OUR friends the De Forests, after boarding for a time at the Manassas,
removed their quarters to the City Hotel.
They had taken under their protecting wing a little yellow girl by the
name of “Mandy.” She was sent one day to invite my mother and another
lady to spend the day at the City Hotel. Mandy and I had traveled the
road many times, and we put our heads together and determined to take
them by way of the long line of cotton defences, instead of the open
street, as we could just as well have done. Imagine their discomfiture
and our glee as they faced the frowning wall over which they had to
climb as best they could. How we laughed and shouted as we scaled the
“works” with the agility of young monkeys.
The low-ceiled parlor of the City Hotel, with its dark, large-figured
Brussels carpet, is yet a familiar feature to me, as we gathered in it
after dinner and listened to Mrs. Dr. Mitchell relate how they used to
go to church in a wagon drawn by an ox team, at her girlhood’s home in
Illinois.