ry
many eyes would watch over the new relations of laborer and employer,
I should trust that in ten years America would again raise her head
proudly among the nations. But all this supposes that we gain our end
and have the work to do. Till the common head of the people
understands and the common heart of the people feels that this _is_
the work of the war, that Emancipation should be the means, and not
only the best means but the holy _end_ of the war,--I tremble, and
fear neither our strength nor God's help will give us the victory.

FROM H. W.

_March 20._ C. amused himself and us by making two or three of my
children who were waiting for school read to him upside down, which
they did as readily as the right way.

Just a year to-night since Mr. Philbrick spent his first night in this
house. He has been telling us about it: a file of soldiers were drawn
up at the gate and refused him admittance till his credentials were
examined; now he is lord of the manor. I reminded the children
to-night that a year ago they did not know their letters; now they are
reading Hillard's Second Reader for the second time.

The feat of reading upside down might seem to suggest that
they were reading Hillard's Second Reader for the second
time chiefly by the aid of memory!

The next letter, written by Mr. Philbrick to a Northern
correspondent, was printed at the time on a broadside, for
distribution.

FROM E. S. P.

_Coffin's Point, March 20._ Just a year ago to-night I entered this
house for the first time. If our Northern croakers could only be made
to realize as we do here the ease with which we have reduced a
comparative degree of order out of the chaos we found, and see how
ready this degraded and half-civilized race are to become an
industrious and useful laboring class, there would not be so much
gabble about the danger of immediate emancipation, or of a stampede of
negro labor to the North.

We found them a herd of suspicious savages who regarded their change
of condition with fear and trembling, looking at the cotton-field as a
life-long scene of unrequited toil, and hailing with delight the
prospect of "no more driver, no more cotton, no more lickin'." They
had broken up the cotton-gins and hidden the iron-work, and nothing
was more remote from their shallow pates than the idea of planting
cotton for "white folks" again.

Now they have, without the least urging, prepared for planting some