up
by trees, so as to get in at all.

Our house could not be reached by the front, so we left the buggy in
the back yard, and running through the lot without stopping to examine
the storeroom and servants' rooms that opened wide, I went through the
alley and entered by the front door.

Fortunate was it for this record that I undertook to describe the
sacking only from Miriam's account. If I had waited until now, it would
never have been mentioned; for as I looked around, to attempt such a
thing seemed absurd. I stood in the parlor in silent amazement; and in
answer to Charlie's "Well?" I could only laugh. It was so hard to
realize. As I looked for each well-known article, I could hardly
believe that Abraham Lincoln's officers had really come so low down as
to steal in such a wholesale manner. The _papier-mache_ workbox Miriam
had given me was gone. The baby sacque I was crocheting, with all
knitting needles and wools, gone also. Of all the beautiful engravings
of Annapolis that Will Pinckney had sent me, there remained a single
one. Gentlemen, my name is written on each! Not a book remained in the
parlor, except "Idyls of the King," that contained my name also, and
which, together with the door-plate, was the only case in which the
name of Morgan was spared. They must have thought we were related to
John Morgan, and wreaked their vengeance on us for that reason. Thanks
for the honor, but there is not the slightest connection! Where they
did not carry off articles bearing our name, they cut it off, as in the
visiting-cards, and left only the first name. Every book of any value
or interest, except Hume and Gibbon, was "borrowed" permanently. I
regretted Macaulay more than all the rest. Brother's splendid French
histories went, too; all except "L'Histoire de la Bastille." However,
as they spared father's law libraries (all except one volume they used
to support a flour barrel with, while they emptied it near the parlor
door), we ought to be thankful.

The dining-room was _very_ funny. I looked around for the cut-glass
celery and preserve dishes that were to be part of my "dot," as mother
always said, together with the champagne glasses that had figured on
the table the day that I was born; but there remained nothing. There
was plenty of split-up furniture, though. I stood in mother's room
before the shattered armoir, which I could hardly believe the same that
I had smoothed my hair before, as I left home three weeks pr