Nov. 15.—Yesterday a letter was handed me from H. Grant's army was moving, he wrote, steadily down the Mississippi Central, and might cut the road at Jackson. He has a house and will meet me in Jackson to-morrow.
Nov. 20. (Vicksburg.)—A fair morning for my journey back to Vicksburg. On the train was the gentleman who in New Orleans had told us we should have all the butter we wanted from Texas. On the cars, as elsewhere, the question of food alternated with news of the war.
When we ran into the Jackson station, H. was on the platform, and I gladly learned that we could go right on. A runaway negro, an old man, ashy-colored from fright and exhaustion, with his hands chained, was being dragged along by a common-looking man. Just as we started out of Jackson the conductor led in a young woman sobbing in a heartbroken manner. Her grief seemed so overpowering, and she was so young and helpless, that every one was interested. Her husband went into the army in the opening of the war, just after their marriage, and she had never heard from him since. After months of weary searching she learned he had been heard of at Jackson, and came full of hope, but found no clue. The sudden breaking down of her hope was terrible. The conductor placed her in care of a gentleman going her way and left her sobbing. At the next station the conductor came to ask her about her baggage. She raised her head to try and answer. "Don't cry so; you'll find him yet." She gave a start, jumped from her seat with arms flung out and eyes staring. "There he is now!" she cried. Her husband stood before her.
The gentleman beside her yielded his seat, and as hand grasped hand a hysterical gurgle gave place to a look like Heaven's peace. The low murmur of their talk began and when I looked around at the next station they had bought pies and were eating them together like happy children.
Midway between Jackson and Vicksburg we reached the station near where Annie's parents were staying. I looked out, and there stood Annie with a little sister on each side of her, brightly smiling at us. Max had written to H., but we had not seen them since our parting. There was only time for a word and the train flashed away.
XII
VICKSBURG
We reached Vicksburg that night and went to H.'s room. Next morning the cook he had engaged arrived, and we moved into this house. Martha's ignorance keeps me busy, and H. is kept close at his office.
January 7, 1863.—I have had little to record here recently, for we have lived to ourselves, not visiting or visited. Every one H. knows is absent, and I know no one but the family we stayed with at first, and they are now absent. H. tells me of the added triumph since the repulse of Sherman in December, and the one paper published here shouts victory as much as its gradually diminishing size will allow. Paper is a serious want. There is a great demand for envelops in the office where H. is. He found and bought a lot of thick and smooth colored paper, cut a tin pattern, and we have whiled away some long evenings cutting envelops and making them up. I have put away a package of the best to look at when we are old. The books I brought from Arkansas have proved a treasure, but we can get no more. I went to the only book-store open; there were none but Mrs. Stowe's "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." The clerk said I could have that cheap, because he couldn't sell her books, so I got it and am reading it now. The monotony has only been broken by letters from friends here and there in the Confederacy. One of these letters tells of a Federal raid to their place, and says: "But the worst thing was, they would take every toothbrush in the house, because we can't buy any more; and one cavalryman put my sister's new bonnet on his horse, and said, 'Get up, Jack,' and her bonnet was gone."