For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which her
dear boy was forced to endure. He, who was used to linen sheets and eider
down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the best
table in the state, was reduced to husks.

"But, Aunt Lillian," cried Virginia, "he is fighting for the South. If he
were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud of
him."

Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to
Virginia. How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even the
candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away! He was happy, though
wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had longed for.
At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world.
He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.

"Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would
come of our not being able to work? How I wish you could see us
felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister,
and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.
Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage. I can see
you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us."

It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew. She had always detested
it. Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began. Sad to
relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the front,
--those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which were made
in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the war, to be
ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.