The women were making every sacrifice. Delicate hands performed duties
which had always fallen to menials. The servants had gone to the enemy,
and aristocratic young women cooked, washed, swept, and drudged--a
charming spectacle perhaps to the enemy, who hated the "aristocracy,"
but woeful to fathers, and sons, and brothers, when they came home
sick, or wounded. Clothes had long grown shabby, and were turned and
mended. Exquisite beauty was decked in rags. A faded calico was a
treasure. The gray-haired gentleman, who had always worn broadcloth,
was content with patched homespun. It was not of these things that they
were thinking, however. Dress had not made those seigneurs and
dames--nor could the want of it hide their dignity. The father, and
care-worn wife, and daughter, and sister, were thinking of other
things. The only son was fighting beside Lee--dying yonder, in the
trenches. He was only a "poor private," clad in rags and carrying a
musket--but he was the last of a long line, perhaps, of men who had
built up Virginia and the Federal government which he was fighting--he
was "only a private," but his blood was illustrious; more than all, he
was the treasure of the gray-haired father and mother; the head of the
house in the future; if he fell, the house would fall with him--and it
was nearly certain that he would fall!
So they mourned, and looked fearfully to the coming hours, in town and
country.
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