“Lord, keep us safe this night,
    Secure from all our fears;
  May angels guard us while we sleep,
    Till morning light appears.”

June 7th, 1863. (In the cellar.)—­I feel especially grateful that amid these horrors we have been spared that of suffering for water.  The weather has been dry a long time, and we hear of others dipping up the water from ditches and mud-holes.  This place has two large underground cisterns of good cool water, and every night in my subterranean dressing-room a tub of cold water is the nerve-calmer that sends me to sleep in spite of the roar.  One cistern I had to give up to the soldiers, who swarm about like hungry animals seeking something to devour.  Poor fellows! my heart bleeds for them.  They have nothing but spoiled, greasy bacon, and bread made of musty pea-flour, and but little of that.  The sick ones can’t bolt it.  They come into the kitchen when Martha puts the pan of corn-bread in the stove, and beg for the bowl she has mixed it in.  They shake up the scrapings with water, put in their bacon, and boil the mixture into a kind of soup, which is easier to swallow than pea-bread.  When I happen in they look so ashamed of their poor clothes.  I know we saved the lives of two by giving a few meals.  To-day one crawled upon the gallery to lie in the breeze.  He looked as if shells had lost their terrors for his dumb and famished misery.  I’ve taught Martha to make first-rate corn-meal gruel, because I can eat meal easier that way than in hoe-cake, and I prepared him a saucerful, put milk and sugar and nutmeg—­I’ve actually got a nutmeg.  When he ate it the tears ran from his eyes.  “Oh, madam, there was never anything so good!  I shall get better.”

June 9th, 1863.—­The churches are a great resort for those who have no caves.  People fancy they are not shelled so much, and they are substantial and the pews good to sleep in.  We had to leave this house last night, they were shelling our quarter so heavily.  The night before, Martha forsook the cellar for a church.  We went to H.’s office, which was comparatively quiet last night.  H. carried the bank box; I the case of matches; Martha the blankets and pillows, keeping an eye on the shells.  We slept on piles of old newspapers.  In the streets the roar seems so much more confusing, I feel sure I shall run right into the way of a shell.  They seem to have five different sounds from the second of throwing them to the hollow echo wandering among the hills, which sounds the most blood-curdling of all.

[Illustration:  PRINTED ON WALL PAPER IN THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG.]

June 13th, 1863.—­Shell burst just over the roof this morning.  Pieces tore through both floors down into the dining-room.  The entire ceiling of that room fell in a mass.  We had just left it.  Every piece of crockery on the table was smashed.  The “Daily Citizen” to-day is a foot and a half long and six inches wide.  It has a long letter from a Federal officer, P. P. Hill, who was on the gun-boat Cincinnati, that was sunk May 27th.  Says it was found in his floating trunk.  The editorial says, “The utmost confidence is felt that we can maintain our position until succor comes from outside.  The undaunted Johnston is at hand.”