Better society was not wanting; but it remained largely in the background. Vice was strutting in cloth of gold; virtue was at home mending its rags. Every expedient was resorted to, not so much to keep up appearances as to keep the wolf from the door. Servants were sent around by high-born ladies to sell, anonymously, baskets of their clothes. The silk or velvet of old days was now parted with for bread. On the shelves of the bookstores were valuable private libraries, placed there for sale. In the shops of the silversmiths were seen breastpins, watches, bracelets, pearl and diamond necklaces, which their owners were obliged to part with for bread. “Could we have traced,” says a late writer, “the history of a set of pearls, we should have been told of a fair bride, who had received them from a proud and happy bridegroom; but whose life had been blighted in her youthful happiness by the cruel blast of war--whose young husband was in the service of his country--to whom stark poverty had continued to come, until at last the wedding present from the dear one, went to purchase food and raiment... A richly bound volume of poems, with here and there a faint pencil-marked quotation, told perchance of a lover perished on some bloody field; and the precious token was disposed of, or pawned, when bread was at last needed for some suffering loved one.” You can see these poor women--can you not, reader? The bride looking at her pearl necklace, with flushed cheeks and eyes full of tears, murmuring:--“_He_ gave me this--placed it around my neck on my wedding day--and I must _sell_ it!” You can see too, the fair girl, bending down and dropping tears on the page marked by her dead lover; her bosom heaving, her heart breaking, her lips whispering:--“_His_ hand touched this--we read this page together--I hear his voice--see his smile--this book brings back all to me--and now, I must go and sell it, to buy bread for my little sister and brother, who are starving!” That is dolorous, is it not, reader?--and strikes you to the heart. It is not fancy. December, 1864, saw that, and more, in Virginia. II. THE MEN WHO RUINED THE CONFEDERACY. In the streets of Richmond, crowded with uniforms, in spite of the patrols, marching to and fro, and examining “papers,” I met a number of old acquaintances, and saw numerous familiar faces. The “Spottswood” was the resort of the _militaires_, and the moneyed people. Here, captains and colonels were elbowed by messieurs the blockade-runners, and mysterious government employees--employed, as I said on a former occasion, in heaven knows what. The officer stalked by in his braid. The “Trochilus” passed, smiling, in shiny broadcloth. Listen! yonder is the newsboy, shouting, “The _Examiner_!”--that is to say, the accurate photograph of this shifting chaos, where nothing seems stationary long enough to have its picture taken.