hrough the back room, H. after me. I was just within the door
when the crash came that threw me to the floor. It was the most
appalling sensation I'd ever known--worse than an earthquake, which I've
also experienced. Shaken and deafened, I picked myself up; H. had struck
a light to find me. I lighted one, and the smoke guided us to the parlor
I had fixed for Uncle J. The candles were useless in the dense smoke,
and it was many minutes before we could see. Then we found the entire
side of the room torn out. The soldiers who had rushed in said, "This is
an eighty-pound Parrott." It had entered through the front, burst on the
pallet-bed, which was in tatters; the toilet service and everything else
in the room smashed. The soldiers assisted H. to board up the break with
planks to keep out prowlers, and we went to bed in the cellar as usual.
This morning the yard is partially plowed by a couple that fell there in
the night. I think this house, so large and prominent from the river, is
perhaps taken for headquarters and specially shelled. As we descend at
night to the lower regions, I think of the evening hymn that grandmother
taught me when a child:

Lord, keep us safe this night,
Secure from all our fears;
May angels guard us while we sleep,
Till morning light appears.

Surely, if there are heavenly guardians, we need them now.

_June 7._ (_In the cellar._)--There is one thing I feel especially
grateful for, that amid these horrors we have been spared that of
suffering for water. The weather has been dry a long time, and we hear
of others dipping up the water from ditches and mud-holes. This place
has two large underground cisterns of good cool water, and every night
in my subterranean dressing-room a tub of cold water is the nerve-calmer
that sends me to sleep in spite of the roar. One cistern I had to give
up to the soldiers, who swarm about like hungry animals seeking
something to devour. Poor fellows! my heart bleeds for them. They have
nothing but spoiled, greasy bacon, and bread made of musty pea-flour,
and but little of that. The sick ones can't bolt it. They come into the
kitchen when Martha puts the pan of corn-bread in the stove, and beg for
the bowl she mixed it in. They shake up the scrapings with water, put in
their bacon, and boil the mixture into a kind of soup, which is easier
to swallow than pea-bread. When I happen in, they look so ashamed of
their poor clothe