longing after domestic affection and remembrance,
the dread of being forgotten, are all very touching.

We replied to it immediately, and after that seldom allowed a week to
pass without writing. On Saturday afternoons Lucy would come into the
library with a little piece of sewing in her hands, and, sitting on a
stool by the dogs' baskets, repeat her proposed letter faster than I
could write it.

She related all the news of the two colored villages situated on either
side of this town; the meetings they were holding,--the jubilees and
quarterlies,--which last seemed to come every Sunday; the payment of the
church debts; the births of children; the deaths of old people; the
marriages and engagements of young ones; and even the hatching of
chickens and killing of pigs. The letters were a droll medley; and when
I could not help smiling sometimes at the odd bits of information given,
she would say, with innocent earnestness,--

"I know he'll like to hear all this, Ma'am. It'll make him and the other
boys from Spring Town and Gould Town feel like bein' among us again."

She dictated very rapidly; and her expressions were right pretty, being
so natural and affectionate. Once I remarked to her that she did it so
nicely that it sounded sometimes as if read from a book.

"Oh, it's because I keep _a-studyin_' about what to say to him," she
replied, "I talks it all over to myself when I'm alone. That's what
makes me so forgetful, and gives me this everlastin' _misery_ in my
head. I'm forever and ever _a-studyin_' so much about him."

These weekly letters seemed to make Lucy feel as if she were having a
stated talk with her absent husband. She gradually grew more cheerful
under their influence. While at her work, she would burst out into
perfect gusts of wild chanting: scraps of Methodist hymns suited her
best. There was one verse she would peal out to a shrill, weird minor
melody that was anything but cheerful or gay in its effect; and yet she
repeated it over and over, morning, noon, and night, with unparalleled
constancy:--

"I know there's room in heaven for me,
So I'm a-goin', I'm a-goin';
And don't you hope there's room for you?
Let's both be goin', let's both be goin';
I should n't wonder if room's for them,
So we'll all be goin' we'll all be goin',
Some day soon."

About two months after she came to live with me, there was a battle
somewhere South, in which several colored