As good news flies fast in a strange place, especially where a good cause is under way, we had no sooner got through with our most capital tea than the newspaper reporters began to arrive. And those reporters were the politest gentlemen I ever saw in my life, for they treated us with as much kindly interest as if we had all been acquainted for the last twenty years. Tom and I asked them to be seated whilst we had a brief consultation between ourselves aside. This consultation was about my own coming to New Orleans at a former time, and releasing my own dear mother from slavery. But as the bottom had already been knocked out of the peculiar institution, as it was playfully called, and what remained of it would soon pass away, we did not consider that there was any risk to run, and decide to tell the whole truth, and give all the facts of the case to the reporters, leaving it to their own discretion to say and do anything that they pleased, themselves. So the reporting gentlemen took their seats, got out their note-books, and went to work, writing down our depositions, one and all, first and last, asking us questions which we answered with the greatest pleasure. There was a good deal of amusement in the parlor that evening over the reporting business, I suspect arising out of the slavery question, and the whole of us being a lot of "runaways"! In the meantime, when all had left, the girls and myself were completely worn out both in mind and body, with travel, fatigue and excitement. Tom saw us to the gate where we all took leave for the night, after which we steered for our cosy lodgings, and all got to bed as rapidly as possible, for we were as tired and worn out as soldiers after a hard-fought field! The children and I had a grand, long sleep, and came down late to breakfast. There had been showers of warm rain in the early morning, and the breezes that blew over New Orleans were as well perfumed with the odor of Southern flowers and vegetation as ever lady’s boudoir was with the perfumes and colognes. Fresh-cut flowers in vases stood on the dining-room table, and there were plenty of the fresh fruits of the Sunny South, which the family had brought in from the market in the early morning. The girls seemed quite at sea amid so many tropical pleasures, and my first-born exclaimed, as she looked around and viewed the plants, and flowers, and shrubbery in every direction, both in the house and out of it, "My goodness, mamma; the people have good times down here in Dixie. Papa has a grand time in that fine hospital, reading the latest news from the front, and scenting the perfumery wafted from 10,000 flowers and shrubs! I just envy him so much happiness." "Yes," said the younger child, "and he is here all the time." To which her elder sister rejoined, "Oh, my dear sister, I wish that mamma and papa would stay here altogether, and not go back to Buffalo!"