Thursday, November 17, 1864.
I am getting my South Carolina health back — eat like a horse, sleep like a top, do any amount of work, and read nothing; that last is too bad and greatly to my regret. We have begun reading in the carriage on our way to school.
The weather is exquisite, the school flourishing, household matters comfortable, living good, and all things smooth at present. We are not yet in our new schoolhouse, for the Government carpenter, Mr. Wilson, has to let his hands literally fish for themselves, as the quartermaster has no money to pay for six months’ work back, and they need a subsistence. So we have to wait for seats for our scholars, and other finishings. We have a very large school and a charming time in it. Just think, you poor, freezing, wind-pierced mortals! we have summer weather. The fields are gay with white, purple, and yellow flowers, and with the red leaves of sumach and other shrubs. Our woods are always green, and just now the gum trees make them beautiful with red. You can’t see a leaf! Chill November! I pity you. But — but! — We are perfect recluses.
Ellen has gone to-night to Frogmore to see her friends and family and I miss her terribly. I think I get less and less used to doing without things — yet I am resolved to stick just here to my work. . . .
We are just enjoying my darling little stove, being able to eat our meals in comfort and without involuntary mastication from chattering teeth, for it has been too cold until within two days to do without fires in the dining-room, a luxury we never could have before. It, the stove, draws well. Our curtains are not yet up, and I begin to fear they will not decorate our windows all winter.
You do not know how snug and homelike our parlor looks — just large enough for two.
I wonder whether you will see Mr. Tomlinson in Philadelphia. He is still there and I hope you will meet him. He is to speak at some Freedmen’s Relief meeting, and I suppose you will hear him. If you do, be sure to tell me the drift of his remarks.
We are overjoyed at Lincoln’s victory, which reaches us in this fashion. He has all the states but three — Kentucky! New Jersey, and Tennessee. Is it so? There is beginning to be great talk here of leasing the school farms, and the Murrays may have to leave Frogmore. They have no idea where they will go. All is as uncertain as ever, but I do not trouble myself. The uncertainties down here all smooth themselves into very good order in time, and so I do not fear any serious vexations in the new school arrangements on the school farms.
