XXXIVSUBSTITUTES
Mrs. Walker sent me a pan of flour! It was the first time in months and almost the last time in years that I saw flour. These, you must know, were war times, and flour was not the only necessary we lacked. Dear Dr. Stone had a bluff, hearty way of arriving at things. When the Federals were in New Orleans he was often called for a surgical consultation, or to administer to an officer, with headache or backache, for they were mortally afraid of yellow fever, and it was just the season for it; and their regimental surgeons were not familiar with the scourge. Dr. Stone frequently “made a bargain” before he would act, and so I do not doubt in that way he obtained permission to ship a barrel of flour—for which all of us were famishing—to Mrs. Stone’s sister on the coast. Mrs. Walker most generously shared it with her neighbors.
Indians had lived on cornmeal and prospered therewith. Negroes had lived on cornmeal andprospered also. We were living on cornmeal and not prospering, for we had been brought up on (metaphorically speaking) nectar and ambrosia. Our cakes even, everybody had to have cakes! were made of cornmeal and molasses.... But I want to tell more about our Dr. Stone. When one Northern officer sent for him to consult about amputating a leg the doctor told him, in his blunt, positive way, he would not even examine the wounded member until he had in his pocket a permit for Mrs. Stone and the ladies associated with her to visit the Parish Prison and minister to the Confederates confined there. It was the only time any of us ever heard of a body asking the privilege of entering that dirty old calaboose down by Congo Square.
Many such stories were wafted to us about Dr. Stone. Some may not have been authentic, but we loved to hear and to repeat them. However, after the war, I did hear him tell of a Union officer offering him the present of a fine horse in recognition of some professional obligation. “I needed that horse,” he said, “for I had none, and so I was going my rounds a-foot, but it was branded U. S. and I returned it.” Years after I met that Federal officer in St. Paul, and, speaking of the doctor, whom he admired greatly, he told of the horse he had tenderedhim, which was promptly returned, accompanied with a most amusing note, ending with “So US don’t want that horse.”
Every blessed one of us was a coffee drinker, and even before the secession of Louisiana we were weighing and measuring what coffee we had on hand, not knowing where we could replenish our diminishing stock. Gov. Manning, of South Carolina, and his wife were our guests at this crisis, and Mrs. Manning showed me how to prepare a substitute for coffee. Gracious me! that was the first, but we had substitutes for almost every article, both to eat and to wear, before we were whipped like naughty children and dragged back into the Union, and made to take our nauseous medicine, labeled “Reconstruction.” And now we are all cured! and will never be naughty again.
That first substitute, which was followed by a score of others, was sweet potatoes, cut, dried, toasted, ground and boiled. The concoction did not taste so very bad, but it had no aroma, and, of course, no exhilarating quality; it was simply a sweety, hot drink. We had lots of Confederate money, but it quickly lost any purchasing power it ever had. There was nothing for sale, and we could not have bought anything even if shops had been stocked with goods and supplies. A pin! Whyto this day I always stoop to pick up a pin, I learned so to value that insignificant necessary in the days we could not buy a pin. A hairpin! Many women in country towns used thorns to secure their “waterfalls.” We wore waterfalls; chignons they were called later. I saw many of them made of silk strings, plaited or twisted. Women had to be in the fashion, as Dr. Talmage once said, “though the heavens fell.” If we had had anything to sew we would have missed the usual needle supply.
I was visiting one day when one large and one small needle were all there were in the house; if they had been made entirely of gold, instead of “gold-eyed” only, they could not have been more cherished. I can hear the wailing voice now, inquiring, “Where is the needle?”
You may smile now at the idea of a substitute for a toothbrush, but, my dear, that oft-quoted mother of invention taught us an althea switch made a fairly good toothbrush; of course, it was both scratchy and stiff, but we never found a better substitute for the necessary article. As for tea, we Southerners have never been addicted to the tea habit; however, we soon became disgusted with the various coffee substitutes. We tried to vary our beverages with draughts of catnip tea, that the darkies always give their babies for colic; and orange leaftea, that old ladies administered to induce perspiration in cases of chills; and sassafras tea we had drunk years gone by in the spring season to thin the blood. We did not fancy posing as babies or ague cases—the taste of each variety was highly suggestive. I wonder if any lady of to-day ever saw a saucer of home-made soft soap on her washstand? After using it one had to grease (no use saying oil, for it was generally mutton tallow) the hands to prevent the skin cracking. I never used that soap, but traveling in out-of-the-way roads I saw it on many a stand. Clothes, too, wore out, as is their nature, and the kind we were used to wearing were not of the lasting variety like osnaburgs and linseys.
Quite early in the war Cuthbert Slocomb and De Choiseul stopped over a night with us on their way to the front. With them was another young man whose name escapes me now, who was suffering from chills, so he remained a few days as our guest. We dosed him with orange-leaf tea, which was about the best we could do, having no quinine on hand. In his kit he had a lot of chamois skins, which he laid out before me with the modest request I make a pair of pantaloons out of them. We talked the project over and decided overalls were the only thing in that line that could be made ofchamois skins, that, of course, had to be pieced lengthways, crossways and sideways. The result was satisfactory, and the young man proudly carried off his overalls. I hoped, but did not expect, that he would escape a rain or two on his expedition clad in chamois skins! However, I was amply repaid for my ingenuity and skill, for I had scraps enough of the skins left me to supply tobacco pouches and gloves to lots of soldier friends thereafter.
At one time, in dire need, I paid one dollar a yard for thin coarse muslin, white with black dots, which looked distressingly bad after a wetting or two, but my crowning extravagance was paying thirty dollars a yard for common blue denim; that was in Houston. Thus went the last of my Confederate money. After that for a while we did without things.
Mr. James Phelps of New Orleans—scores of us must remember genial Jim Phelps—made a call on me in Texas, introducing himself with the whimsical remark that I must look at him from shoulder up and not down, for he had on a brand new paper collar, and had borrowed the use of a razor, and was now out making ceremonious calls! Oh, dear me! we lived through all of these privations, and the few remaining survivors are not afflicted withnervous prostration, or any of the fashionable ills of the day. Their nerves were strengthened, their spirits brightened. They bravely bore the fires of trouble and privation that make them placidly content with the comforts and solaces of their declining years.