whole country waste with fire and sword, and leave it
desolate!" Draw me a finer picture of Coward, Brute, or Bully than that
one sentence portrays! O men of the North! you do your noble hearts
wrong in sending such ruffians among us as the representatives of a
great people! Was ever a more brutal thought uttered in a more brutal
way? Mother, like many another, is crazy to go away from here, even to
New Orleans; but like the rest, will be obliged to stand and await her
fate. I don't believe Butler would _dare_ execute his threat, for at
the first attempt, thousands, who are passive now, would cut the brutal
heart from his inhuman breast.

Tuesday, July 1st.

I heard such a good joke last night! If I had belonged to the female
declaiming club, I fear me I would have resigned instantly through mere
terror. (Thank Heaven, I don't!) These officers say the women talk too
much, which is undeniable. They then said, they meant to get up a
sewing society, and place in it every woman who makes herself
conspicuous by her loud talking about them. Fancy what a refinement of
torture! But only a few would suffer; the majority would be only too
happy to enjoy the usual privilege of sewing societies, slander, abuse,
and insinuations. How some would revel in it. The mere threat makes me
quake! If I could so far forget my dignity, and my father's name, as to
court the notice of gentlemen by contemptible insult, etc., and if I
should be ordered to take my seat at the sewing society--!!! I would
never hold my head up again! Member of a select sewing circle! Fancy
me! (I know "there is never any _gossip_ in _our_ society, though the
one over the way gets up dreadful reports"; I have heard all that, but
would rather try neither.) Oh, how I would beg and plead! Fifty years
at Fort Jackson, good, kind General Butler, rather than half an hour in
your sewing society! Gentle, humane ruler, spare me and I split my
throat in shouting "Yankee Doodle" and "Hurrah for Lincoln!" Any, every
thing, so I am not disgraced! Deliver me from your sewing society, and
I'll say and do what you please!

Butler told some of these gentlemen that he had a detective watching
almost every house in town, and he knew everything. True or not, it
looks suspicious. We are certainly watched. Every evening two men may
be seen in the shadow on the other side of the street, standing there
until ever so late, sometimes until a