age. Since the light
readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling
of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering
drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my
adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell,
with no bad dreams.

In all pleasant weather the outer "fly" is open, and men pass and
repass, a chattering throng. I think of Emerson's Saadi, "As thou
sittest at thy door, on the desert's yellow floor,"--for these bare
sand-plains, gray above, are always yellow when upturned, and there
seems a tinge of Orientalism in all our life.

Thrice a day we go to the plantation-houses for our meals,
camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in
different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of
William Washington,--William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern
of house-servants, William the noiseless, the observing, the
discriminating, who knows everything that can be got, and how to cook
it. William and his tidy, lady-like little spouse Hetty--a pair of
wedded lovers, if ever I saw one--set our table in their one room,
half-way between an un glazed window and a large wood-fire, such as is
often welcome. Thanks to the adjutant, we are provided with the social
magnificence of napkins; while (lest pride take too high a flight)
our table-cloth consists of two "New York Tribunes" and a "Leslie's
Pictorial." Every steamer brings us a clean table-cloth. Here are we
forever supplied with pork and oysters and sweet potatoes and rice and
hominy and corn-bread and milk; also mysterious griddle-cakes of corn
and pumpkin; also preserves made of pumpkin-chips, and other
fanciful productions of Ethiop art. Mr. E. promised the
plantation-superintendents who should come down here "all the luxuries
of home," and we certainly have much apparent, if little real variety.
Once William produced with some palpitation something fricasseed,
which he boldly termed chicken; it was very small, and seemed in some
undeveloped condition of ante-natal toughness. After the meal he frankly
avowed it for a squirrel.

December 5, 1862.

Give these people their tongues, their feet, and their leisure, and they
are happy. At every twilight the air is full of singing, talking, and
clapping of hands in unison. One of their favorite songs is full of
plaintive cadences; it is not, I think, a Methodist tune, and I won