We have had a fortnight of calm, dry, and warm weather.
There is a hazy atmosphere, and the sun rises and sets wearing a blood-red
aspect. At night the moon, dimly and indistinctly seen (now a crescent), has a somber
and baleful appearance. This is strange at this season of the year; it is like
Indian summer in May. The ground is dry and crusted, and apprehensions are felt
for the crops, unless we have rain in a few days. My poor little garden has
suffered for moisture, but the area is so small I am enabled to throw water
over it in the evening. My beets, tomatoes, early potatoes, and lettuce look
pretty well, though not so far advanced, in consequence of the late spring, as
I have seen them in Burlington. But they are a great comfort to me. I work
them, water them, and look at them, and this is what the French would call a distraction.
I have abundance of roses, — this is the city of roses. And my cherries are
coming on finely, — I know not yet what kind they are; but it relieves the eye
to gaze on them. And then my neighbor has a pigeon-house, and the birds come
into my yard and are fed by my daughters, being pretty and tame. I sit for
hours watching them.
Alas! this cruel war! But independence will be ample
compensation. Our posterity will thank us for our sacrifices and sufferings.
Yet all do not suffer. The Gil Biases, by their servility and cringing to their
patrons, the great men in power, and only great because they have
patronage to bestow, which is power, are getting rich. Even adroit clerks are
becoming wealthy. They procure exemptions, discharges, and contracts for the
speculators for heavy bribes, and invest the money immediately in real estate,
having some doubts as to its ultimate redemption, and possibly indifferent as
to the fate of the country, so that their own prosperity be secure. After the
war the rascals and traitors will be rich, and ought to be marked and exposed.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 331-2
