I was sick with a chill and fever May 2d, and the nearest to being homesick since I left Michigan. The next day I was better. Here I met Joseph Warner, with whom I had been acquainted from his childhood. He was a lessee at Waterproof. He had a large plantation, and two hundred hands employed. He was twice taken by guerrillas. He told them they could hang or shoot him, but they might rest assured that forty of their men's lives would pay for his, and forty men stood ready to take his place; and they let him go each time. A distressed mother came to us to inquire for her two daughters, that her mistress had sent to Texas to elude the effects of the Proclamation of Emancipation. She had begged her mistress to allow them to remain in town, if she could not have them with her. The mistress said, "No you shall never have your girls with you again, not even to give you a drink of water if you are dying." This was at the retaking of Baton Rouge, when the mistress considered herself again in full power; but she was soon to suffer herself. When that city was retaken by Union men, the only son of the mistress was burned to death in the house at which he was boarding. Upon this she fell into fits. Yet, Pharaoh-like, she persisted in keeping the slave-girls in Texas. A number of missionaries called on us, and urged me to remain with them a few weeks longer; but for two reasons I had to decline: First, those three thousand soldier prisoners were daily on my mind; and, second, my poor health made it a duty to return home. Skirmishing four miles off took place May 5th, and we could see the blue smoke of battle. The shooting seemed near us. How little this terrible war was realized in our own free State homes! I met on the street a mulatto girl seventeen years old, weeping, and inquired the cause of her grief. She said her owner, Mrs. Morehead, had been beating her. "Why do you remain with her?" I asked. "She keeps my baby locked up," was her reply; "and she says if I leave I shall never have him."