s are plentiful. We have
chicken for breakfast, dinner, and supper, fried, stewed, broiled, and
in soup, and there is a family of ten. Luckily I never tire of it. They
make starch out of corn-meal by washing the meal repeatedly, pouring off
the water, and drying the sediment. Truly the uses of corn in the
Confederacy are varied. It makes coffee, beer, whisky, starch, cake,
bread. The only privations here are the lack of coffee, tea, salt,
matches, and good candles. Mr. W. is now having the dirt floor of his
smoke-house dug up and boiling from it the salt that has dripped into it
for years. To-day Mrs. W. made tea out of dried blackberry leaves, but
no one liked it. The beds, made out of equal parts of cotton and
corn-shucks, are the most elastic I ever slept in. The servants are
dressed in gray homespun. Hester, the chambermaid, has a gray gown so
pretty that I covet one like it. Mrs. W. is now arranging dyes for the
thread to be woven into dresses for herself and the girls. Sometimes her
hands are a curiosity.

[Footnote 2: On this plantation, and in this domestic circle, I myself
afterward sojourned, and from them enlisted in the army. The initials
are fictitious, but the description is perfect.--G.W.C.]

The school at the nearest town is broken up, and Mrs. W. says the
children are growing up heathens. Mr. W. has offered me a liberal price
to give the children lessons in English and French, and I have accepted
transiently.

_Oct. 28._--It is a month to-day since I came here. I only wish H. could
share these benefits--the nourishing food, the pure aromatic air, the
sound sleep away from the fevered life of Vicksburg. He sends me all the
papers he can get hold of, and we both watch carefully the movements
reported lest an army should get between us. The days are full of useful
work, and in the lovely afternoons I take long walks with a big dog for
company. The girls do not care for walking. In the evening Mr. W. begs
me to read aloud all the war news. He is fond of the "Memphis Appeal,"
which has moved from town to town so much that they call it the "Moving
Appeal." I sit in a low chair by the fire, as we have no other light to
read by. Sometimes traveling soldiers stop here, but that is rare.

_Oct. 31._--Mr. W. said last night the farmers felt uneasy about the
"Emancipation Proclamation" to take effect in December. The slaves have
found it out, though it had been carefully kept from them.

"Do yours know it?" I