It was a good umbrella as far as it went and it was a special convenience to the refugee women who had to camp in the woods. At night a short pole was set in the ground with a short horizontal cross piece tacked across its top. Over this was stretched the hoopskirt and over it a sheet, and, behold a beautiful, cozy Sibley tent for two or three children to sleep under. It was our mother's faithful friend and companion to the end of the war. Like the old soldier's sword it came out very much battered and worn by long service. Like the old soldier himself, it had been wounded and broken and mended and spliced until it was hardly its former self. In their fatigue outfit our mothers laid aside the hoopskirt and tucked up what was left. But on dress parade, in meeting, company, and attending church it was her constant friend and companion. The South embalms in its memories the deeds of its men and the toil of its women. Father's old sword and John's gray jacket are sacred heirlooms. So are the old spinning wheel and hand loom, "And e'en the old hoopskirt which hung on the wall, The old hoopskirt The steel-ribbed shirt, The old hoopskirt which hung on the wall." One thing in the management of the hoopskirt the men never could understand. How in the world could all those steel wires be bundled and controlled when a woman rode horseback or had to be packed in a buggy or carriage? It was always a like wonder how the women could dance so nimbly and gracefully with long trains and never get tripped or tangled in them. Our women managed the trains and the hoopskirts just as tactfully and thoroughly and gracefully as they did their hard-headed husbands and silly sweethearts. How they did it nobody can tell, but they did it.