May 20th.—Lunched at Mrs. Davis’s; everything nice to eat, and I was ravenous. For a fortnight I have not even gone to the dinner table. Yesterday I was forced to dine on cold asparagus and blackberries, so repulsive in aspect was the other food they sent me. Mrs. Davis was as nice as the luncheon. When she is in the mood, I do not know so pleasant a person. She is awfully clever, always.
We talked of this move from Montgomery. Mr. Chesnut opposes it violently, because this is so central a position for our government. He wants our troops sent into Maryland in order to make our fight on the border, and so to encompass Washington. I see that the uncomfortable hotels here will at last move the Congress. Our statesmen love their ease, and it will be hot here in summer. “I do hope they will go,” Mrs. Davis said. “The Yankees will make it hot for us, go where we will, and truly so if war comes.” “And it has come,” said I. “Yes, I fancy these dainty folks may live to regret losing even the fare of the Montgomery hotels.” “Never.”
Mr. Chesnut has three distinct manias. The Maryland scheme is one, and he rushes off to Jeff Davis, who, I dare say, has fifty men every day come to him with infallible plans to save the country. If only he can keep his temper. Mrs. Davis says he answers all advisers in softly modulated, dulcet accents.
What a rough menagerie we have here. And if nice people come to see you, up walks an irate Judge, who engrosses the conversation and abuses the friends of the company generally; that is, abuses everybody and prophesies every possible evil to the country, provided he finds that denouncing your friends does not sufficiently depress you. Everybody has manias—up North, too, by the papers.
But of Mr. Chesnut’s three crazes: Maryland is to be made the seat of war, old Morrow’s idea of buying up steamers abroad for our coast defenses should be adopted, and, last of all, but far from the least, we must make much cotton and send it to England as a bank to draw on. The very cotton we have now, if sent across the water, would be a gold mine to us.