IT was nearing the end.
Every resource of the Southern states had been taxed to the point of exhaustion.
The people had given up everything they had for “the cause.”
Under the law of a “tax in kind,” they had surrendered all they could spare of food products of every character. Under an untamable impulse of patriotism they had surrendered much more than they could spare in order to feed the army.
It was at such a time that I went to my home county on a little military business. I stopped for dinner at a house, the lavish hospitality of which had been a byword in the old days.
I found before me at dinner the remnants of a cold boiled ham, some boiled mustard greens, which we Virginians called “salad,” a pitcher of butter-milk, some corn-pones and—nothing else.
I carved the ham, and offered to serve it to the three women of the household. But they all declined. They made their dinner on salad, butter-milk, and corn-bread, the latter eaten very sparingly, as I observed. The ham went only to myself and to the three convalescent wounded soldiers, who were guests in the house.
Wounded men were at that time guests in every house in Virginia.
I lay awake that night and thought over the circumstance. The next morning I took occasion to have a talk on the old familiar terms with the young woman of the family, with whom I had been on a basis of friendship in the old days that even permitted me to kiss her upon due and proper occasion.
“Why didn’t you take some ham last night?” I asked urgently.
“Oh, I didn’t want it,” she replied.
“Now, you know you’re fibbing,” I said. “Tell me the truth, won’t you?”
She blushed, and hesitated. Presently she broke down and answered frankly: “Honestly, I did want the ham. I have hungered for meat for months. But I mustn’t eat it, and I won’t. You see the army needs all the food there is, and more. We women can’t fight, though I don’t see at all why they shouldn’t let us, and so we are trying to feed the fighting men—and there aren’t any others. We’ve made up our minds not to eat anything that can be sent to the front as rations.”
“You are starving yourselves,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, no,” she said. “And if we were, what would it matter? Haven’t Lee’s soldiers starved many a day? But we aren’t starving. You see we had plenty of salad and butter-milk last night. And we even ate some of the corn-bread. I must stop that, by the way, for corn-meal is a good ration for the soldiers.”
A month or so later this frail but heroic young girl was laid away in the Grub Hill church-yard.
Don’t talk to me about the “heroism” that braves a fire of hell under enthusiastic impulse. That young girl did a higher act of self-sacrifice than any soldier who fought on either side during the war ever dreamed of doing.