My own special kitchen (an immense wareroom at the back of the store, which was used for a distributing-room) was in Newnan well fitted up.  A cavernous fireplace, well supplied with big pots, little pots, bake-ovens, and stew-pans, was supplemented by a cooking-stove of good size.  A large brick oven was built in the yard close by, and two professional bakers, with their assistants, were kept busy baking for the whole post.  There happened to be a back entrance to this kitchen, and although the convalescents were not allowed inside, many were the interviews held at said door upon subjects of vital importance to the poor fellows who had walked far into the country to obtain coveted dainties which they wanted to have cooked “like my folks at home fix it up.”  They were never refused, and sometimes a dozen different “messes” were set off to await claimants,—­potato-pones, cracklin bread, apple-pies, blackberry-pies, squirrels, birds, and often chickens.  For a long time the amount of chickens brought in by “the boys” puzzled me.  They had little or no money, and chickens were always high-priced.  I had often noticed that the men in the wards were busy preparing fish-hooks, and yet, though they often “went fishing,” they brought no fish to be cooked.  One day the mystery was fully solved.  An irate old lady called upon Dr. McAllister, holding at the end of a string a fine, large chicken, and vociferously proclaiming her wrongs.  “I knowed I’d ketch ’em:  I knowed it.  Jes’ look a-here,” and she drew up the chicken, opened its mouth, and showed the butt of a fish-hook it had swallowed.  Upon further examination, it was found that the hook had been baited with a kernel of corn.  “I’ve been noticin’ a powerful disturbance among my fowls, an’ every onct in while one of ’em would go over the fence like litenin’ and I couldn’t see what went with it.  This mornin’ I jes’ sot down under the fence an’ watched, and the fust thing I seed was a line flyin’ over the fence right peert, an’ as soon as it struck the ground the chickens all went for it, an’ this yer fool chicken up and swallered it.  Now, I’m a lone woman, an’ my chickens an’ my truck-patch is my livin’, and I ain’t gwine to stan’ no sich!” The convalescents, attracted by the shrill, angry voice, gathered around.  Their innocent surprise, and the wonder with which they examined the baited fish-hook and sympathized with the old lady, almost upset the gravity of the “sturgeons,” as the old body called the doctors.

There was one dry-goods store still kept open in Newnan, but few ladies had the inclination or the means to go shopping.  The cotton lying idle all over the South was then to a certain extent utilized.  Everything the men wore was dyed and woven at home:  pants were either butternut, blue, or light purple, occasionally light yellow; shirts, coarse, but snowy white, or what would now be called cream.  Everybody knitted socks.  Ladies, negro women,