by John Beauchamp Jones
APRIL 6TH.—At mid-day it cleared off; wind still northwest, and cool.
Beans (white) were held to-day at $5 per quart! and other articles of food in proportion. How we are to live is the anxious question. At auction old sheets brought $25 a piece, and there seemed to be an advance on everything, instead of a decline as was expected. The speculators and extortioners seem to act in concert, and the government appears to be no match for them. It is not the scarcity of food which causes the high prices, for wood and coal sell as high as other things, and they are no scarcer than at any former period. But it is an insatiable thirst for gain, which I fear the Almighty Justicer will rebuke in some signal manner, perhaps in the emancipation of the slaves, and then the loss will be greater than all the gains reaped from the heart’s blood of our brave soldiers and the tears of the widow and orphan And government still neglects the wives and children of the soldiers,— a fearful risk!
But, alas! how are our brave men faring in the hands of the demon fanatics in the United States? It is said they are dying like sheep.
