Midway between Jackson and Vicksburg we reached the station near where Annie’s parents were staying.  I looked out, and there stood Annie with a little sister on each side of her, brightly smiling at us.  Max had written to H., but we had not seen them since our parting.  There was only time for a word and the train flashed away.

FOOTNOTES:  [33] On this plantation, and in this domestic circle, I myself afterward sojourned, and from them enlisted in the Confederate army.  The initials are fictitious, but the description is perfect.—­G.W.C.

XII.

VICKSBURG.

We reached Vicksburg that night and went to H.’s room.  Next morning the cook he had engaged arrived, and we moved into this house.  Martha’s ignorance keeps me busy, and H. is kept close at his office.

January 7th, 1863.—­I have had little to record recently, for we have lived to ourselves, not visiting or visited.  Every one H. knows is absent, and I know no one.  H. tells me of the added triumph since the repulse of Sherman in December, and the one paper published here shouts victory as much as its gradually diminishing size will allow.  Paper is a serious want.  There is a great demand for envelopes in the office where H. is.  He found and bought a lot of thick and smooth colored paper, cut a tin pattern, and we have whiled away some long evenings making envelopes.  I have put away a package of the best to look at when we are old.  The books I brought from Arkansas have proved a treasure, but we can get no more.  I went to the only book-store open; there were none but Mrs. Stowe’s “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands.”  The clerk said I could have that cheap, because he couldn’t sell her books, so I am reading it now.  The monotony has only been broken by letters from friends here and there in the Confederacy.  One of these letters tells of a Federal raid and says, “But the worst thing was, they would take every tooth-brush in the house, because we can’t buy any more; and one cavalry man put my sister’s new bonnet on his horse, and said ‘Get up, Jack,’ and her bonnet was gone.”

Feb. 25th, 1863.—­A long gap in my journal, because H. has been ill unto death with typhoid fever.  I nearly broke down from loss of sleep, there being no one to relieve me.  It was terrible to be alone at night with a patient in delirium, and no one within call.  To wake Martha was simply impossible.  I got the best doctor here, but when convalescence began the question of food was a trial.  I got with great difficulty two chickens.  The doctor made the drug-store sell two of their six bottles of port; he said his patient’s life depended on it.  An egg is a rare and precious thing.  Meanwhile the Federal fleet has been gathering, has anchored at the bend, and shells are thrown in at intervals.