War Diary of a Union Woman in the South |
Preface
|
The following diary was originally written
in lead pencil and in a book the leaves of which were too soft to take ink
legibly. I have it direct from the hands of its writer, a lady whom I have
had the honor to know for nearly thirty years. For good reasons the
author’s name is omitted, and the initials of people and the names of
places are sometimes fictitiously given. Many of the persons mentioned
were my own acquaintances and friends. When some twenty years afterwards
she first resolved to publish it, she brought me a clear, complete copy in
ink. It had cost much trouble, she said, for much of the pencil writing
had been made under such disadvantages and was so faint that at times she
could decipher it only under direct sunlight. She had succeeded, however,
in making a copy, verbatim except for occasional improvement in the
grammatical form of a sentence, or now and then the omission, for
brevity’s sake, of something unessential. The narrative has since been
severely abridged to bring it within magazine limits. In reading this diary one is much charmed with its constant understatement of romantic and perilous incidents and conditions. But the original penciled pages show that, even in copying, the strong bent of the writer to be brief has often led to the exclusion of facts that enhance the interest of exciting situations, and sometimes the omission robs her own heroism of due emphasis. I have restored one example of this in a footnote following the perilous voyage down the Mississippi.— G. W. CABLE.
|
page visit since October 28, 2002
Page last edited
06/27/2009