So, in some places you will hear Southerners say that, save for domestic and industrial upheavals resulting from emancipation and for the privations of acute poverty, they suffered no extreme trials while under the strictly martial regime--were victims of no act of tyranny from local Federal authorities; in other places, you will hear words reflecting praise on such authorities; in others, evidence is plain that inhabitants endured worse things of military satraps than Israel suffered of Pharaoh. As the days went by, there were fresh occasions for the conclusion: "The officers who gave Captain Bayard work and the officer who knocked him down are types of two classes of our conquerors and rulers. One is ready to help the cripple to his feet, the other to knock him down again and again. Congress will club the cripple with the negro ballot." "If that be true," said some, "the cripple will rise no more. Let me go hence ere my eyes behold it. Spilled blood and ruin wrought I can forgive, but not this thing!" NEW FASHIONS CHAPTER XIII NEW FASHIONS: A LITTLE BONNET AND AN ALPACA SKIRT The confessions of Matoaca: "I will never forget how queer we thought the dress of the Northern ladies. A great many came to Richmond, and Military Headquarters was very gay. Band answered band in the neighbourhood of Clay and Twelfth Streets, and the sound of music and dancing feet reached us through our closed shutters. "Some ladies wore on the streets white petticoats, braided with black, under their dresses, which were looped up over these. Their gowns were short walking length, and their feet could be seen quite plainly. That style would be becoming to us, we said to ourselves, thinking of our small feet--at least I said so to myself. Up to that time we had considered it immodest to show our feet, our long dresses and hoop-skirts concealing them. We had been wearing coal-scuttle bonnets of plaited straw, trimmed with corn-shuck rosettes. I made fifteen one spring, acquired a fine name as a milliner, and was paid for my work. "I recall one that was quite stunning. I got hold of a bit of much-worn white ribbon and dyed it an exquisite shade of green, with a tea made of coffee-berries. Coffee-berries dye a lovely green; you might remember that if you are ever in a war and blockaded. Our straw-and-shuck bonnets were pretty. How I wish I had kept mine as a souvenir--and other specimens of my home-made things! But we threw all our home-made things away--we were so tired of make-shifts!--and got new ones as soon as we could. How eager we were to see the fashions! We had had no fashions for a long time.