June 18th.—­To-day the “Citizen” is printed on wall paper; therefore has grown a little in size.  It says, “But a few days more and Johnston will be here”; also that “Kirby Smith has driven Banks from Port Hudson,” and that “the enemy are throwing incendiary shells in.”

June 20th.—­The gentleman who took our cave came yesterday to invite us to come to it, because, he said, “it’s going to be very bad to-day.”  I don’t know why he thought so.  We went, and found his own and another family in it; sat outside and watched the shells till we concluded the cellar was as good a place as that hill-side.  I fear the want of good food is breaking down H. I know from my own feelings of weakness, but mine is not an American constitution and has a recuperative power that his has not.

June 21st, 1863.—­I had gone upstairs to-day during the interregnum to enjoy a rest on my bed and read the reliable items in the “Citizen,” when a shell burst right outside the window in front of me.  Pieces flew in, striking all round me, tearing down masses of plaster that came tumbling over me.  When H. rushed in I was crawling out of the plaster, digging it out of my eyes and hair.  When he picked up beside my pillow a piece as large as a saucer, I realized my narrow escape.  The window-frame began to smoke, and we saw the house was on fire.  H. ran for a hatchet and I for water, and we put it out.  Another (shell) came crashing near, and I snatched up my comb and brush and ran down here.  It has taken all the afternoon to get the plaster out of my hair, for my hands were rather shaky.

June 25th.—­A horrible day.  The most horrible yet to me, because I’ve lost my nerve.  We were all in the cellar, when a shell came tearing through the roof, burst upstairs, and tore up that room, the pieces coming through both floors down into the cellar.  One of them tore open the leg of H.’s pantaloons.  This was tangible proof the cellar was no place of protection from them.  On the heels of this came Mr. J., to tell us that young Mrs. P. had had her thighbone crushed.  When Martha went for the milk she came back horror-stricken to tell us the black girl there had her arm taken off by a shell.  For the first time I quailed.  I do not think people who are physically brave deserve much credit for it; it is a matter of nerves.  In this way I am constitutionally brave, and seldom think of danger till it is over; and death has not the terrors for me it has for some others.  Every night I had lain down expecting death, and every morning rose to the same prospect, without being unnerved.  It was for H. I trembled.  But now I first seemed to realize that something worse than death might come; I might be crippled, and not killed.  Life, without all one’s powers and limbs, was a thought that broke down my courage.  I said to H., “You must get me out of this horrible place; I cannot stay; I know I shall be crippled.”  Now the regret comes that I lost control, for H. is worried, and has lost his composure, because my coolness has broken down.