290 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

being devoured in the dining-room, and that if I did not look
out for myself I should have to do without that essential article
for the rest of the day, I hurried into the salle-d~-manger, where
two long tables were furnished with all the luxuries then to be
obtained in Charleston, which luxuries consisted of lumps of
meat supposed to be beef, boiled Indian corn, and I think there
were the remains of a feathered biped or two, to partake of
which I was evidently too late. All these washed down with
water, or coffee without sugar, were not very tempting; but
human nature must be supported, so at it I set, and having
swallowed a sufiicient quantity of animal food, I went off to my
room to take a pull at a bottle of brandy which I had sagaciously
stored in my carpet-bag. But alas, for the morals of the be-
leaguered city. I found, on arriving there, a darkey extended
at full length in happy oblivion on the floor, with the few clothes
I had with me forming his pillow, and the brandy bottle rolling
about alongside of him, empty.

“I first of all hammered his head against the floor, but the
floor had the worst of it; then I kicked his shins (the only vul-
nerable part), but it was of no use; so, pouring the contents of
a water pitcher over him, in the hope that I might thus cause
awful dreams to disturb his slumbers, I left him, voting myself
a fool for leaving the key in my trunk.

“Having letters of introduction to some of General Beaure-

gard’s staff, I made my way to headquarters, where I met with
the greatest courtesy and kindness.”

Col. Alfred Moore Waddell wrote in his very interesting
reminiscences of a railroad tragedy during the war on what is
now a part of the great Atlantic Coast Line system, in which he
narrowly escaped death, but which involved a ludicrous scene,
as follows:

“The yellow fever was brought to Wilmington by a blockade
runner in August, 1862, and raged with terrible effect for two
or three months. Happening to be going from Richmond, Va.,
to Augusta, Ga., and stopping for a day or two in Wilmington,
just before the fever broke out, and hearing that a poor fellow
named Swartzman, a young German, was sick and alone, I
called at his room and sat by his bedside and tried to cheer him,
holding his hand in the meantime. I observed that he had
a very yellow appearance and supposed he had jaundice. After
sitting some time, I bade him good-bye, and a few hours later
left the city for Augusta. He died with black vomit within

The War Between the States 291

forty-eight hours, and his was the first case of the dreadful
scourge, or at least it was the first recognized case. My escape
was a signal mercy; and there was cause for additional grati-
tude when, on my return home, which was delayed until the
fever had disappeared, a dreadful railroad accident occurred
in which two young ladies sitting immediately behind me were
killed and every person in the car except one was hurt, while I
crawled out with slight injury. The railroad was in a very
dilapidated condition, as the war was going on and no means
of repairing it was available, and the engine ‘jumped the track’
twice after the accident, the last time being about ten miles
from Wilmington, whereupon, wiflé several others, I left it and
walked to town. I have frequently related the circumstances
attending this fatal accident for the purpose of proving that,
according to my experience, there seldom occurs a tragedy with-
out some comic incident. In this case the comic incident was
as follows: Provisions of all kinds were hard to get, and seeing
an old ‘aunty’ at one of the stations with a box of ten dozen eggs,
I bought them, paying her five (Confederate) dollars per dozen
for them, and placed them under the seat in front of me, on
which Mr. James Dawson, of Wilmington, and another gentle-
man were sitting. When the accident occurred all the lights
in the car were extinguished, and, the night being very dark,
it was impossible to distinguish persons. Just after I crawled
out of the wreck, and while the cries and groans of the victims
were still going on, a feeble voice cried, ‘Gentlemen, I am bleed-
ing to death.’ At once recognizing the voice as that of Dawson
and expressing the hope that he was mistaken, he replied, ‘No,
just feel my head and my clothes.’ I did so, and the wet, slimy
clothes certainly seemed to verify his assertion. About that
time a lantern was brought by the conductor (Harry Brock)
and the revelation it made, in spite of the solemnity of the sur-
roundings, was ludicrous in the extreme. My box of eggs, when
the car turned over, had fallen on Dawson’s head and shoulders,
and the contents were streaming from his battered hat—an old
‘stove-pipe’—and from his hair and face and arms in a yellow
Cascade. His change of expression upon the discovery was even
More ridiculous than the plight he was in.”