Agnes wrote from Richmond early in May:—
"My Dearest: What could I do without you? Now don't flatter yourself that I need now, or ever did need, those beautiful moral reflections in well-chosen language by means of which you have striven to educate me. But you are an unmitigated blessing when my 'feelings are too many for me'—when, in short, I boil over.
"Now when a kettle boils over it puts out the fire, and then we go tea-less to bed. How nice it would be for the kettle if some convenient utensil were at hand to receive its excited bubbles.
"I am aggrieved and indignant at the sermons people are preaching to us. And I have caught a young brother in a flagrant theft. All Richmond is in a state of beautiful admiration at a sermon it listened to last week on the uses of our great misfortune. War was declared to be a blessing. 'The high passion of patriotism prevents the access of baser passions. Men's hearts beat together, and woman is roused from the frivolousness and feebleness into which her nature is apt to sink. Death, insult, carnage, violated homes, and broken hearts are all awful. But it is worse than a thousand deaths when a people has adopted the creed that the wealth of nations consists—not in generous hearts, in primitive simplicity, in preference of duty to life; not in MEN, but in silk, cotton, and something that they call "capital." If the price to be paid for peace is this—that wealth accumulates and men decay, better far that every street in every town of our once noble country should run blood.'
"Now all this is very fine, but very one-sided. And my brother didn't believe a word of it. He has been away in England and has seen none of the horrors of war; but he has seen something else—a very charming lecture printed in London some time before the war.[25]
"Strange are the ways of Providence. Precisely that I might convict him did this address fall into my hands in Washington. It struck me forcibly at the time. Little did I think I should hear it in Richmond after a terrible civil war of our own.
"I feel impatient at this attempt to extort good for ourselves out of the overwhelming disaster which brought such ruin to others; to congratulate ourselves for what is purchased with their blood. Surely, if for no other reason, for the sake of the blood that has been spilt, we should not hasten to acquiesce in the present state of things. If I catch my Colonel piously affirming too much resignation, too prompt a forgetfulness of the past, I'll—well, he knows what I am capable of saying!
"But, now that I have safely boiled over, I will tell you my news. We cannot remain here. We are literally stripped to the 'primitive' state my reverend brother thinks so good for us. We are wofully in need of 'silk, cotton, and something they call capital,' and we'll never get it here. And so my Colonel and I are going to New York. He has secured a place in some publishing house or other. I only wish it were a dry-goods store!
"Of course our social life is all over. I have taken my resolution. There are fine ladies in New York whom I used to entertain in Washington. Just so far as they approach me, will I approach them! A card for a card, a visit for a visit. But I imagine I shall not be recognized. I am content. There will be plenty to read in that publishing house. I shall not repine. All the setting, the entourage, of a lady is taken from me, but the lady herself has herself pretty well in hand, and is quite content if she may always be
"Your devoted
"Agnes."