28th.—Our niece, M. P., came for me to go with her on a shopping expedition. It makes me sad to find our money depreciating so much, except that I know it was worse during the old Revolution. A merino dress cost $150, long cloth $5.50 per yard, fine cotton stockings $6 per pair; handkerchiefs, for which we gave fifty cents before the war, are now $5. There seems no scarcity of dry-goods of the ordinary kinds; bombazines, silks, etc., are scarce and very high; carpets are not to be found—they are too large to run the blockade from Baltimore, from which city many of our goods come.
Diary of a Southern Refugee, Judith White McGuire.
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