My friend's little nest is calm in contrast to the tumult not far off.
Yet the trials of war are here too. Having no matches, they keep fire,
carefully covering it at night, for Mr. G. has no powder, and cannot
flash the gun into combustibles as some do. One day they had to go with
the children to the village, and the servant let the fire go out. When
they returned at nightfall, wet and hungry, there was neither fire nor
food. Mr. G. had to saddle the tired mule and ride three miles for a pan
of coals, and blow them, all the way back, to keep them alight. Crockery
has gradually been broken and tin cups rusted out, and a visitor told me
they had made tumblers out of clear glass bottles by cutting them smooth
with a heated wire, and that they had nothing else to drink from.

_Aug. 11._--We cannot get to New Orleans. A special passport must be
shown, and we are told that to apply for it would render H. very likely
to be conscripted. I begged him not to try; and as we hear that active
hostilities have ceased at Vicksburg, he left me this morning to return
to his uncle's and see what the prospects are there. I shall be in
misery about conscription till he returns.

_Sunday, Sept. 7._ (_Vicksburg, Washington Hotel._)--H. did not return
for three weeks. An epidemic disease broke out in his uncle's family and
two children died. He stayed to assist them in their trouble. Tuesday
evening he returned for me, and we reached Vicksburg yesterday. It was
my first sight of the "Gibraltar of the South." Looking at it from a
slight elevation suggests the idea that the fragments left from
world-building had tumbled into a confused mass of hills, hollows,
hillocks, banks, ditches, and ravines, and that the houses had rained
down afterward. Over all there was dust impossible to conceive. The
bombardment has done little injury. People have returned and resumed