glad enough to bid '61 goodbye. Most miserable year
of my life! What ages of thought and experience have I not lived in it.

Last Sunday I walked home from church with a young lady teacher in the
public schools. The teachers have been paid recently in "shin-plasters." I
don't understand the horrid name, but nobody seems to have any confidence
in the scrip. In pure benevolence I advised my friend to get her money
changed into coin, as in case the Federals took the city she would be in a
bad fix, being in rather a lonely position. She turned upon me in a rage.

"You are a black-hearted traitor," she almost screamed at me in the
street, this well-bred girl! "My money is just as good as coin you'll see!
Go to Yankee land. It will suit you better with your sordid views and want
of faith, than the generous South."

"Well," I replied, "when I think of going, I'll come to you for a letter
of introduction to your grandfather in Yankee land." I said good-morning
and turned down another street in a sort of a maze, trying to put myself
in her place and see what there was sordid in my advice.

Luckily I met Mrs. B. to turn the current of thought. She was very merry.
The city authorities have been searching houses for fire-arms. It is a
good way to get more guns, and the homes of those men suspected of being
Unionists were searched first. Of course they went to Dr. B.'s. He met
them with his own delightful courtesy. "Wish to search for arms?
Certainly, gentlemen." He conducted them through all the house with
smiling readiness, and after what seemed a very thorough search bowed them
politely out. His gun was all the time safely reposing between the canvas
folds of a cot-bed which leaned folded up together against the wall, in
the very room where they had ransacked the closets. Queerly, the rebel
families have been the ones most anxious to conceal all weapons. They have
dug pits quietly at night in the back yards, and carefully wrapping the
weapons, buried them out of sight. Every man seems to think he will have
some private fighting to do to protect his family.

V.

MARRIED.

_Friday, Jan. 24, 1862. (On steamboat W., Mississippi River.)_--With a
changed name I open you once more, my journal. It was a sad time to wed,
when one knew not how long the expected conscription would spare the
bridegroom. The women-folk knew how to sympathize with a girl expected to
prepare for her wedding in three days, in a blockaded city, and