Famous Single Poems
dates. It may seem to her refined sensibilities somewhat narrow to have an equivocal auditor. Yet she should ask no more and no less consideration than is accorded other writers, even though doomed to live amid the fragrance of the magnolia and the melody of the mockingbird ‘Away Down South in Dixie.’”
Mrs. Jones, however, had finally been pinned down to the definite statement that the poem had been sent by her to the New York Evening Post in 1865, and, under the direction of the indefatigable Mr. Boyd, a careful search was made of the files of the Post for 1864, 1865 and 1866. The result must have been a severe blow to him, for the poem could not be discovered. He laid this result before Mrs. Jones, who replied cheerfully that she “was under the impression that it was the Evening Post, but if the files for that year had been examined without success, possibly it was not published there.”
And then she proceeded to recount another romance, previously unmentioned, with a “handsome young lieutenant” of the Union army, who had been detailed to guard her home. “I, being a hot-headed patriotic little rebel,” she writes, “treated him with lofty disdain, withered him with a glance of scorn, for was he not wearing the blue? However, we gradually became more social, until quite a flirtation ensued; we read poetry together and
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