Bonaparte's daughter-in-law, Kiz, is very ill with typhoid fever. Her husband brought her to the doctor to-day in an ox cart. The doctor was very angry, saying she was quite too ill and that he must take her quickly home.
I had made some jelly for her and sent Patty running after the ox cart with it. She said Kizzie was very grateful and took it all, saying it was the nicest thing she had ever tasted. Poor, poor soul; in this heat—no ice, no anything that she should have! I who am quite well miss ice terribly, and think of her with that fever!
Her husband brought her in an ox cart.
I sent some jelly to old Amy, too. I do not think she can recover. She is Patty's grandmother. MacDuff feels the heat greatly. The mercury has been over 90 for several days. The colts both have distemper and cannot be driven for a long time.
CHAPTER III
September 3.
It is time for my harvest to begin, but for some reason the rice is ripening very slowly, and I fear the first field at Casa Bianca will not be ready to cut before the 14th of this month. It has never quite recovered from the salt water and is not as fine as last year. At Cherokee one field of rice is very fine, the other not very good; but the corn is of the best, and so are the peas. A splendid crop. In July I took up thirty acres of very well-drained land, enclosed it with an American wire fence, and planted some of it in cow-peas preparatory to planting alfalfa this autumn. The peas are most luxuriant, a solid mass of green about two feet high. They show the benefit of the subsoiling I had done, for I used no fertilizer of any kind on the land. I have gone to great expense to put this land in good condition, for I have great hope of making alfalfa our money crop in the future—poor, dear rice seems to have resigned that position.
September 13.