ay, for the third time since the war began, I derived some money
from our farm. It was another interposition of Providence. Once before,
on the very days that money was indispensable, a Mr. Evans, a
blockade-runner to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, came unexpectedly with
$100 obtained from my agent, who has had the management of the farm for
many years, and who is reported to be a Union man. To-day, just when my
income is wholly insufficient to pay rent on the house--$500 per annum
and $500 rent for the furniture, besides subsisting the family--at the
very moment when my wife was about to part with the last of her little
store of gold, to buy a few articles of furniture at auction, and save a
heavy expense ($40 per month), the same Evans came to me, saying that
although he had no money from my agent, if I would give him an order on
the agent for $300, he would advance that amount in Treasury notes. I
accepted the sum on his conditions. This is the work of a beneficent
Providence, thus manifested on three different occasions,--and to doubt
it would be to deserve damnation!

AUGUST 8TH.--There is nothing new from any of the armies, except that my
old friend, Gen. Rains, sent to Mississippi, stopped and stampeded
Grant's army, after Johnston retreated from Jackson, with his "subterra
batteries." It appears that hundreds of the enemy and their horses were
killed and wounded by the shells planted by him beneath the surface of
the earth, and which ignited under the pressure of their weight. They
knew not where to go to avoid them, and so they retreated to Vicksburg.
This invention may become a terror to all invading.

A letter received some days ago from a Mr. Bible, in Georgia, proposing
to contribute one-quarter of his slaves as teamsters, cooks, etc. for
the army, came back from the President, to-day, approved, with
directions to quartermasters to employ in such capacities all that could
be procured.

Col. Myers, the Quartermaster-General, who is charged with saying "Let
them suffer," when the soldiers wanted blankets last winter, is to go
out of office at last--to be succeeded by Brig.-Gen. Lawton.

Oak-wood is selling to-day for $35 per cord; coal, $25 per cart-load;
and flour, $45 per barrel. Mr. Warwick, however, sells any family one
barrel for $34. I got one from him, and the promise of another for
$33--from Commissary Warner; and I hope to get two loads of coal, under
the navy contract, at $20 each. There is much