I have ever looked upon my acquaintance with him as strikingly providential. While at Fredericksburg, I was led by the providence of God to care for a brother of his, who was supposed to be mortally wounded, but who finally recovered, and, hearing of my illness, directed this brother to find me and return the favors shown him. They were returned an hundredfold. Oh! that hot, dusty July; those long, weary days and sleepless nights; the scorching sun, beating down upon my tent; the swarms of flies; that little rusty tin pail, out of which, for the want of something better, I drank my gruel; the heated, suffocating atmosphere; the anxiety to be at work; how fresh in memory! As the season advanced, the heat became more intense and the dust more intolerable. The long trains of army wagons that were constantly moving to and fro, only a few rods from us, were scarcely visible, being so completely enveloped in clouds of dust. On the night of the 24th, there was a sudden and most grateful change in the weather. A heavy rain-storm came up, accompanied with high wind and severe thunder and lightning. It was a gloomy night, yet full of grandeur. My tent swayed to and fro in the wind; bright flashes of lightning and almost Egyptian darkness rapidly succeeded each other, while the crashing of thunder was far more grand than any discharge of artillery of human invention. Many tents were blown down, whose occupants were left to the tender mercies of the storm. When the morning dawned we seemed to be in a new world. The air was clear and pure, our clean white tents glistened in the sunlight, the slow-moving trains were in full view, the trees and bushes were relieved of their dusty coats, and all nature, animate and inanimate, seemed to rejoice. The 2d of August, I left City Point, in company with Mrs. Johnson (who had been with me some ten days), and was taken to Washington. On the steamer--the “Vanderbilt”--on which we took passage, were twenty-one rebel officers, prisoners of war. As they frequently passed my window, I entered into conversation with them. The war, as a matter of course, was the subject discussed; but they all, with one accord, acknowledged the hopelessness of their cause, and confessed that it would have been better had they not appealed to the sword. They said they had no desire to divide the Union; but they thought their “rights” had been infringed upon, and for these they were fighting. I inquired what “rights” they had lost, or had been “infringed upon.” All were silent a moment, then one replied: “Our rights in regard to slavery.” The interference of the North with this institution they believed to be the cause of the war; and yet they confessed that, if it were even so, it was no just cause for declaring war. I never conversed with a rebel who could give an intelligent answer to the questions concerning the loss of his “rights,” but they would invariably fall back, as a last resort; upon the interference of the North with slavery.