June 1st.—We have been to Bloomsbury again and hear that William Kirkland has been wounded. A scene occurred then, Mary weeping bitterly and Aunt B. frantic as to Tanny’s danger. I proposed to make arrangements for Mary to go on at once. The Judge took me aside, frowning angrily. “You are unwise to talk in that way. She can neither take her infant nor leave it. The cars are closed by order of the government to all but soldiers.”
I told him of the woman who, when the conductor said she could not go, cried at the top of her voice, “Soldiers, I want to go to Richmond to nurse my wounded husband.” In a moment twenty men made themselves her body-guard, and she went on unmolested. The Judge said I talked nonsense. I said I would go on in my carriage if need be. Besides, there would be no difficulty in getting Mary a “permit.”
He answered hotly that in no case would he let her go, and that I had better not go back into the house. We were on the piazza and my carriage at the door. I took it and crossed over to see Mary Boykin. She was weeping, too, so washed away with tears one would hardly know her. “So many killed. My son and my husband—I do not hear a word from them.”
Gave to-day for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, and sixty pounds of sugar, $800.
Beauregard is a gentleman and was a genius as long as Whiting did his engineering for him. Our Creole general is not quite so clever as he thinks himself.
Mary Ford writes for school-books for her boys. She is in great distress on the subject. When Longstreet’s corps passed through Greenville there was great enthusiasm; handkerchiefs were waved, bouquets and flowers were thrown the troops; her boys, having nothing else to throw, threw their school-books.
