s of the war,
had been for a brief period under my charge. Their hearty greetings to
one whom they remembered as the first to point them to freedom and cheer
them with its prospect could hardly be received without emotion. But
there is no time to linger over these scenes.

* * * * *

Such are some of the leading features in the condition of the freedmen,
particularly at Port Royal. The enterprise for their aid, begun in
doubt, is no longer a bare hope or possibility. It is a fruition and a
consummation. The negroes will work for a living. They will fight for
their freedom. They are adapted to civil society. As a people, they are
not exempt from the frailties of our common humanity, nor from the vices
which hereditary bondage always superadds to these. As it is said to
take three generations to subdue a freeman completely to a slave, so it
may not be possible in a single generation to restore the pristine
manhood. One who expects to find in emancipated slaves perfect men and
women, or to realize in them some fair dream of an ideal race, will meet
disappointment; but there is nothing in their nature or condition to
daunt the Christian patriot; rather, there is everything to cheer and
fortify his faith. They have shown capacity for knowledge, for free
industry, for subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly
fortitude, for social and family relations, for religious culture and
aspirations; and these qualities, when stirred and sustained by the
incitements and rewards of a just society, and combining with the
currents of our continental civilization, will, under the guidance of a
benevolent Providence which forgets neither them nor us, make them a
constantly progressive race, and secure them ever after from the
calamity of another enslavement, and ourselves from the worse calamity
of being again their oppressors.

* * * * *

NO AND YES.

I watched her at her spinning;
And this was my beginning
Of wooing and of winning.

But when a maid opposes,
And throws away your roses,
You say the case forecloses.

Yet sorry wit one uses,
Who loves and thinks he loses
Because a maid refuses.

For by her once denying
She only means complying
Upon a second trying.

When first I said, in pleading,
"Behold, my love lies bleeding!"
She heard me half unheeding.

When afterward I told her,
And blamed her growing colder,--