till we concluded the
cellar was as good a place as that hillside. I fear the want of good
food is breaking down H. I know from my own feelings of weakness, but
mine is not an American constitution and has a recuperative power that
his has not.

_June 21._--I had gone up-stairs to-day during the interregnum to enjoy
a rest on my bed, and read the reliable items in the "Citizen," when a
shell burst right outside the window in front of me. Pieces flew in,
striking all around me, tearing down masses of plaster that came
tumbling over me. When H. rushed in I was crawling out of the plaster,
digging it out of my eyes and hair. When he picked up a piece as large
as a saucer beside my pillow, I realized my narrow escape. The
windowframe began to smoke, and we saw the house was on fire. H. ran for
a hatchet and I for water, and we put it out. Another [shell] came
crashing near, and I snatched up my comb and brush and ran down here. It
has taken all the afternoon to get the plaster out of my hair, for my
hands were rather shaky.

_June 25._--A horrible day. The most horrible yet to me, because I've
lost my nerve. We were all in the cellar, when a shell came tearing
through the roof, burst up-stairs, tore up that room, and the pieces
coming through both floors down into the cellar, one of them tore open
the leg of H.'s pantaloons. This was tangible proof the cellar was no
place of protection from them. On the heels of this came Mr. J. to tell
us that young Mrs. P. had had her thigh-bone crushed. When Martha went
for the milk she came back horror-stricken to tell us the black girl
there had her arm taken off by a shell. For the first time I quailed. I
do not think people who are physically brave deserve much credit for it;
it is a matter of nerves. In this way I am constitutionally brave, and
seldom think of danger till it is over; and death has not the terrors
for me it has for some others. Every night I had lain down expecting
death, and every morning rose to the same prospect, without being
unnerved. It was for H. I trembled. But now I first seemed to realize
that something worse than death might come: I might be crippled, and not
killed. Life, without all one's powers and limbs, was a thought that
broke down my courage. I said to H., "You must get me out of this
horrible place; I cannot stay; I know I shall be crippled." Now the
regret comes that I lost control, because H. is worried, and has lost
his composure, because my