Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/205

 Rh soldiers' clothes and knit socks for the army, and packed the boxes with as much alacrity as the white people did. They were our greatest comfort during the war.

When hostilities began, the younger children were taught by a tutor who had been in the family for several years. Mr. Dabney had not thought of sending him away, though he was a Northern man, and, it was to be supposed, with Northern sympathies. He was so quiet that we at Burleigh rarely thought of his sympathies, for he never seemed to speak if he could avoid it. But the neighbors had a report that he was a spy, and Mr. Dabney was informed of it, with a request that Mr. T—— should be dismissed. This was communicated to the tutor in the kindest manner, and the man was moved to tears as Thomas talked with him.

Thomas Dabney originated the scheme for the Confederate government to raise money by getting out bonds on the basis of the cotton then in the hands of the planters. The cotton bonds supplied the sinews of war during the early part of the struggle.

At a trial of strength between himself and five young men who were guests in his house for a month or two before they went off to the war, he held out at arm's length a weight that was too heavy for them to hold out.

One day after his beloved wife had been dead about a year, Thomas was lying on his bed in his chamber, one of his daughters and a niece sitting by him. He began to sing the song that had so often been begged for in vain by their children,—the song that had won their mother's heart.

He sang it from beginning to end. As he came to the last line, he struck withhis clinched fist upon his breast,—

"Do they think that I can forget you! Do they think that I can forget you!" he cried.

Some one, little knowing the man, had spoken to him jestingly of marrying again in this early stage of his grief.

The Episcopal Church of St. Mark's, at Raymond,