Wall, Ury and Philury moved right in and took charge of things and helped us off, and in less than a week’s time we wuz on our way down through the snow-drifts and icickles of the North to the greenness and bloom of the orange-trees and magnolias. Down from the ice-bound rivers of the North to the merry, leapin’ rivulets of Belle Fanchon. Down from the cold peace and calm of our Jonesville farm, down to the beauty and bloom of our boy’s home in the South land, the sorrow and pathos of his love-watched sick-bed, and our little Snow’s white-faced gladness. We got there jest as the sun set. The country through which we had been a passin’ all day and for some time past wuz a hard and forbidden-lookin’ country—sand, sand, sand, on every side on us, and piled up in sand-heaps, and stretched out white and smooth and dreary-lookin’. Anon, or mebby oftener, we would go by some places sort o’ sot out with orange-trees, so I spozed, and some other green trees. And once in a while we would see a house set back from the highway with a piazza a runnin’ round it, and mebby two on ’em. And the children a playin’ round ’em, and the children a wanderin’ along the railroad-track and hangin’ about the depots wuz more than half on ’em black as a coal. A contrast, I can tell you, to our own little Jonesvillians, with their freckled white faces and their tow locks a hangin’ over their forwerds. The hair of these little boys and girls wuzn’t hair, it wuz wool, and it curled tight round their black forwerds. And their clothes wuz airy and unpretentious in the extreme; some on ’em had only jest enough on to hide their nakedness, and some on ’em hadn’t enough. [Illustration: THE COLORED CHILDREN.] But our boy’s place wuz beautiful. It looked like a picture of fairy land, as we see it bathed in the red western light. And though we felt that we might on closter inspection see some faults in it, we couldn’t seem to see any then. It wuz a big house, sort o’ light grey in color, with a piazza a runnin’ clear round it, and up on the next story another piazza jest as big, reared up and runnin’ all round—a verandy they called it. And both stories of the piazza wuz almost covered with beautiful blossomin’ vines, great big sweet roses, and lots of other fragrant posies that I didn’t know the name of, but liked their looks first rate. There wuz a little rivulet a runnin’ along at one side of the front yard, and its pleasant gurglin’ sound seemed dretful sort o’ friendly and pleasant to us.