It is therefore perhaps not strange that the feelings which Walter entertained for Sherman's "bummers," despite his father's Whig principles, were those of most Southern communities.

One day a kindly Northern soldier, sympathizing with the boy because of the small rations left for the local population, invited him to join the officers' mess at dinner.

Walter drew proudly back.
"I'll starve before I'll eat with the Yankees," he said.
* * * * * "I slept that night on a trundle bed by my mother's," Page wrote years afterward, describing these early scenes, "for her room was the only room left for the family, and we had all lived there since the day before.

The dining room and the kitchen were now superfluous, because there was nothing more to cook or to eat.

.