"When the Northern ladies appeared on the streets, they did not seem to have on any bonnets at all. They wore tiny, three-cornered affairs tied on with narrow strings, and all their hair showing in the back. We thought them the most absurd and trifling things! But we made haste to get some. How did we see the fashions when we kept our blinds closed? Why, we could peep through the shutters, of course. Remember, we had seen no fashions for a long time. Then, too, after the earlier days, we did not keep our windows shut. "I began braiding me a skirt at once. The Yankees couldn't teach me anything about braid! To the longest day I live, I will remember the reign of skirt-braid during the Confederacy! There was quite a while when we had no other trimming, yet had that in abundance, a large lot having been run through the blockade; it came to the Department. The Department got to be a sort of Woman's Exchange. Prices were absurd. I paid $75 for a paper of pins and thought it high, but before the war was over, I was thankful to get a paper for $100. I bought, once, a cashmere dress for the price of a calico, $25 a yard, because it was a little damaged in running the blockade. At the same time, Mrs. Jefferson Davis bought a calico dress pattern for $500 and a lawn for $1,000; one of my friends paid $1,400 for a silk, another, $1,100 for a black merino. Mine was the best bargain. It lasted excellently. I made it over in the new fashion after the evacuation. One of the styles brought by the Northern ladies was black alpaca skirts fringed. I got one as soon as I could. "The Yankees introduced some new fashions in other things besides clothes that I remember vividly, one being canned fruit. I had never seen any canned fruit before the Yankees came. Perhaps we had had canned fruit, but I do not remember it. Pleasant innovations in food were like to leave lasting impressions on one who had been living on next to nothing for an indefinite period." The mystery of her purchase of the alpaca skirt and the little bonnet is solved by her journal: "I am prospering with my needlework. I sew early and late. My friends who are better off give me work, paying me as generously as they can. Mammy Jane has sold some of my embroideries to Northern ladies. Many ladies, widows and orphans, are seeking employment as teachers. The great trouble is that so few people are able to engage them or to pay for help of any kind. Still, we all manage to help each other somehow. "Nannie, our young bride, is raising lettuce, radish, nasturtiums, in her back yard for sale. She is painting her house herself (with her husband's help). She is going to give the lettuce towards paying the church debt. She has nothing else to give. I think I will raise something to buy window-panes for this house. Window-panes patched with paper are all the fashion in this town.