Page:Nurse and spy in the Union Army.djvu/101

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A CURIOUS VISIT.
91


count which historians give of the conduct of women in Paris during the Reign of Terror. The women are said to have been more fierce and blood-thirsty than even the fiercest and most blood-thirsty of the men. Many of our people have supposed that the accounts given of those things must surely be fictions or exaggerations. They have felt themselves unable to conceive that woman's nature could become a thing so utterly revolting. But if they will look and listen in this region, at the present time, they will find that they have no further reason for incredulity or scepticism. The bitter and ferocious spirit of thousands of rebel women in Kentucky, Tennessee, and other States, is scarcely, if at all, surpassed by the female monsters that shrieked and howled for victims in the French Revolution."

I will here relate a little incident illustrative of the peculiarity of my adventures while on this catering business : One morning I started, all alone, for a five mile ride to an isolated farm-house about three miles back /rom the Hampton road, and which report said was well supplied with all the articles of which I was in search. I cantered along briskly until I came to a gate which opened into a lane leading directly to the house. It was a large old fashioned two-story house, with immense chimneys built outside, Virginia style. The farm appeared to be in good condition, fences all up, a rare thing on the Peninsula, and corn-fields