in
many places to a pale brown scarcely darker than the deep yellow to
which time had burned the paper. The effort to read under such
conditions, and the tears shed over the scenes evoked, might well have
cost my mother her sight; but she toiled for many weeks, copying out
the essential portions of the voluminous record for the benefit of the
Northerner who really wished to know.

Her transcription finished, she sent it to Philadelphia. It was in due
course returned, with cold regrets that the temptation to rearrange it
had not been resisted. No Southerner at that time could possibly have
had opinions so just or foresight so clear as those here attributed to
a young girl. Explanation was not asked, nor justification allowed: the
case, tried by one party alone, with evidence seen from one standpoint
alone, had been judged without appeal.

Keenly wounded and profoundly discouraged, my mother returned the
diaries to their linen envelope, and never saw them again. But my
curiosity had been roused by these incidents; in the night, thoughts of
the records would haunt me, bringing ever the ante-bellum scent of the
cedar-lined wardrobe. I pleaded for the preservation of the volumes,
and succeeded at last when, beneath the injunction that they should be
burned, my mother wrote a deed of gift to me with permission to make
such use of them as I might think fitting.

Reading those pages for myself, of late, as I transcribed them in my
turn, I confess to having blamed the Philadelphian but lightly for his
skepticism.

Here was a girl who, by her own admission, had known but ten months'
schooling in her life, and had educated herself at home because of her
yearning for knowledge; and yet she wrote in a style so pure, with a
command of English so thorough, that rare are the pages where she had
to stop for the alteration of so much as one word. The very haste of
noting what had just occurred, before more should come, had disturbed
the pure line of very few among these flowing sentences. There are
certain uses of words to which the twentieth century purist will take
exception; but if he is familiar with Victorian literature he will know
that these points have been solved within the last few decades--and not
all solved to the satisfaction of everyone, even now.

But underlying this remarkable feat of style, are a fairness of
treatment and a balance of judgment incredible at such a period and in
an author so young. On such a day, w