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Page 73
When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along.
When she believed it,--as she does believe it now,--she agreed with me
in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should ever
be parted. Nor have we been, ever!
She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her
wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was
our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us
ONE!
THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.
BY J. THOMAS DARKAGH (LATE C.C.S.).
[This paper was first published in the "Galaxy," in 1866.]
* * * * *
I see that an old chum of mine is publishing bits of confidential
Confederate History in Harper's Magazine. It would seem to be time,
then, for the pivots to be disclosed on which some of the wheelwork of
the last six years has been moving. The science of history, as I
understand it, depends on the timely disclosure of such pivots, which
are apt to be kept out of view while things are moving.
I was in the Civil Service at Richmond. Why I was there, or what I did,
is nobody's affair. And I do not in this paper propose to tell how it
happened that I was in New York in October, 1864, on confidential
business. Enough that I was there, and that it was honest business. That
business done, as far as it could be with the resources intrusted to me,
I prepared to return home. And thereby hangs this tale, and, as it
proved, the fate of the Confederacy.
For, of course, I wanted to take presents home to my family. Very little
question was there what these presents should be,--for I had no boys nor
brothers. The women of the Confederacy had one want, which overtopped
all others. They could make coffee out of beans; pins they had from
Columbus; straw hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands;
snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we
had no hoop-skirts,--skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had
made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the
Deer, the Flora, the J.C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all
took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and
the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J.C. Cobb sunk at sea, the
Fore-and-Aft and the Greyhound were set fire to by their own crews, and
the Varuna (our Varuna) was never heard of. Then the State of Arkansas
offered sixteen townships of swamp land to the first manufacturer who
would exhibit five gross of a home-manufactured article. But no one ever
competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield
crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The
consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the
Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never
anything of it but the outside.
Of course, then, I put in the bottom of my new large trunk in New York,
not a "duplex elliptic," for none were then made, but a "Belmonte," of
thirty springs, for my wife. I bought, for her more common wear, a good
"Belle-Fontaine." For Sarah and Susy each, I got two "Dumb-Belles." For
Aunt Eunice and Aunt Clara, maiden sisters of my wife, who lived with us
after Winchester fell the fourth time, I got the "Scotch Harebell," two
of each. For my own mother I got one "Belle of the Prairies" and one
"Invisible Combination Gossamer." I did not forget good old Mamma Chloe
and Mamma Jane. For them I got substantial cages, without names. With
these, tied in the shapes of figure eights in the bottom of my trunk, as
I said, I put in an assorted cargo of dry-goods above, and, favored by a
pass, and Major Mulford's courtesy on the flag-of-truce boat, I arrived
safely at Richmond before the autumn closed.
I was received at home with rapture. But when, the next morning, I
opened my stores, this became rapture doubly enraptured. Words cannot
tell the silent delight with which old and young, black and white,
surveyed these fairy-like structures, yet unbroken and unmended.
Perennial summer reigned that autumn day in that reunited family. It
reigned the next day, and the next. It would have reigned till now if
the Belmontes and the other things would last as long as the
advertisements declare; and, what is more, the Confederacy would have
reigned till now, President Davis and General Lee! but for that great
misery, which all families understand, which culminated in our great
misfortune.
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