My third baby-girl, Virginia Belle, was ten days old when my liberated brother was added, like a beautiful clasp, to the golden circle of our reunited family. He came directly to us, and lingered longer than I had dared expect, for recuperation, and for enjoyment of the society from which he had been so long exiled. A pretty love-story, the initial chapters of which had been rudely broken into by the war, was resumed and continued at this visit. That the girl-friend who had grown into a sister’s place in our home and affections, should marry my dearest brother, was a dream too fair of complexion and too symmetrical in proportions, to be indulged under conditions that had prevailed since his visit to Newark, almost five years ago. Yet this was the vision that began to define itself into a blessed reality, by the time the soldier-returned-from-the-war packed the outfit of civilized and civilian clothing—the getting-together of which had been one ostensible excuse for extending the visit—and took his way southward. It was a divine breathing-spell for us and for the country—that summer of peace and plenty. For three years past, we had spent each July and August in a roomy farm-house among the Jersey hills. For the first season, we were the only boarders. Then, perhaps because we boasted somewhat too freely of the healthfulness of the region, and the excellent country fare set before us by good Mrs. Blauvelt, the retreat from malaria and mosquitoes became too popular for our comfort. When there were three babies, a nurse, a visiting sister, our two selves, and a horse, to be accommodated, we found the once ample quarters too strait for us. For baby Belle’s sake we migrated late in June of this year. We were discussing the seriousness of the problem consequent upon a growing family, as we drove up a long hill, one July day, Alice on a cricket between us in the foot of the buggy, when an exclamation from my husband stopped a sentence in the middle. He drew the horse to a sudden halt. Woodmen were busy with destructive axes upon a body of native trees at the left of our road. They had opened to our sight a view heretofore hidden by the wood. A lake, blue and tranquil as the heavens it mirrored; green slopes, running down to the water; wooded heights, bordering the thither banks, and around, as far as the eye could reach, mountains, benignant in outline and verdant to their summits, billowing, range beyond range, against the horizon—why had we never seen this before? It was like a section of the Delectable Mountains, gently lowered from Bunyan’s Beulah Land, and set down within thirty miles of the biggest city in America. The rapt silence was ended by one word from my companion: “Alabama!”