a three hours' shelter in North
Carolina....

F. A. B.

DEAREST HARRIET,

I had been very much struck with the appearance of the horses we passed
occasionally in enclosures, or gathered round some lonely roadside
pine-wood shop, or post-office, fastened to trees in the surrounding
forest, and waiting for their riders. I had been always led to expect a
great improvement in the breed of horses as we went southward, and the
appearance of those I saw on the road was certainly in favor of the
claim. They were generally small, but in good condition, and remarkably
well made. They seemed to be tolerably well cared for, too; and those
which we saw caparisoned were ornamented with gay saddle-cloths, and
rather a superfluity of trappings for _civil_ animals.

At our dismal halt in the woods, while waiting for the railroad train,
among our other spectators was a woman on horseback. Her steed was
uncommonly pretty and well-limbed; but her costume was quite the most
eccentric that can be imagined, accustomed as I am to the not over-rigid
equipments of the northern villages. But the North Carolinian damsel
beat all Yankee girls, I ever saw, hollow, in the glorious contempt she
exhibited for the external fitness of things in her exceeding short
skirts and huge sun-bonnet.

After our departure from Colonel ----'s, we traveled all night on the
railroad. One of my children slept in my lap, the other on the narrow
seat opposite to me, from which she was jolted off every quarter of an
hour by the uneasy motion of the carriage, and the checks and stops of
the engine, which was out of order. The carriage, though full of people,
was heated with a stove, and every time this was replenished with coals
we were almost suffocated with the clouds of bituminous smoke which
filled it. Five hours, they said, was the usual time consumed in this
part of the journey; but we were the whole mortal night upon that uneasy
railroad, and it was five o'clock in the morning before we reached
Wilmington, North Carolina. When the train stopped it was yet quite
dark, and most bitterly cold; nevertheless, the distance from the
railroad to the only inn where we could be accommodated was nothing less
than a mile; and, weary and worn out, we trudged along, the poor little
sleeping children carried by their still more unfortunate, sleepless
nurses--and so by the cheerless winter starlight we walked a