Not having any recollection of the war myself, I send a little circumstance which I have often heard my mother, now dead, relate. I have often heard her say that she never refused a Confederate soldier food or shelter and never charged one for it, and was never treated with any discourtesy by one. I have also heard her and other women in this county say that they fared worse after the war, during the reconstruction period, about 1868, when the militia were in this county, than they did during the war.
During the absence of her husband in the army, Mrs. C.K. Holman, then living near Paracliffta, Sevier county, Ark., was one night requested by some Confederate soldiers to furnish them food and lodgings for the night, which she cheerfully did. Among them was a young soldier who reminded her of one of her own sons, then far away from home. While sitting around the fire after supper, she observed a hole in the knee of the trousers of the young soldier, and after the men had retired she sent her son to the room to tell the young man that if he would send his trousers to her she would mend them. On hearing this message to the young man, all of the others exclaimed, "Take mine, too! Take mine, too!" which he did, and as there were quite a number of them, Mrs. Holman and her daughter (now Mrs. Sager of Hubbard, Tex) sat up nearly all the night repairing them.
I do not claim that there was either heroism or fortitude displayed in this incident; merely a small service, willingly rendered, to some of the men who wore the gray.