Friday, 25th.
Write me down a witch, a prophetess, or what you will. I am certainly something! All has come to pass on that very disagreeable subject very much as I feared. Perhaps no one in my position would speak freely on the subject; for that very reason I shall not hesitate to discuss it.
Know, then, that this morning, He went North along with many other Confederate prisoners, to be exchanged. And he left — he who has written so incessantly and so imploringly for me to visit his prison — he left without seeing me. Bon! Wonder what happened?
• • • • • • • •
Evening.
I have learned more. He has not yet left; part of the mystery is unraveled, only I have neither patience nor desire to seek for more. These women —I Hush! to slander is too much like them; be yourself.
My sweet little lisper informed a select circle of friends the other night, when questioned, that the individual had not called on me, and, what was more, would not do so. “Pray, how do you happen to be so intimately acquainted with the affairs of two who are strangers to you?” asked a lady present. She declined saying how she had obtained her information, only asserting that it was so. “In fact, you cannot expect any Confederate gentleman to call at the house of Judge Morgan, a professed Unionist,” she continued. So that is the story she told to keep him from seeing me. She has told him that we had turned Yankees! All her arts would not grieve me as much as one word against Brother. My wrongs I can forget; but one word of contempt for Brother I never forgive! White with passion I said to my informant, “Will you inform the young lady that her visit will never be returned, that she is requested not to repeat hers, and that I decline knowing any one who dares cast the slightest reflection on the name of one who has been both father and brother to me!” This evening I was at a house where she was announced. Miriam and I bade our hostess good-evening and left without speaking to her. Anybody but Brother! No one shall utter his name before me save with respect and regard.
This young woman’s father is a Captain in the Yankee navy, and her brother is a Captain in the Yankee army, while three other brothers are in the Confederate. Like herself, I have three brothers fighting for the South; unlike her, the only brother who avows himself a Unionist has too much regard for his family to take up arms against his own flesh and blood.
