“Now you see,” he replied, “that this house will be but paper to mortar-shells.  You must go into the country.”

The argument was long, but when a woman is obstinate and eloquent, she generally conquers.  I came off victorious, and we finished preparations for the siege to-day.  Hiring a man to assist, we descended to the wine-cellar, where the accumulated bottles told of festive hours long since departed.  To empty this cellar was the work of many hours.  Then in the safest corner a platform was laid for our bed, and in another portion one arranged for Martha.  The dungeon, as I call it, is lighted only by a trap-door, and is very damp.  The next question was of supplies.  I had nothing left but a sack of rice-flour, and no manner of cooking I had heard or invented contrived to make it eatable.  A column of recipes for making delicious preparations of it had been going the rounds of Confederate papers.  I tried them all; they resulted only in brick-bats, or sticky paste.  H. sallied out on a hunt for provisions, and when he returned the disproportionate quantity of the different articles provoked a smile.  There was a hogshead of sugar, a barrel of sirup, ten pounds of bacon and pease, four pounds of wheat-flour, and a small sack of corn-meal, a little vinegar, and actually some spice!  The wheat-flour he purchased for ten dollars as a special favor from the sole remaining barrel for sale.  We decided that must be kept for sickness.  The sack of meal, he said, was a case of corruption, though a special providence to us.  There is no more for sale at any price, but, said he, “a soldier who was hauling some of the Government sacks to the hospital offered me this for five dollars, if I could keep a secret.  When the meal is exhausted, perhaps we can keep alive on sugar.  Here are some wax candles; hoard them like gold.”  He handed me a parcel containing about two pounds of candles, and left me to arrange my treasures.  It would be hard for me to picture the memories those candles called up.  The long years melted away, and I

  “Trod again my childhood’s track
  And felt its very gladness.”

In those childish days, whenever came dreams of household splendor or festal rooms or gay illuminations, the lights in my vision were always wax candles burning with a soft radiance that enchanted every scene....  And, lo! here on this spring day of ’63, with war raging through the land, I was in a fine house, and had my wax candles sure enough, but, alas! they were neither cerulean blue nor rose-tinted, but dirty brown; and when I lighted one, it spluttered and wasted like any vulgar, tallow thing, and lighted only a desolate scene in the vast handsome room.  They were not so good as the waxen rope we had made in Arkansas.  So, with a long sigh for the dreams of youth, I return to the stern present in this besieged town, my only consolation to remember the old axiom, “A city besieged is a city taken,”—­so if we live through it we shall be out of the Confederacy.  H. is very tired of having to carry a pass around in his pocket and go every now and then to have it renewed.  We have been so very free in America, these restrictions are irksome.