Page 119 - Arkansas Confederate Women
P. 119
104 Confederate Women of Arkansas
This I haughtily resented with a curl of the lip, and a defiant
shrug of the shoulders, which he seemed more amused at. I
at once strode into my mother's parlor, accompanied by my sis-
ter, Fannie Wills, who, with hidden wrath, showed me all
the pictures on the walls, which had been cut in holes and other-
wise defaced.
She recounted to me the depredations the soldiers had com-
mitted, such as killing the milch cows and calves and chick-
ens and devastating the garden, orchard and stripping the
smokehouse. My dear, noble mother did not utter a complaint,
though her heart bled for her country and her loved ones and
her home. She urged me and sister to be patient and not to
do anything that would bring more suffering upon us all.
A BIT OF BRUTALITY. .
But all the fires of a proud, patriotic Southerner burned
myand thrilled in our veins, and I fairly gritted teeth, but held
my temper under control when in the presence of the Federals,
until one day when I had been exasperated almost beyond en-
durance, I heard a scream from my baby boy, and then the
voice of his nurse Chaney crying "Miss Sue, come here quick."
I followed the direction of the voices to the back yard, and
there found my baby being held roughly to the ground by a big,
rough soldier while another held Julia's negro baby of the same
age in his lap, and every now and then made them kiss, at
which those ground laughed coarsely, and used profane epithets
to me and my baby. It seemed to me I jumped from the steps
ten feet to where they were. Snatching my baby in my arms,
I called on heaven to send judgment and retribution to the cruel
cowards. My terrible anger seemed to intimidate them for a
time, but later only provoked them to more than profanity, even
to blackguardism.
MORE BRUTALITY.
After this episode my mother was in constant dread lest I
should cause some terrible trouble to come to us all, and she
had not long to wait. About a month after the above occurrence
