parts of winter after winter amid the snows of New England; but if it was cold out of doors, there was warmth and light within doors; but here, if you opened the door for light, the cold would also enter, and so part of the time I sat by the fire, and that and the crevices in the house supplied me with light in one room, and we had the deficient window-sash, or perhaps it never had had any lights in it.  You could put your finger through some of the apertures in the house; at least I could mine, and the water froze down to the bottom of the tumbler.  From another such domicile may kind fate save me.  And then the man asked me four dollars and a half a week board.

One of the nights there was no fire in the stove, and the next time we had fires, one stove might have been a second-hand chamber stove.  Now perhaps you think these people very poor, but the man with whom I stopped has no family that I saw, but himself and wife, and he would make two dollars and a half a day, and she worked out and kept a boarder.  And yet, except the beds and bed clothing, I wouldn’t have given fifteen dollars for all their house furniture.  I should think that this has been one of the lowest down States in the South, as far as civilization has been concerned.  In the future, until these people are educated, look out for Democratic victories, for here are two materials with which Democracy can work, ignorance and poverty.  Men talk about missionary work among the heathen, but if any lover of Christ wants a field for civilizing work, here is a field.  Part of the time I am preaching against men ill-treating their wives.  I have heard though, that often during the war men hired out their wives and drew their pay.”

* * * * *

“And then there is another trouble, some of our Northern men have been down this way and by some means they have not made the best impression on every mind here.  One woman here has been expressing her mind very freely to me about some of our Northerners, and we are not all considered here as saints and angels, and of course in their minds I get associated with some or all the humbugs that have been before me.  But I am not discouraged, my race needs me, if I will only be faithful, and in spite of suspicion and distrust, I will work on; the deeper our degradation, the louder our call for redemption.  If they have little or no faith in goodness and earnestness, that is only one reason why we should be more faithful and earnest, and so I shall probably stay here in the South all winter.  I am not making much money, and perhaps will hardly clear expenses this winter; but after all what matters it when I am in my grave whether I have been rich or poor, loved or hated, despised or respected, if Christ will only own me to His Father, and I be permitted a place in one of the mansions of rest.”

Col.  J.W.  Forney, editor of “The Press,” published July 12, 1871, with the brief editorial heading by his own hand, the document appended: