I WUZ a strange thing to come most imegiatly after Cousin John Richard’s visit, and our almost excited interview with Deacon Henzy—that Thomas J. should make the dicker he did make, and havin’ made it, to think that before a very long time had passed over Josiah Allen’s bald head and mine (it wuz _his_ head that wuz bald, not mine) that we two, Josiah Allen and me, should be started for where we wuz started for, to come back we knew not when. Yes, it happened curius, curius as anything I ever see—that is, as some folks count curiosity. As for me, I feel that our ways are ordered and our paths marked out ahead on us. You know when the country is new, somebody will go ahead through the forests and “blaze” the trees, so the settlers can foller on the path and not get lost. Wall, I always feel that we poor mortals are sot down here in a new country—and a strange one, God knows—and the wilderness stretches out round us on every side, and we are likely to get lost, dretful likely. But there is Somebody who goes ahead on us and marks out our pathway. He makes marks that His true children can see if they only look sharp enough, if they put on the specks of Faith and the blinders of Onworldliness, and look keen. And, above all, reach out their hands through the shadows, and keep close hold of the hand that guides ’em. And all along the way, though dark shadows may be hoverin’ nigh, there is light, and glory, and peace, and pretty soon, bimeby they will come out into a large place, the fair open ground of Beauty and Desire, into all that they had hoped and longed for. But I am a eppisodin’ fearful, and to resoom. As I say, to the outside observer it seemed queer, queer as a dog, that after all our talk on the subject (and it seemed as if Providence had jest been a preparin’ us for what wuz to come), that I myself, Josiah Allen’s wife, should go with my faithful pardner down South to stay for we knew not how long. Wall, the way on’t wuz, our son Thomas Jefferson, who is doin’ a powerful big bizness, made a dicker with a man from the South for a big piece of land of hisen, a old plantation that used to be splendid and prosperous before the war, but wuz now run down. The name of the place—for as near as I can make out they have a practice of namin’ them old plantations—wuz Belle Fanchon, a sort of a French name, I wuz told. Wall, Thomas J., in the way of bizness, had got in his hands a summer hotel at a fashionable resort, and this man wanted to trade with him. He hadn’t owned this plantation long—it had come into his hands on a mortgage. Wall, Thomas Jefferson was offered good terms, and he made the trade. And early in the fall Maggie, our son’s wife, got kinder run down (she had a young child), and comin’ from a sort of a consumptive family on her father’s side, the doctor ordered her to go South for the winter. He said, in her state of health (she had been weak as a cat for months) he wouldn’t like to resk the cold of our Northern winter.