Judith White McGuire, Diary of a southern refugee during the war, by a lady of Virginia

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[66] and at Media, sick, and without a home. All Virginia has open doors for the family of General Lee; but in her state of health, how dreadful it is to have no certain abiding place. She is very cheerful, and showed me the other day a picture of “Arlington,” in a number of Harpers' Magazine, which had mistaken its way and strayed to Dixie. She thought the representation good, as it certainly is of what Arlington was; but it is said that those fine trees are living trees no more-all felled to make room for the everlasting fortifications. She clings to the hope of getting back to it; but I begin to feel that we may all hang our harps upon the willows; and though we do not sit by the waters of a strange land, but among our wholesouled friends in our own Virginia, yet our “vine and figtree” is wanting. Home and its surroundings must ever be our chief joy, and while shut out from it and its many objects of interest, there will be a feeling of desolation. The number of refugees increases fearfully as our army falls back; for though many persons, still surrounded by all the comforts of home, ask why they do not stay, and protect their property, my only answer is, “How can they?” In many instances defenceless women and children are left without the means of subsistence; their crops destroyed; their business suspended; their servants gone; their horses and other stock taken off; their houses liable at any hour of the day or night to be entered and desecrated by a lawless soldiery. How can they remain without even the present means of support, and nothing in prospect? The enemy will dole them out rations, it is said, if they will take the oath! But who so base as to do that? Can a Southern woman sell her birthright for a mess of pottage? Would she not be unworthy of the husband, the