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ance was all earnestness: "Nan, you did it for the Cause--the flag--the battery--anything but him personally. _He_ knows it. Everybody saw that. Its very publicity--" "Yes?" soothingly interposed Madame, "'t was a so verrie pewblic that--" "Why, Flora," continued the well-meaning sister, "Steve says when he came back into Charleston from Fort Sumter the ladies--" "Of course!" said Flora, sparkling afresh. "Even Steve understands that, grandma." Her foot was on a step of the carriage. A child plucked her flowing sleeve: "Misses! Mom-a say'"--he pressed into her grasp something made of broadcloth, very red and golden--"here yo' husband's cap." XXXI VIRGINIA GIRLS AND LOUISIANA BOYS Thanks are due to Mr. Richard Thorndyke Smith for the loan of his copy of a slender and now extremely rare work which at this moment lies before me. "A History of Kincaid's Battery," it is called, "From Its Origin to the Present Day," although it runs only to February, '62, and was printed (so well printed, on such flimsy, coarse paper) just before the dreadful days of Shiloh and the fall of New Orleans. Let us never paint war too fair; but this small volume tells of little beyond the gold-laced year of 'Sixty-one, nor of much beyond Virginia, even over whose later war-years the color effects of reminiscence show blue and green and sun-lit despite all the scarlet of carnage, the black and crimson of burning, and the grim hues of sickness, squalor, and semi-starvation; show green and blue in the sunlight of victory, contrasted with those of the states west and south of her. It tells--this book compiled largely from correspondence of persons well known to you and me--of the first "eight-days' crawl" that conveyed the chaffing, chafing command up through Mississippi, across East Tennessee into southeast Virginia and so on through Lynchburg to lovely Richmond; tells how never a house was passed in town or country but handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, snatched-off sunbonnets, and Confederate flags wafted them on. It tells of the uncounted railway stations where swarmed the girls in white muslin aprons and red-white-and-red bows, who waved them, in as they came, and unconsciously squinted and made faces at them in the intense sunlight. It tells how the maidens gave them dainties and sweet glances, and boutonnieres of tuberoses and violets, and bloodthirsty adjurations, and blarney for blarney; gave them seven wild well-believed
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