Ev'rybody’s poor, aren’t they, Billy?
All the nicest people are, he replied. Billy was a war baby. He had a message from General Lee congratulating him on being born, and was quite wise. I was only a since-the-war baby. I climbed on a cricket table and looked at myself in the mahogany-framed glass hanging over Gran'munny’s dimity dressing table. I decided a girl with a shingled head was utterly, hopelessly ugly, and I wondered why God hadn’t made me a boy. What place would there be in the world for an ugly girl?

As a child who grew to womanhood in the years following the war of Aggression on my Southern countrymen, I think I am the one most qualified to write this book. I have told only one woman’s experience, however, I have been well known in my time as a writer of Virginia history and its people. I cannot say I am an authority on your heritage and neighbor’s, but I can say that I am on mine. -Mary Newton Stanard