The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-09-18

InE DInMIr busy marts of trade show closed doors to the passerby; but broken windows reveal vacant shelves and their emptiness reverberates to the rare footballs.
 Gone are the merchant and his corps of clerks, furnishers of ail thing desirable, and the butcher with his errand boy helper; the lawyer and the blacksmith; the doe tor and the carpenter. No white male is seen be he able to handle gun not even 16 and SO being the limit if the strength is there.
 And in the country the broad acres whose richness had been so carefuiiy cherished and increased are covered with malaria bearing weeds almost as tall as the serried rows of corn which formerly burgeoned there.
 A few negroes whom neither per suasion nor coercion could move from their homes still work the ad- jacent fields, former pasture grounds whose circumscribed fences they still keep intact.
 Gone are Black Hawk and Fan of the Timber heels and Snip and Snap, and Crockett, cavalry horse too bad ly crippled with bullets for army service hobbies weekly to the mill with boy and turn of corn on his back, while on other days he with another invalied bearer of battle scars and a couple of mules too old for service laboriously works the diminished fields. Gone are the long line of water toters" and the smaller company bearing the milk buckets while now the children at the house rejoice when Peggy of the big udder "come in"- to vary a diet of rye bread and sorghum; and later the best cow is selected to be cared for during the winter from scanty re- sources while the remnant of the herd, scant from federal raids and government acquisitions, test out the survival of the fittest.
 But in the sprngtime there are still straw berries in the garden and later wild ones that have come In the desterted fields, and the June blackberries that now come close to the house. The peach and apple or chards give their abundance, plenty for white and black now steadily diminished, and surplus for a couple of chosen pigs, whose growth tACi COn W III Dc SuPDlemGHlcu DY the mast in the fall. And autumn still has it's plentitude; wild grapes, mus cadines and persimmons to be eaten and the various stores of nuts to be hoarded for winter. No longer haul ed in the cart on special occasions but brought in sacks, on young backe that would acknowledge no fatigue, hoping for the strength that would enable the bearer to claim gray coat and gun. Down in the hamlet of the seven hills a small squad of Cohfederates keep guard over the ferry quartered in an old barn of a store, its vastness a relic of the needed space of the early days of prosperity.
 old Sycamore Deserted
 No boat has tied to the old syc- amore tree opposite the warehouses since the gunboats had swept all craft from the river after the fall of Fort Henry. Only few stones are left to show the landmarks of the early days. but across the ravine the empty Price homestead still shows white through the surrounding ce- dars.
 Away from the achievements of his youth and the earned pleasures of his mature years, the proprietor in a small store house on his country pos sessions, with few of his faithful slaves, with his two daughters while his oldest son lies at Manassas and the second resigning from the fed eral navy wears the Confederate gray
 w nose color was like the smoke
 That curled OCT the battle line When the serried columns before it
 broke
 With their dead for the fatal sign"
 And in that autumn one day long lines of gray coats marched down the road Regiments deployed where the wagons once went into camp. cannon were placed on the cliff above the old warehouses and pom toons with their bearers placed single files in the deep ravine were looken on by the empty house In which hospitality once reigned as lavish as though the prophesied inn periai city already crowned it's seven hills.
 The evening sun Is dropping low in the west and the pontoon bearers de- ployed at the waters edge stand waiting with armed forces close be- hind them. And the sun touches the waters edge and lights the calm bosom of the mighty river with rose and gold, gliding with it's splendor the waiting bayonets; the federal bu- gle sends it's evening call from the Florence camp and shell from the battery on the hill back of the old warehouses sends across a shrieking shell lest the warehouses still stand ing on the northern bank should hold a hidden enemy.
 Away go the boats with swift row CTS and armed crews standing erect and, safely landed, Gibson of Lou isiana leads his men double quick along the half mile of levee across the river bottoms and up the long hill to the little town upon it's crest
 Not even breathing time is needed for the men who had fought from Dalton to Atlanta and, after woeful disaster, had made the long and un- faltering march to the banke of the Tennessee; and forming battle line as they reach the broad streets they drive the surprised garrison tumul- tuously ahead while the women, amid whistling bullets, swarm into the street to welcome the return of