As well assured as they felt of all this, they still regarded it as important to keep all the while the "best foot foremost;" to keep up an _appearance_ of strength, however weak they might be; to keep up a show of independence, however much they might be hoping and praying for help. Like as an expectant bride, though she has the plighted faith of her lover, will continue to smile, to dress, to allure in every way she can, up to the very hour of the marriage ceremony, so the South continued to smile, to dress, to allure, in every way she could, her Northern allies, who had solemnly plighted their faith to her, and her English sympathizers, whose pecuniary interests lay all in that direction, and these things she continued to do up to the very moment when the Confederacy collapsed, and when it was found that nothing was left of the egg but the shell. As our reverend friend said to us, over and over again, and as other Confederate officers have said to us, over and over again, "none but those within the lines, and behind the scenes, knew of the destitution, of the suffering, of the heart-aches, of the skeletons within closets while those who held the keys were smiling as if they were full of good things, of the turns and shifts which not only the army but which almost every family in the South had to make, in order to preserve life, and yet keep up a fair outside show, during those four terrible years of war." And now for the illustrations--little or none of which has ever before been published.
After the first year of the war, so much in want of food was the Confederate army at times, that, in one instance, an officer, with an escort, travelled sixty miles before he could purchase food enough to load one six-mule wagon which he had with him. Even then they had to go within the Union lines, and run very great risk of being captured.
The same officer from whom we learned the above incident, also told us that, on one occasion, he and the men with him were so ravenous from hunger that he shot an old sow that had had a large litter of pigs only the day before, and that while he and his fellow officers ate the meat (if meat it could be called) of the old sow, his men ate not only the one-day-old pigs, but even the very entrails of the mother.