. Had it not been for my
lucky discovery, we should have had no spoons, forks, etc.

My wife has obviated one of the difficulties of the blockade, by a
substitute for coffee, which I like very well. It is simply _corn meal,
toasted like coffee_, and served in the same manner. It costs five or
six cents per pound--coffee, $2.50.

I heard a foolish North Carolinian abusing the administration to-day. He
said, among other things, that the President himself, and his family,
had Northern proclivities. That the President's family, when they fled
from Richmond, in May, took refuge at St. Mary's Hall, Raleigh, the
establishment of the Rev. Dr. Smedes, a Northern man of open and avowed
partiality for the Union; and that the Rev. Dr. Mason of the same place,
with whom they were in intimate association, was a Northern man, and an
open Unionist. That the President's aid, and late Assistant Secretary of
State, was an Englishman, imported from the North; Gen. Cooper, the
highest in rank of any military officer, was a Northern man; Col.
Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance, was also a Northern man; Gen. Lovell, who was
in the defeat at Corinth, and who had surrendered New Orleans, was from
Pennsylvania; Gen. Smith, in command of Virginia and North Carolina,
from New York; and Gen. Winder, commanding this metropolis, a
Marylander, and his detectives strangers and aliens, who sold passports
to Lincoln's spies for $100 each. He was furious, and swore all the
distresses of the people were owing to a Nero-like despotism,
originating in the brain of Benjamin, the Jew, whose wife lived in
Paris.

The Senate, yesterday, passed the following resolutions, almost
unanimously:

_1st. Resolved by the Congress of the Confederate States of America_,
That no officer of the Confederate Government is _by law_ empowered to
vest Provost Marshals with any authority whatever over citizens of the
Confederate States not belonging to the land or naval forces thereof or
with general police powers and duties for the preservation of the peace
and good order of any city, town, or municipal district in any State of
this Confederacy, and any such exercise of authority _is illegal and
void_.

_2d. Resolved_, That no officer of the Confederate Government has
constitutional or other lawful authority to limit or restrict, or in any
manner to control the exercise of the jurisdiction of the civil judicial
tribunals of the States of this Confederacy, vested in them by the
cons