North Carolina -- Social life and customs; Plantation life
"Honey, whar'bouts is you?" Mammy questioned, as, pausing upon the
threshold, she peered into the obscurity beyond. The windowless room
was dark, and Mammy, after again calling, groped her way in, straining
her eyes into the gloom, but unable to discern any object. Then,
suddenly, the deep silence and the gloom smote upon her senses, and a
great horror came over her. She turned to rush from the room, when her
eyes, grown more accustomed to the darkness, fell upon an object which
froze the lifeblood in her veins. It lay almost at her feet. She
stooped and bent over it, with thick, laboring breath. Very still it
lay, with set white face and wide-open, unseeing eyes.
WAR REMINISCENCES
I remember when Wheeler's cavalry passed through town that the men,
when halted, just dropped in the streets and slept, so that passers-by
were forced to step over them, but in spite of starvation and
weariness the old indomitable spirit would assert itself. One of the
poor fellows, while the column was passing by Christ Church, looked up
at the weathercock and remarked to a comrade that it was the first and
only instance of Wheeler's boys seeing a chicken which they could not
get at.
We were singularly fortunate in the neighborhood of Raleigh in having
no lack of wholesome food, and in being able to send boxes of
provisions to the army around Petersburg. We, in particular, were
plentifully supplied from the plantation, a four-horse wagon being
constantly engaged in hauling supplies.
One of the greatest taxes upon our resources, and the event that
brought the war very closely home to us, was the advent of the
cavalcade and ambulances referred to in my notes concerning My Own
Early Home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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