The cellar was dug out only a little way down.  It had been raining and snowing all day—­melted as it fell.  It was about noon and the seep water had filled a pool in the middle of the cellar.  They placed a tub in the water and it floated like a little boat.  They put Nora and a little girl who was visiting her, and me in it.  The grown folks clung to the damp sides of the cellar floor and wall.  After the worst bombing was over we heard someone upstairs in the house calling.  It was the wife of a Northern officer.  He had gotten away so fast he had forgotten his pistols.  She had tried to follow him, but the shots had frightened her.  We called to her to come to the basement.  She came, but in trying to climb up the slick sides she slid down and almost into our tub.  She looked so funny with her big fat legs that I giggled.  Mrs. Blakeley slapped me—­it was one of the few times she struck me.  I was glad she did, for I would have laughed out.  And it didn’t do to laugh at Northerners.

It wes night before the fighting was over.  An old man who was in the basement with us went upstairs because he heard someone groan.  Sure enough a wounded man had dragged himself to our door.  He laid the man, almost fainting down before the fireplace.  It was all he could do.  The man died.  When we finally came up there wasn’t a pea, nor a bit of ham, not a crum of cornbread.  Floaters had cleaned the pot until it shone.

We had a terrible time getting along during those years.  I don’t believe we could have done it except for the Northern soldiers.  You might say the Confederacy was kept up by private subscription, but the Yankees had the whole Federal government back of them.  They had good rations which were issued uncooked.  They could get them prepared anywhere they liked.  We were good cooks so that is the way we got our food—­preparing it for soldiers and eating it with them.  They had quite a variety and a lot of everything.  They were given bacon and coffee and sugar and flour and beans and somthing they called ‘mixed vegetables’.  Those beans were little and sweet—­not like the big ones we have today.  The mixed vegetables were liked by lots of folks—­I didn’t care for them.  Everything was ground up together and then dried.  You had to soak it like dried peas before cooking.

After the war they came to Mrs. Blakeley, the soldiers did, and accused her of keeping me against my will.  I told them that I stayed because I wanted to, the Blakeleys were my people.  They let me alone, the whites did, but the negroes didn’t like it.  They tried to fight me and called me names.  There was a well near the square from which everybody got water.  Between it and our house was a negro cabin.  The little negroes would rock me.  I stood it as long as I could.  Then I told Mrs. Blakeley.  She said to get some rocks in my bucket and if they rocked me to heave back.  I was a good shot and they ran.  Their mother came to Mrs. Blakeley to complain, but she told her after hearing her thru that I had stood all I could and the only reason I hadn’t been seriously hurt was because her children weren’t good shots.  They never bothered me again.