It was in Petersburg that my trousseau was made. Much of it was the work and embroidery of loving, light-hearted girls whose feet were set to music and dancing, and most of it was worn by women who trod instead fields red with the blood of their friends and kinsmen. During the long, dreary years in which the Northern ports were closed, and the South clothed itself as best it could, or went in rags, that trousseau constituted my sole outfit, and it reinforced the wardrobes of some comrades in war and want.
Charlie Murray and I were galloping along a country road.
“I haven’t, Charlie. I met his brother Dick in Norfolk, and didn’t like him at all.”
“Well, Nell, you’d like Dan--everybody does. I wonder you haven’t met him. Dan never fails to meet every pretty girl that comes here.”
I had heard that before. Indeed, I had heard a great deal about Dan Grey that made me long to get even with him. Everybody had a way of speaking as if Petersburg wasn’t Petersburg with Dan Grey left out.
“You ought to meet Dan Grey,” Charlie repeated.
“I don’t think so,” I rapped out. “I think I can get along very nicely without meeting Dan Grey”--Dan Grey seemed to be getting along very nicely without meeting me--“I know as many nice men now as I have time to see.”
So I dismissed Dan, whipped up my horse, and raced Charlie along the old Jerusalem Plank Road--that historic thoroughfare by which the Union troops first threatened Petersburg, and near which Fort Hell and Fort Damnation are still visible. We ran our horses past the old brick church, built of bricks brought from England to erect a place of worship for the aristocratic colonists, past the quiet graves in Blandford; and turning our horses into Washington Street, slackened their pace and, chatting merrily the while, rode slowly into the city toward the golden sunset. A few years later I was to run along this street in abject terror from bursting shells.
It came from George Van B---- this time. George was the poet laureate of our set. Afterward he was Colonel Van B----, and as gallant a soldier as ever faced shot and shell. I had been playing an accompaniment for him; he was singing a popular ditty of the day, “Sweet Nellie is by my Side”; I wheeled around on the piano-stool and faced him.