Page 40 - Arkansas Confederate Women

Heroic Deeds of Southern Women 35

them knew of an empty grave which had been dug for the body
of a Captain Bean who had been carried back home to Roseville,
and buried there instead. There was one available vehicle. It
was a small cart, roughly constructed, and mounted upon two
old wagon wheels. To this was harnessed the only team a brace
of young steers. With Mrs. Knott driving and two of the other
women walking behind to hold the lifeless bodies on the shaky
cart, from which they were in imminent danger of falling, the
pathetic little procession wended its way to the graveyard. With
their own hands they laid the three bodies, uncoffmed, in the
same grave, and with an old shovel and a rusty spade, these faith-
ful and heroic women put the clods of "earth to earth and ashes
to ashes," upon the sacred dead.

Finally worn out with physical exertion and mental emo-
tion, they turned wearily homeward. It was nearing the close
of day when at last they arrived, and bright stars, just peep-
ing out from the grey twilight, were soon to shed their cold

unfeeling radiance upon the dark tragedies of human life.

"DON'T LET THE OLD MAN BLEED ON THE

BISCUITS."

Four or five members of Company H, Fifth Mississippi,

while lying in the trenches around Atlanta in 1864, had a brief

respite one morning from the annoying shot and shell. We had

got a large lot of biscuits, and expected to have a fine time of it

in enjoying the unusual banquet. But human hopes often de-

ceive us. While we were sitting a la Turk on a blanket, pitching

—into the biscuits, and old Tommie E , a long, lean specimen of

Rebeldom, was stretching out his bony arms for the biggest one

in the pile, a minnie ball took off a piece of his head as big as

a five-dollar Confederate note, and pitched him over upon our
H—stock of biscuits. George
jerked at him and cried out:

"Damn it, boys, dont let the old man bleed on the biseuts."

F. J. MASON".