For once in my life I am at a loss where to commence. I have been your debtor so long, and am so full of unsaid things, that I don’t know which idea to let loose first. Perhaps I might as well speak of the weather. Well, it _rains_, and that is good for my conscience again, for I couldn’t get out in that if I were well enough. Rain here means mud, you must understand, but I am sheltered. Why, I have a _whole_ house of my own, first and second floors, two rooms and a flight of stairs, and a great big fireplace, a bright fire burning, a west window below, a south one above, an east door, with a soldier-built frame arbor of cedar, twelve feet in front of it and all around it, so close and green that a cat couldn’t look in, unless at my side opening. It was the negro house for the plantation, and was dirty, of course, but ten men with brooms and fifty barrels of water made it all right, and they moved me into it one night when I was sick, and here I have lain and the winds have blown and the rains descended and beat upon my house, and it fell not, and for hours in the dark night I have listened to the guy ropes snapping and the tent flies flapping in the wind and rain, and thunder and lightning. All about me are the frail habitations of my less fortunate neighbors. One night I remembered a darling little Massachusetts boy, sick of fever and chronic diarrhœa, a mere skeleton, and I knew he was lying at the very edge of his ward, tents, of course,--delicate little fellow, about fifteen,--and I couldn’t withstand the desire to shield him, and sent through the storm and had him brought, bed and all, and stored in my lower room, and there he lay like a little kitten, so happy, till about noon the next day, when his father, one of the wealthy merchants of Suffolk, came for him. He had just heard of his illness, had searched through the damp tents for him and finally traced him to me. The unexpected sight of his little boy, sheltered, warm, and fed, nearly deprived him of speech, but when those pale lips said, “Auntie--father--this is _my_ Auntie; doesn’t she look like mother?” It was _too much_. Women’s and children’s tears amount to little, but the convulsive sobs of a strong man are not forgotten in an hour.