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

It was rather a spiteful repartee, I must confess, but was provoked by many ill-natured remarks previously made by this renegade, and had the good effect of putting an end to them.

We were comparatively safe once more,—for how long no one knew. I now became very anxious about the men in the trenches at Atlanta who were lying day after day, always under fire. Suffering from insufficient food, exposed to the scorching sun or equally pitiless rain, sometimes actually knee-deep in water for days. The bombardment was heavy and incessant, ceasing only for a while at sunset, when carts were hastily loaded with musty meat and poor corn-bread, driven out to the trenches, and the rations dumped there. Many of my friends were lying in these trenches, among them my husband. In addition to other ills, the defenders of Atlanta were in instant danger of death from shot or shell. I could not bear it. The desire to see my husband once more, and to carry some relief in the shape of provisions to himself and his comrades could not be quelled. Many things stood in the way of its accomplishment, for, upon giving a hint of my project to my friends at Newnan, a storm of protest broke upon my devoted head. Not one bade me God-speed, everybody declared I was crazy. ‘A woman to go to Atlanta under such circumstances; how utterly absurd, how mad.’ So I was obliged to resort to deception and subterfuge. My first step was to request leave of absence, that I might forage for provisions to be sent to the front by the first opportunity.

Dr. McAllister very kindly accorded me his permission, placing at my disposal an ambulance and a driver, advising me, however, not to follow the main road or the beaten track which had already been drained