April 5th.—Miss Middleton’s letter came in answer to mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me. “We long,” she says, “for our own small sufficiency of wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle unto death, although the neighbors continue to feed us, as you would say, ‘with a spoon.’ We have fallen upon a new device. We keep a cookery book on the mantelpiece, and when the dinner is deficient we just read off a pudding or a crême. It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this dessert in imagination, but perhaps it is as good for the digestion.”
As I was ready to go, though still up-stairs, some one came to say General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton cried out, “Send word you are not at home.” “Never!” said I. “Why make him climb all these stairs when you must go in five minutest ” “If he had come here dragging Sherman as a captive at his chariot wheels I might say ‘not at home,’ but not now.” And I ran down and greeted him on the sidewalk in the face of all, and walked slowly beside him as he toiled up the weary three stories, limping gallantly. He was so well dressed and so cordial; not depressed in the slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report self-defense; says Joe Johnston attacked him and he was obliged to state things from his point of view. And now follow statements, where one may read between the lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in Western Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned because he and Joe Johnston were not on cordial terms, and as the fatigue of the mountain campaign would be too great for him, he would like the chance of going across the Mississippi. Texas was true to him, and would be his home, as it had voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General Lee is utterly despondent, and has no plan if Richmond goes, as go it must.
