"james harris is agoin to send a letur to the church at spring town in the care of mister saffron to be rede in the congration. no more at preasante fur i am verry weake
"your luvin husband "j. williams."
After I finished reading this poor fellow's letter, I felt like laughing and crying. The ignorance it displays is droll enough; but the keen yearning for home, the longing after domestic affection and remembrance, the dread of being forgotten, are all very touching.
We replied to it immediately, and after that seldom allowed a week to pass without writing. On Saturday afternoons Lucy would come into the library with a little piece of sewing in her hands, and, sitting on a stool by the dogs' baskets, repeat her proposed letter faster than I could write it.
She related all the news of the two colored villages situated on either side of this town; the meetings they were holding,—the jubilees and quarterlies,—which last seemed to come every Sunday; the payment of the church debts; the births of children; the deaths of old people; the marriages and engagements of young ones; and even the hatching of chickens and killing of pigs. The letters were a droll medley; and when I could not help smiling sometimes at the odd bits of information given, she would say, with innocent earnestness,—
"I know he'll like to hear all this, Ma'am. It'll make him and the other boys from Spring Town and Gould Town feel like bein' among us again."
She dictated very rapidly; and her expressions were right pretty, being so natural and affectionate. Once I remarked to her that she did it so nicely that it sounded sometimes as if read from a book.
"Oh, it's because I keep a-studyin' about what to say to him," she replied, "I talks it all over to myself when I'm alone. That's what makes me so forgetful, and gives me this everlastin' misery in my head. I'm forever and ever a-studyin' so much about him."
These weekly letters seemed to make Lucy feel as if she were having a stated talk with her absent husband. She gradually grew more cheerful under their influence. While at her work, she would burst out into perfect gusts of wild chanting: scraps of Methodist hymns suited her best. There was one verse she would peal out to a shrill, weird minor melody that was anything but cheerful or gay in its effect; and yet she repeated it over and over, morning, noon, and night, with unparalleled constancy:—
"I know there's room in heaven for me,
So I'm a-goin', I'm a-goin';
And don't you hope there's room for you?
Let's both be goin', let's both be goin';
I should n't wonder if room's for them,
So we'll all be goin' we'll all be goin',
Some day soon."