Is Over."

CHAPTER XII

The war went on, successfully for the most part, but people had

stopped saying "One more victory and the war is over," just as

they had stopped saying the Yankees were cowards. It was obvious

to all now that the Yankees were far from cowardly and that it

would take more than one victory to conquer them. However, there

were the Confederate victories in Tennessee scored by General

Morgan and General Forrest and the triumph at the Second Battle of

Bull Run hung up like visible Yankee scalps to gloat over. But

there was a heavy price on these scalps. The hospitals and homes

of Atlanta were overflowing with the sick and wounded, and more

and more women were appearing in black. The monotonous rows of

soldiers' graves at Oakland Cemetery stretched longer every day.

Confederate money had dropped alarmingly and the price of food and

clothing had risen accordingly. The commissary was laying such

heavy levies on foodstuffs that the tables of Atlanta were

beginning to suffer. White flour was scarce and so expensive that

corn bread was universal instead of biscuits, rolls and waffles.

The butcher shops carried almost no beef and very little mutton,

and that mutton cost so much only the rich could afford it.

However there was still plenty of hog meat, as well as chickens

and vegetables.

The Yankee blockade about the Confederate ports had tightened, and

luxuries such as tea, coffee, silks, whalebone stays, colognes,

fashion magazines and books were scarce and dear. Even the

cheapest cotton goods had skyrocketed in price and ladies were

regretfully making their old dresses do another season. Looms

that had gathered dust for years had been brought down from

attics, and there were webs of homespun to be found in nearly

every parlor. Everyone, soldiers, civilians, women, children and

negroes, began to wear homespun. Gray, as the color of the

Confederate uniform, practically disappeared and homespun of a

butternut shade took its place.

Already the hospitals were worrying about the scarcity of quinine,

calomel, opium, chloroform and iodine. Linen and cotton bandages

were too precious now to be thrown away when used, and every lady

who nursed at the hospitals brought home baskets of bloody strips

to be washed and ironed and returned for use on other sufferers.

But to Scarlett, newly emerged from the chrysalis of widowhood,

all the war meant was a time of gaiety and excitement. Even the

small privations of clothing and food did not annoy her, so happy

was she to be in the world again.

When she thought of the dull times of the past year, with the days

going by one very much like another, life seemed to have quickened

to an incredible speed. Every day dawned as an exciting

adventure, a day in which she would meet new men who would ask to

call on her, tell her how pretty she was, and how it was a

privilege to fight and, perhaps, to die for her. She could and

did love Ashley with the last breath in her body, but that did not

prevent her from inveigling other men into asking to marry her.

The ever-present war in the background lent a pleasant informality

to social relations, an informality which older people viewed with

alarm. Mothers found strange men calling on their daughters, men

who came without letters of introduction and whose antecedents

were unknown. To their horror, mothers found their daughters

holding hands with these men. Mrs. Merriwether, who had never

kissed her husband until after the wedding ceremony, could

scarcely believe her eyes when she caught Maybelle kissing the

little Zouave, Rene Picard, and her consternation was even greater

when Maybelle refused to be ashamed. Even the fact that Rene