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RECOLLECTIONS OF A CONFEDERATE GENERAL BY JUBAL DE BROOKE
Liverpool, England, December, 1863.
Through the frost-rimed window of my room in the Wellington Hotel, I watched a band of Christmas carollers in Dale Street. They carried a lantern hooked to a pole and held aloft so its radiance cast evenly on their song books. Faint strains of Once in Royal David’s City carried up to my window. The street was a giddy wash of radiance from gas lamps and shop windows laid up with festive wares. Occasional drapes of snow rippled the inky night.
In other circumstances this would have been a happy scene. As it was, Sarah lay cold in the mortuary while her father was too shocked even to begin grieving. I, too, struggled to accept that she was gone; that this was not an aberration; that she was no
