One morning my friend, Miss Barnett, a beautiful girl, rushed into my room, and, throwing herself on the floor beside me, began telling me with sobs and tears that my brother-in-law, Major Grey, or his brother Dick, was a prisoner in the Old Capitol at Washington. She begged me to go at once and see what I could do. If I could not find some way of helping the prisoner to freedom, I could at least add to his comfort in prison.
“You could at least show him that he was remembered,” she said. “You could take some little delicacies which would be grateful to a prisoner. I will help you to get them up.”
Poor Isabelle! It was one of the tragedies of the war. She was too wretched to attempt any concealment.
“You see, if I had any right to go myself I would not ask you to go for me. If I were even engaged to him--but I am not. You see, it couldn’t be. But, O Millie! I wish there wasn’t any war that I might be my love’s betrothed and go to him!”
For a minute her proposition daunted me. To rush into Washington, a Southern woman, alone and unprotected; to be surrounded on all sides by the Government officials and spies whose business it was to watch and report every careless word and act of any one who was known to be interested in the South or in Southerners--the undertaking seemed desperate. But there were Isabelle’s tearful eyes, and there was the fear that Nell’s husband might be the prisoner. I determined to make the trip at all hazards.
Together we made purchases of what we considered the most tempting delicacies to take to an invalid or prisoner. There were cheeses, crackers, oranges, lemons, jellies; and we did not forget to add to our stock wine, whisky, pipes, and tobacco. Isabelle herself sent a box of fine cigars, a costly gift, for the war with the Southern States affected the price of tobacco.
The next morning I started off by myself to Washington in fear and trembling. Taking a hack there, and trusting to a kind Providence for guidance and protection, I drove first to the office of the provost marshal for a permit. On entering his office, to my consternation I recognized in him the judge-advocate under whose protection our truce boat had gone to Richmond not many months before with the distinct understanding that her passengers were not to return from Dixie while the war lasted. But it was too late to retreat. Rallying all my courage and self-control I greeted him as a stranger, asking whether or not I was addressing Judge Turner. Answered in the affirmative, I requested permission to visit the prisoners in the Old Capitol.