my brother was in the Confederate service, but I was glad that he was so far off that there was not much danger of my meeting him; for I felt certain that he would object, in no measured terms, to my course in assuming male attire for the purpose of doing a share of the fighting, and feared that we might quarrel about it.
Some Good News.
Shortly after my arrival in Atlanta, however, I heard some thing that delighted me even more than the receipt of these letters from my near and dear relatives. This was that Captain De Caulp was near Spring Hill with Van Dorn. This bit of particularly interesting information I obtained from a soldier of the third Arkansas regiment. I had not seen the captain since the battle of Shiloh, where I fought by his side, or at least under his eye, during nearly the whole of the conflict, succeeding in winning his commendation for my courage, without exciting any suspicion in his mind that I was the woman upon whom his affections were bestowed. So soon as I heard that he was in my vicinity, I was seized with an intense desire to meet him again; for I was greatly in love with him, and it afforded me the keenest delight to hear praises of myself from his lips, and he all the while thinking that he was addressing them to a third party.
I don't suppose, since the commencement of the world, so strange a courtship as ours was ever carried on. It is certain that not many women have had the same opportunities as myself to find out, from their own lips, exactly how fond of them their expected husbands really are. The situation, I confess, had a wonderful fascination for me, for there were intensely romantic elements in it, that addressed themselves, in the strongest manner, to my imagination. To have been able to fight by the side of my lover in one of the greatest battles of the war, and to be praised by him for my valor, were of themselves matters for intense satisfaction; and I often imagined how it would be after the war was over, and we would be able to compare notes and relate our adventures to each other. But, alas! before the war would be over there was much that both of us would be compelled to endure of toil and suffering; and the peaceful, happy home that my fervid imagination pictured was but a dream, and nothing more.
