Our difficulties were as great in the matter of transmitting our letters, when once they were written. We might intrust them to the mails, but these particularly were prey to our invaders; or we might charge with the care of them some traveller who was known to be making his way to the city for which the letters were addressed. Stray newspapers reached us at “Redcliffe” occasionally, from even so distant a point as our capital, and efforts were made by local editors to purvey the news of battles and the movements of the armies, but the supply of paper necessary for the issuing of a daily journal and even a weekly edition was difficult to obtain. What at first had appeared as morning papers were changed to evening editions, as the cost of candles, by which the compositors must work, had risen in ’3 to three and one-half dollars a pound. Our brother, J. Withers Clay, who owned and edited the _Confederate_, turned peripatetic, and issued his paper where he could, being obliged to keep shifting, printing paraphernalia and all, with the movements of the army in the Tennessee region. Writing us from Chattanooga, on August 16, 1863, he thus described his life: “I am living in camp style. I mess with my office boys and our fare is frugal. My bed is a piece of carpet, laid on a door, with one end elevated on two bricks and the other resting on the floor. I lay my blue blanket on this, and my bones on that, with my head supported by my overcoat and carpet sack, and cover myself with a Mexican scarf when it is cool!” On the whole, our condition was almost like that of the ancients who depended on passing travellers for gossip or news of the welfare or whereabouts of friends or kin. Thus my sister (by every tie of affection), writing from Richmond in the spring of ’4, said: “Have no idea where you are, but send this letter by General Sparrow to Macon, care of Mrs. Whittle. The last intelligence I had of you was through Colonel Phillips. He told me he saw you between Augusta and Macon _somewhere_.” Nor dared we avail ourselves of our telegraph wires, so costly had the sending of a few lines become. For the briefest message sent C. O. D. from Macon to Richmond, my sister paid sixteen dollars and implored me to send no more! The chief resource of the people was the arrival of the local train, at which time the railway stations swarmed with inquirers on foot, hedged in by others as eager, who had driven long distances in such vehicles as were at their command.