I encountered friends on my return to my quarters, and had invitations innumerable to meals and shelter. My costume was no drawback. Nobody knew how anybody was dressed. The city was in a fever of excitement over the probable fate of those who had not yet returned, and in making provision for the homeless. Mammy turned up next morning with some of my civilian clothes that had been confided to her. Mammy's simple “What you gwine do now, Mabs William?” thrown in whilst she assisted by her presence at my complete change of toilet--lapse of time was nothing to her--woke me to the momentous problem. There was no commissary sergeant to distribute even the meagre rations that so long left us ravenous after every meal. I could not camp in the Capitol Square, even if I had wished so to do. Mammy left me with the injunction to call on her “ef I didn't have nowhar else to go.” I went with unbroken fast to see what was left of the city. I met many acquaintances on the same errand. None of us seemed to realize that day what was to be done. For four years our campaigns had been planned for us. I learned from one acquaintance, however, that I could have rations for the asking, and not long after found myself in line at the United States Commissary Department, along with hundreds of others, and departed thence bearing a goodly portion of hardtack and codfish. These I took to Mammy, who cooked the fish for me under loud protests against the smell. Not long thereafter a number of us paroled soldiers made a mess, and cooked for ourselves at the room of one of them. On one of these indeterminate days--dates had become nothing to me--I saw a dapper young man sketching about the ruins. I spoke to him, and mentioned that his had been my profession. This acquaintance was the beginning of hope. I showed the young man places of interest, gave him points about a good many things, and at last fell to making sketches to help him out. They were perfectly satisfactory and liberally paid for. With this capital I set myself up in another place, which had a north light--by-the-way, I had been dispossessed of the asylum where I first found shelter, as the previous tenant returned. I was able to purchase material and apparel. But what was I to paint, and where to sell the product? My hand was out, I discovered, so I set to studying still life, and painting those of my friends who had the patience to sit. I would have gone back to my old haunts in New York but for the material reason that my funds were too low, and the sentimental one that I not only was not in the humor for appealing to citizens of that section for patronage, but was not sure that it would not be withheld, from an analogous state of mind towards me. Summer ran into fall. Mammy's visits increased in frequency, and her conversation drifted towards the difficulties of living.