people who are now being distributed onto the plantations have
nothing. With the chance of giving up the control so soon, Government
has not supplied all that is necessary and work bids fair to be as
behindhand here as it was last year. Where the people have gone to
work at all--at this end of the island--they have started with "good
encourage," but at other places it has been impossible to get them to
start any cotton, though they work corn. This is partly due to the
fact that this end of the island is removed from the demoralizing
effects of the camps, and partly, too, to the confidence the people
have in the superintendents here, who have mostly been with them
steadily now for nearly a year. It seems to us on the spot as if
things could not go on another year as they are now, and we long for
February eleventh and things to be settled. The auctioneer is at
Washington trying, not to have the sale postponed, but to have lands
set apart and given the blacks beforehand, and we dread lest any day
we should hear that it has been delayed. Some of the blacks mean to
buy--we don't wish them to till the war is over, as our tenure here is
too uncertain for them to sink their money.

C. on horseback, I in the double sulky started homeward, reaching
home--and we agreed that it was certainly homelike--by half past six.
Rose came up from her house acknowledging that though she wanted to
see me she could have waited till to-morrow, but her mother made her
come!

FROM C. P. W.

_Feb. 2._ The sale is a week from Wednesday. General Saxton (proclaim
it not from the house-top) says he shall take the liberty to use the
Cotton Fund to outbid any troublesome speculators. Glory Hallelujah!

FROM H. W.

_Feb. 4._ Cold as ever again--can do nothing but try to keep warm.
Have a good fire in the school-room, and quite a full school--those
who stay away for the cold being jeered at as not wishing to learn by
the others. I think they have done well for a year with the amount of
teaching they have had.

_Feb. 7._ Found C. was going to Pine Grove, so thought I would go too,
as I have not been to see them since Christmas. I went round to see
the people who were at home; many of them had gone into the field,
where C. went to deal out the land to them. Then I followed him in the
sulky to bring him home, but when I reached the field, Flora, who came
running out to see me, crying out, "my ole missus!" informed me that
"Mass' Charlie have much