Beauregard is a demigod here to most of the natives, but there are always seers who see and say. They give you to understand that Whiting has all the brains now in use for our defense. He does the work and Beauregard reaps the glory. Things seem to draw near a crisis. And one must think. Colonel Whiting is clever enough for anything, so we made up our minds to-day, Maxcy Gregg and I, as judges. Mr. Gregg told me that my husband was in a minority in the Convention; so much for cool sense when the atmosphere is phosphorescent. Mrs. Wigfall says we are mismatched. She should pair with my cool, quiet, self-poised Colonel. And her stormy petrel is but a male reflection of me. _April 8th._—Yesterday Mrs. Wigfall and I made a few visits. At the first house they wanted Mrs. Wigfall to settle a dispute. “Was she, indeed, fifty-five?” Fancy her face, more than ten years bestowed upon her so freely. Then Mrs. Gibbes asked me if I had ever been in Charleston before. Says Charlotte Wigfall (to pay me for my snigger when that false fifty was flung in her teeth), “and she thinks this is her native heath and her name is McGregor.” She said it all came upon us for breaking the Sabbath, for indeed it was Sunday. Allen Green came up to speak to me at dinner, in all his soldier’s toggery. It sent a shiver through me. Tried to read Margaret Fuller Ossoli, but could not. The air is too full of war news, and we are all so restless. Went to see Miss Pinckney, one of the last of the old-world Pinckneys. She inquired particularly about a portrait of her father, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,[30] which she said had been sent by him to my husband’s grandfather. I gave a good account of it. It hangs in the place of honor in the drawing-room at Mulberry. She wanted to see my husband, for “his grandfather, my father’s friend, was one of the handsomest men of his day.” We came home, and soon Mr. Robert Gourdin and Mr. Miles called. Governor Manning walked in, bowed gravely, and seated himself by me. Again he bowed low in mock heroic style, and with a grand wave of his hand, said: “Madame, your country is invaded.” When I had breath to speak, I asked, “What does he mean?” He meant this: there are six men-of-war outside the bar. Talbot and Chew have come to say that hostilities are to begin. Governor Pickens and Beauregard are holding a council of war. Mr. Chesnut then came in and confirmed the story. Wigfall next entered in boisterous spirits, and said: “There was a sound of revelry by night.” In any stir or confusion my heart is apt to beat so painfully. Now the agony was so stifling I could hardly see or hear. The men went off almost immediately. And I crept silently to my room, where I sat down to a good cry.