Christmas, 1864, Village, St. Helena, S.C.
I am not so homesick this year as I was last, but yet how good it would be to look in awhile and see you all well and happy together. It is a cold, dull day here. We meant to go to church, but it rained just about the time we should have set out, and so we are quietly resting at home.
To-morrow we have the celebration for our school. I present my pocketbooks. Ellen gives each girl of her class a nice little workbox with needlebook, pincushion, thread, buttons, scissors, and thimble. Each boy she gives a comb and a knife. Harriet and Fanny have a variety for their classes, and in all about two hundred and fifty children will, we hope, have some pleasure in the day.
I have not had much preparation to make here, Our new school-house is not ready for the Xmas celebration, but we hope we have taught for the last day in the church, as we expect to begin school, after this week’s holiday, in the new building. Four classes going at once at the pitch of their lungs made confusion worse confounded.
Yesterday I baked a batch of gingercakes and to-day we have given two or so to all the children in our “yard,” and to a few others. We made the old African woman’s heart glad by a little tea and sugar, and a warm shawl from Mr. Wright’s store. You do not know what a fine, dignified old thing she can be. To-day her daughter came in bringing two quarts of groundnuts and a dozen big sweet potatoes — “Manners” on Christmas, the daughter said. She is a strapping, middle-aged woman. Mother Katie has a strange history and is over a hundred years old, but bright mentally as if she were but forty. She is blind and suffers horribly with her eyes.
Evening.
Miss Lynch and a colored teacher from the North, Mr. Freeman, dined here and seemed well satisfied. They have just gone. I suppose it would seem strange to you to sit down with two colored people, but to us it is the most natural thing in the world. I actually forget these people are black, and it is only when I see them at a distance and cannot recognize their features that I remember it. The conversation at dinner flowed just as naturally as if we were Northern whites. Both Mr. Freeman and Miss Lynch have education and talk well. General Sherman at Hilton Head received General Saxton with flattering honor, and General Foster more coolly. General Sherman is quartered in Savannah.[1] That evacuation is a blessing if it leaves the country as this has been left, for freedmen under Northern influence. I wish the Southerners would all evacuate their whole territory.
[1] General Sherman had succeeded in reaching Savannah on December 22, 1864, after marching two hundred and fifty miles from Atlanta to the sea.
