Fannie A. Beers, Memories: a record of personal exeperience and adventure during four years of war.

---

[54] of a visitor, would agitate a whole household, sending women in haste to some secret place where they might pray for strength to bear patiently whatever tidings the messenger should bring.

Self-denial in all things began from the first. Butter, eggs, chickens, etc., were classed as luxuries, to be collected and sent by any opportunity offering to the nearest point of shipment to hospital or camp. Fruits were gathered and made into preserves or wine ‘for the sick soldiers.’ Looms were set up on every plantation. The whirr of the spinning-wheel was heard from morning until night. Dusky forms hovered over large iron cauldrons, continually thrusting down into the boiling dye the product of the looms, to be transformed into Confederate gray or butternut jeans.

In the wide halls within the plantation-houses stood tables piled with newly-dyed cloth and hanks of woollen or cotton yarns. The knitting of socks went on incessantly. Ladies walked about in performance of household or plantation duties, sock in hand, ‘casting on,’ ‘heeling,’ ‘turning off.’ By the light of pine knots the elders still knitted far into the night, while to young eyes and more supple fingers was committed the task of finishing off comforts that had been ‘tacked’ during the day, or completing heavy army overcoats; and painfully these toiled over the unaccustomed task.

When a sufficient number of these articles had been completed by the united efforts of ladies for miles around, a meeting was held at one of the churches, where all helped to pack boxes to be sent to ‘the front.’ I attended one of these meetings, the memory of which is ever fresh.

We started from the plantation in the early morning. Our way lay along the red clay roads which in many parts of Alabama contrast so beautifully with the variously-shaded