge of me from Newberry. We came as far as Alston on the train, but the
railroad being destroyed thence, we hired an old ambulance, which, although in
a state of chronic dilapidation, luckily held together for the trip. We entered
the city from the Main street road, our way being marked with desolation and
ruin on all sides. One solitary house is all that is left upon that whole
street above the State House. Turning out of that street, we lost our bearings
in the surrounding mass of brick and ashes. There are few landmarks left in the
heart of the city to enable the wayfarer to distinguish one locality from
another. It is all so strange, so sad, so hard to realize. "How doth the
city sit solitary that was full of people! How has she became as a widow!"
The relief to my overwrought feelings as we drove through the silent streets
was in a woman's refuge—tears; my companion's in a man's silence. We said
little to each other; we only drew long, deep, sighing breaths of pain. War has
no pity, yet, oh! the pity of it!
Thus we reached
home.
Old mammy was the
first to see, the first to greet me.
"Lawd! Lawd!
young missis, dem Yankees ain't kill ye, sure enough!"
"No," said
I; "they must catch before they kill."
"Bless Gawd fer
dat! But I hope yer fetched yer rashuns wid yer."
"No," I
was obliged to admit, "I only brought an appetite, and, I regret to state,
a very good one."
"Den Lawd hab
mercy on yer!" she remarked, "fer de blackberries, dey ain't got ripe
yit."
And old Nancy shook
her head mournfully.
As to my dear
mother, she is so happy in my safe return that she scarcely reverts to our
hardships. We still have each other. We two, and old mammy, are the only ones
at home at present, the gentlemen of the family having gone up to the Broad
River section in a wagon, in the hope of being able to procure some provisions.
It is next door to starvation with us, and no mistake. Each day we send to
headquarters for a little bacon and some meal, and that is what we live on, if
it may be called living. It is true, we have a little sugar, and a small
quantity of real tea a dear old lady gave me in Newberry, but the sugar was
buried while the Federal army was here, and in consequence is infested with
those pestiferous little creatures who never fail to make the best of their
opportunities. Now, some who may chance to read these lines might say that they
couldn't go ant-tea. But I go it! It is much better than no tea at all.
Moreover, I manage it after a way of my own which vastly increases its palatability.
I found out how to do it. I skim all I can conveniently off the top, then I
shut my eyes tight and fast, then I open my mouth (which is a good-sized mouth)
and it all runs down (ants too), and then I open my eyes and put the cup down
and say to myself, "Good! Very good! I like tea."
SOURCE: South
Carolina State Committee United Daughters of the Confederacy, South
Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. 1, “A Confederate
Girl's Diary,” p. 287-8
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