Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/129

 Rh Upstairs, armoires with mirror-doors had been smashed heavy axes or hammers, and the dainty dresses of the young ladies torn and crushed with studied, painstaking malignity, while china, toilet articles, and bits of glass that ornamented the rooms were thrown upon the beds and broken and ground into a mass of fragments. Desks were wrenched open, and the contents scattered, not only through the house; but out upon the streets, to be wafted in all directions; parts of their private letters as well as letters from the desks of other violated homes, and family records torn from numberless Bibles, were found on the sidewalks of the town, and even on the public roads beyond town limits.

Lieutenant Warley, with whom I had served on the McRae, was the only living human being I knew in Charleston, and the great difference in our rank, as well as age, precluded the possibility of my making a companion of him; so, a lonely boy, I roamed the streets of the quaint old city. Evidently the war as yet had had no effect on the style kept up by the old blue-bloods, for I was amazed to see handsome equipages, with coachmen in livery on the box, driving through the town. Little did their owners dream that before very long those same fine horses would be hauling artillery and commissary wagons, and those proud liveried servants would be at work with pick and spade throwing up breast-works!

To my great delight, George Hollins, a son of my dearly loved old commodore, a boy of about my own age with whom I had been shipmate on the Mississippi River, arrived in town, and the boarding-house man consented to allow him to share my little room at the same rate charged me. George had been in Charleston only a few days when yellow fever became epidemic. It was the latter part of August and the heat was something fearful. I had no fear of the fever, as I had been accustomed to its frequent visits to my old home, but with Hollins, a native of Baltimore, it was different.

One afternoon he came into our room and complained of