Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/49

1866.] "It was never so till since the wa'. Now we have chills and fever, jest like they do in a new country. It's owin' to the land all comin' up to weeds; the dew settles in 'em, and they rot, and that fills the air with the agur. I've had the agur myself till about a fortnight ago; then, soon as I got shet of that, the colic took me. Eat too much on a big appetite, I suppose. I like to live well; like to see plenty of everything on the table, and then I like to see every man eat a heap."

I commended Elijah's practical sense; upon which he replied,—

"The old man is right ignorant; can't read the fust letter; never went to school a day; but the old man is right sharp!"

He was fond of speaking of himself in this way. He thought education a good thing, but allowed that all the education in the world could not give a man sense. He was fifty years old, and had got along thus far in life very well.

"I reckon thar's go'n' to be a better chance for the poo' man after this. The Union bein' held together was the greatest thing that could have happened for us."

"And yet you fought against it."

"I was in the Confederate army two year and a half. I was opposed to Secession; but I got my head a little turned after the State went out, and I enlisted. Then, when I had time to reconsider it all over, I diskivered we was wrong. I told the boys so.

Boys,' says I, 'when my time's up, I'm go'n' out of the army, and you won't see me in ag'in.'

You can't help that, old man,' says they; 'fo' by that time the conscript law'll be changed so 's to go over the heads of older men than you.'

Then,' says I, 'the fust chance presents itself, I fling down my musket and go spang No'th.'

"They had me put under arrest for that, and kep' me in the guard-house seven months. I liked that well enough. I was saved a deal of hard march'n' and lay'n' out in the cold, that winter.

Why don't ye come in, boys,' says I, 'and have a warm?'

"I knowed what I was about! The old man was right ignorant, but the old man was right sharp!"

We passed the line of Sedgwick's retreat a few miles from Fredericksburg.

"Shedrick's men was in line acrost the road hyer, extendin' into the woods on both sides; they had jest butchered their meat, and was ishyin' rations and beginnin' to cook their suppers, when Magruder struck 'em on the left flank." (Elijah was wrong; it was not Magruder, but McLaws. These local guides make many such mistakes, and it is necessary to be on one's guard against them.) "They jest got right up and skedaddled! The whole line jest faced to the right, and put for Banks's Ford. Thar's the road they went. They left it piled so full of wagons, Magruder couldn't follah; but his artillery jest run around by another road I'll show ye, hard as ever they could lay their feet to the ground, wheeled their guns in position on the bluffs by the time Shedrick got cleverly to crossin', and played away. The way they heaped up Shedrick's men was awful!"

Every mile or two we came to a small farm-house, commonly of logs, near which there was usually a small crop of corn growing.

"Every man after he got home, after the fall of Richmond, put in to raise a little somethin' to eat. Some o' the corn looks poo'ly, but it beats no corn at all, all to pieces."

We came to one field which Elijah pronounced a "monstrous fine crap." But he added,—

"I've got thirty acres to home not a bit sorrier'n that. Ye see, that mule of mine," etc.

I noticed—what I never saw in the latitude of New England—that the fodder had been pulled below the ears and tied in little bundles on the stalks to cure. Ingenious shifts for fences had been resorted to by the farmers. In some places the planks of the worn-out plank road had been staked and lashed together to form a temporary inclosure.