got wet; but I know that he did get wet, though.  He said the Lord carried him over the river without letting him get wet.  I am sure that I could not help laughing at my brother to hear of such a thing, for there never was a time that I have read of since the time of Peter that any one was called to walk on the water.  The Lord was there Himself to show Peter how small his strength was when he trusted in his own strength, and Peter would have failed entirely if his Lord and Master had not been there.

And so it would have been with my dear brother.  He would have been taken by the Southerners, and that would have been his last trial on this side of the grave.

My sister Frances was hired out and we did not see her from one Christmas to the other, for she was a good way off where she could not get home.  She was treated very badly by some of those where she lived and her limbs had been sprained so that she could hardly move on them.  When later on the Lord had it so arranged that she was taken home to live, where she could be cared for, she soon got better and was able to go about helping mother, with the rest of the children, for my brother who had to help her to care for the children was gone, and she was all the help that my mother had, for I was not large enough to do much and had not been put to mind the children.

The gentleman that my dear brother belonged to was a Methodist and a minister.  He did not want to go to the war and so he sent my poor brother to defend what belonged to him, and he did not get the good of it after all, for my brother was determined that he would gain his freedom if he could and he tried and did not get tired of trying.

Then my sister Annie was given to the gentleman’s married son and she was not with us, and sister Tempy Green was with the minister, and she was one of the dead ones that mother had a time to get.  Maggie, Susie, Martha and Mary were at the same place where mother was sold from, and she went and got them at once.  It was like a dream to them to see how far she had been sold and to see her back there again.

Sister Lavinia was at the same place where I was and she was treated very badly by the man’s own daughter, for she would whip her without cause.  Sister Rosa was at the same place and she was three and a half years on mother’s return.  As I told you, she was six weeks old when mother was sold and that made it three years and three months that mother was gone from her own native home to a part of the country where she did not know any one, not even the great God who had been so good to her all of those years when she was gone; and all of her whole life God was watching over her and giving to the world one child who was to help to educate the down-trodden race which was, through Abraham Lincoln, to be God’s leader for the children that were in Egypt in the South, and God with this leader and the race, they came through fire and smoke, and now