amuses a half hour. To-day he heard while out that expert swimmers are
crossing the Mississippi on logs at night to bring and carry news to
Johnston. I am so tired of corn-bread, which I never liked, that I eat
it with tears in my eyes. We are lucky to get a quart of milk daily from
a family near who have a cow they hourly expect to be killed. I send
five dollars to market each morning, and it buys a small piece of
mule-meat. Rice and milk is my main food; I can't eat the mule-meat. We
boil the rice and eat it cold with milk for supper. Martha runs the
gauntlet to buy the meat and milk once a day in a perfect terror. The
shells seem to have many different names: I hear the soldiers say,
"That's a mortar-shell. There goes a Parrott. That's a rifle-shell."
They are all equally terrible. A pair of chimney-swallows have built in
the parlor chimney. The concussion of the house often sends down parts
of their nest, which they patiently pick up and reascend with.

_Friday, June 5. In the cellar._--Wednesday evening H. said he must take
a little walk, and went while the shelling had stopped. He never leaves
me alone for long, and when an hour had passed without his return I
grew anxious; and when two hours, and the shelling had grown terrific, I
momentarily expected to see his mangled body. All sorts of horrors fill
the mind now, and I am so desolate here; not a friend. When he came he
said that, passing a cave where there were no others near, he heard
groans, and found a shell had struck above and caused the cave to fall
in on the man within. He could not extricate him alone, and had to get
help and dig him out. He was badly hurt, but not mortally, and I felt
fairly sick from the suspense.

Yesterday morning a note was brought H. from a bachelor uncle out in the
trenches, saying he had been taken ill with fever, and could we receive
him if he came? H. sent to tell him to come, and I arranged one of the