Читать книгу The Women of the Confederacy - J. L. Underwood - Страница 8

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From her invalid chair in New York the revered and beloved wife of the great chieftain of the Confederacy writes a personal letter to the author of this volume, from which he takes the liberty of publishing the following extract. There is something peculiarly touching in this testimonial which will be prized and kept as a precious heirloom throughout our Southern land:

Hotel Gerard,

123 West Forty-fourth Street, New York. October 25, 1905.

My Dear Mr. Underwood:

* * * I do not know in all history a finer subject than the heroism of our Southern women, God bless them. I have never forgotten our dear Mrs. Robt. E. Lee, sitting in her arm chair, where she was chained by the most agonizing form of rheumatism, cutting with her dear aching hands soldiers’ gloves from waste pieces of their Confederate uniforms furnished to her from the government shops. These she persuaded her girl visitors to sew into gloves for the soldiers. Certainly these scraps were of immense use to all those who could get them, for I do not know how many children’s jackets which kept the soldiers’ children warm, I had pieced out of these scraps by a poor woman who sat in the basement of the mansion and made them for them.

The ladies picked their old silk pieces into fragments, and spun them into gloves, stockings, and scarfs for the soldiers’ necks, etc.; cut up their house linen and scraped it into lint; tore up their sheets and rolled them into 20 bandages; and toasted sweet potato slices brown, and made substitutes for coffee. They put two tablespoonfuls of sorghum molasses into the water boiled for coffee instead of sugar, and used none other for their little children and families. They covered their old shoes with old kid gloves or with pieces of silk and their little feet looked charming and natty in them. In the country they made their own candles, and one lady sent me three cakes of sweet soap and a small jar of soft soap made from the skin, bones and refuse bits of hams boiled for her family. Another sent the most exquisite unbleached flax thread, of the smoothest and finest quality, spun by herself. I have never been able to get such thread again. I am still quite feeble, so I must close with the hope that your health will steadily improve and the assurance that I am,

Yours sincerely,

V. Jefferson Davis.