ouse. But it was one of the
oldest buildings in Arkansas. They've kept on remodeling it. The Yankees
made a commissary out of it. Later on they moved the food up on the
square and used it for a hospital. I can remember lots of times seeing
the feet of dead men sticking out of the windows.

Your Aunt Nora's mother saved that building from being burned. How did
it happen? Well you see both sides were firing buildings--the
Confederates to keep the Yankees from getting them, and the other way
about. But the Southerners did most of the burning. Mrs. Blakeley's
little boy was sick with fever. She and a friend went up, because they
feared burnings. They sat there almost all night. Parties of men would
come along and they would plead with them. One sat in one doorway and
the other in the building next. Mrs. Blakely was a Southerner, the other
woman a Northerner. Between them they kept the buildings from being
burned: saved their own homes thereby and possibly the life of the
little sick boy.

It was like that in Fayetteville. There were so many folks on both sides
and they lived so close together that they got to know one another and
were friends. Things like this would happen. One day a northern officer
came over to our house to talk to his wife who was visiting. He said he
would be away all day. He was to go down to Prarie Grove to get 'Old Man
Parks, dead or alive'. Not until he was on his way did somebody tell him
that he was talking about the father of his wife's hostess. Next day he
came over to apologize. Said he never would have made such a cruel
remark if he had known. But he didn't find his man. As the officers went
in the front door, Mr. Parks went out of the back and the women
surrounded him until he got away.

There was another time when the North and South took refuge together.
During the war even the little children were taught to listen for bugle
calls and know what they meant. We had to know--and how to act when we
heard them. One day, I remember we were to have peas for dinner, with
ham hock and corn bread. I was hungry that day and everything smelled so
good. But just as the peas were part of them out of the pot and in a
dish on the table the signal came 'To Arms'. Cannon followed almost
immediately. We all ran for the cellar, leaving the food as it was.

The cellar was dug out only a little way down. It had been raining and
snowing all day--melted as it fell. It was about noon and the seep water
had fill