m. It was a very pretty sight.

Mr. Philbrick has been entertaining us with an account of his week's
experience, which ended at church to-day in a funny way. A couple came
forward to be married after church, as often happens, when Sarah from
this place got up and remarked that was her husband! Whereupon Mr.
Philbrick was called in from the yard and promised to investigate and
report. Jack said he had nothing against Sarah, but he did not live on
the plantation now, and wanted a wife at Hilton Head.

General Saxton was at church to-day to invite the people to camp
Thursday, telling them that they need not be afraid to go, as no one
would be kept there against their will. They are afraid of a trap, as
they were at the Fourth of July Celebration, but I hope a good many
will have the sense to go.

Mr. Philbrick and C. are having an amiable comparison of relative
plantation work and which has raised the most cotton. The cotton
raised on these places and C.'s and R.'s is more than half of that
raised on all the islands.

The Pine Grove house has been broken into and the furniture we left
there carried off. The way in which those people have degenerated and
these improved since we moved here is a proof of how necessary it is
that they should have the care and oversight of white people in this
transition state. When we lived there, that plantation was the best
behaved and this the worst; now the reverse is the case. The Point
Plantation has not been affected so much any way, as they never had a
"white house" and have the same excellent driver.

Finding that Maria, the old nurse, and some babies were sick, I made a
pilgrimage to the quarters, visited the invalids and also Bacchus'
school, and told the people I hoped they would go to the Celebration
at camp. As I went through the long street, women were washing outside
their doors, sitting on their doorsteps sewing or tending babies,
while the smaller children were rolling in the dirt. In one of the
cabins I accidentally encountered Sarah, the deserted wife, and coming
out found Grace, Jack's mother, holding forth in her dignified way
upon the subject, condemning her son, quietly but earnestly. She
turned to Sarah as she came out and, gesticulating with her hands
respectively, said, "I take Becca in dis han' and carry her to
punishment, an' Sarah in dis right han' and carry her to Christ." She
is a "fine figure of a woman"--I wish I could have drawn her as she
stood. She di