A few days before Christmas another pleasant event occurred. Her nephew Stephen, whom she had continued to call “Bub,” arrived in uniform. Though hardly fifteen, he had enlisted in the telegraph corps, and was sent to be with her. He became her closest friend in an intimacy of relation that did not cease until her eyes closed in death; and then, in her perfect confidence in him, she appointed him her executor. A letter in this month reviews the experiences of her sojourn at Hilton Head: HILTON HEAD, S.C. Wednesday, December 9th, 1863 MR. PARKER, MY DEAR KIND FRIEND: It would be impossible for me to tell how many times I have commenced to write you. Sometimes I have put my letter by because we were doing so little there was nothing of interest to communicate; at other times, because there was so much I had not time to tell it, until some greater necessity drew me away, and my half-written letter became “rubbish” and was destroyed. And now I have but one topic which is of decided interest to _me_, and that is so peculiarly so that I will hasten to speak of it at once. After _almost_ a year’s absence, I am beginning to _think_ about once more coming _home_, once more meeting the scores of kind friends I have been from so long; and the nearer I bring this object to my view, the brighter it appears. The nearer I fancy the meeting, the dearer the faces and the kinder the smiles appear to me and the sweeter the welcome voices that fall upon my ear. Not that I have not found good friends here. None could have been kinder. I came with one brother, loving, kind, and considerate; I have met others here scarcely less so, and those, too, with whom rested the power to make me comfortable and happy, and I have yet to recall the first instance in which they have failed to use their utmost endeavor to render me so, and while a tear of joy glistens in my eye at the thought of the kind friends I hope so soon to meet, there will still linger one of regret for the many of those I leave. Eight months and two days ago we landed at the dock in this harbor. When nations move as rapidly as ours moves at present, that is a long time, and in it as a nation we have done much, gained much, and suffered much. Still much more remains to be done, much more acquired, and I fear much more suffered. Our brave and noble old Army of Virginia still marches and fights and the glorious armies of the West still fight and conquer; our soldiers still die upon the battle-field, pine in hospitals, and languish in prison; the wives and sisters and mothers still wait, and weep and hope and toil and pray, and the little child, fretting at the long-drawn days, asks in tearful impatience, “_When will my papa come?_”