I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? I count four, St. Michael's bells chime out and I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before.
Original passage & context
"I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms at four, the orders are, he shall be fired upon. I count four, St. Michael's bells chime out and I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before. [...] The women were wild there on the housetop. Prayers came from the women and imprecations from the men. And then a shell would light up the scene."
Chesnut's husband, James Chesnut Jr., had rowed out to Sumter that night carrying the ultimatum; she waited in a Charleston house and then went up to the roof. Two passages joined with [...]. Important caveat: "A Diary from Dixie" is the 1905 edition of a manuscript Chesnut substantially rewrote in the 1880s from her 1861 journals — it is a revised memoir built on a contemporaneous diary, not the raw 1861 text. Read it as testimony shaped after the fact.