Colonel Boynton, writing of his experiences in the interior rural districts of North Carolina, three months later, found, in spite of Wilmington blockade-running, a destitution far beyond that of Mobile. “Everything has been mended, and generally in the rudest style. Window-glass has given way to thin boards, and these are in use in railway coaches and in the cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced for four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the pitchers have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and in very few families is there enough left to set a table in a manner approaching gentility. A set of forks with whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all stopped. Clothing, including hats, bonnets, and ladies’ and children’s shoes, are nearly all homemade. Hair-brushes and tooth-brushes have all worn out; combs are broken, and are not yet replaced; pins, needles, thread, and a thousand such articles, which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in weaving on the looms, corn-cobs have been substituted for spindles. Few have pocket-knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an article of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who were once esteemed luxurious providers, you will find neither tea, coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have been replaced by a cup of grease, in which a piece of cloth is plunged for a wick. The problem which the South had to solve has been, not how to be comfortable during the war, but how to live at all.” CHAPTER XXIII. New Orleans and New Orleans Notabilities. Crossing from Mobile to New Orleans was going from the past of the South to its present. Till within a few weeks, Mobile had been among the latest strongholds of the rebellion; for some years New Orleans had been held by the national authorities, and had been changing under the operation of Northern influences. Mobile showed us the last of the old South; New Orleans the first of the new.