y go on to Atlanta
or thereabouts, and wait a little until we hear something of you.
Let me beseech you not to calculate upon seeing me unless I happen
to cross your shortest path toward your bourne, be that what it may.

"It is surely not the fate to which you invited me in the _brighter_
days. But you must remember that you did not invite me to a great
hero's home but to that of a plain farmer. I have shared all your
triumphs, been the only beneficiary of them, now I am claiming the
privilege for the first time of being all to you, since these
pleasures have passed for me.

"My plans are these, subject to your approval. I think I shall be
able to procure funds enough to enable me to put the two eldest to
school. I shall go to Florida if possible and from thence go over
to Bermuda or Nassau, from thence to England, unless a good school
offers elsewhere, and put them to the best school I can find, and
then with the two youngest join you in Texas--and that is the
prospect which bears me up, to be once more with you if need be--but
God loves those who obey Him and I know there is a future for you.

"Here they are all your friends and have the most unbounded
confidence in you. Mr. Burt and his wife have urged me to live with
them--offered to take the chances of the Yankees with us--begged to
have little Maggie--done everything in fact that relatives could do.
I shall never forget all their generous devotion to you.

"I have seen a great many men who have gone through--not one has
talked fight. A stand cannot be made in this country! Do not be
induced to try it. As to the trans-Mississippi, I doubt if at first
things will be straight, but the spirit is there, and the daily
accretions will be great when the deluded of this side are crushed
between the upper and nether millstones. But you have not tried the
'strict construction' fallacy. If we are to require a Constitution,
it must be much stretched during our hours of outside pressure if
it covers us at all.

"Be careful how you go to Augusta. I get rumors that Brown is going
to seize all Government property, and the people are averse and mean
to resist with pistols. They are a set of wretches together, and I
wish you were safe out of their land. God bless you, keep you. I
have wrestled with Him for you. I believe He will restore