the extract quoted above--stood at the second-story window and watched
Sherman's soldiers pass their house, in hot pursuit of General "Joe"
Wheeler's cavalry. The thing that most astonished the children was the
vast size of the army, which took all day to file by their home. They
had never realized that either of the fighting forces could embrace such
great numbers of men. Nor did the behaviour of the invading troops
especially endear them to their unwilling hosts. Part of the cavalry
encamped in the Page yard; their horses ate the bark off the mimosa
trees; an army corps built its campfires under the great oaks, and cut
their emblems on the trunks; the officers took possession of the house,
a colonel making his headquarters in the parlour. Several looting
cavalrymen ran their swords through the beds, probably looking for
hidden silver; the hearth was torn up in the same feverish quest; angry
at their failure, they emptied sacks of flour and scattered their
contents in the bedrooms and on the stairs; for days the flour,
intermingled with feathers from the bayonetted beds, formed a carpet all
over the house. It is therefore perhaps not strange that the feelings
which Walter entertained for Sherman's "bummers," despite his father's
Whig principles, were those of most Southern communities. One day a
kindly Northern soldier, sympathizing with the boy because of the small
rations left for the local population, invited him to join the
officers' mess at dinner. Walter drew proudly back.

"I'll starve before I'll eat with the Yankees," he said.

* * * * *

"I slept that night on a trundle bed by my mother's," Page wrote years
afterward, describing these early scenes, "for her room was the only
room left for the family, and we had all lived there since the day