April 19th, 1865.—This morning at breakfast Father said, “Ten days since Lee’s surrender and none of our boys home yet.”
We look for them continually but they do not come. A miserable uncertainty hangs over us and we do not know what to expect. Ever since I can remember Father has been trying to teach me “self-control,” as he expresses it. He is teaching me to “fight my nerves.” Mother has no nerves—so everybody says, and in these trying days she is the mainstay of the household; we all look to her for help and Father says I must be just like Mother. I wish I was, she is such a comfort to us all and I will yet conquer nervousness, which Aunt Robinson says I inherit from the Bradford side of the house.
