That is all.
The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her
husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs.
Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman,
with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who
sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers,
is the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, Dumps and Tot.
Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war
began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young
men in the neighborhood; and though she was so young, her father
consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into the army, and
wanted to make her his wife before leaving. So, early in '61, before
Major Waldron went to Virginia, there was a quiet wedding in the
parlor one night; and not many days afterwards the young Confederate
soldier donned his gray coat, and rode away with Forrest's Cavalry.
"And ere long a messenger came,
Bringing the sad, sad story--
A riderless horse: a funeral march:
Dead on the field of glory!"
After his death her baby came to gladden the young widow's desolate
life; and he is now almost grown, handsome and noble, and the idol of
his mother.
Diddie is a widow still.
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