Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/275

 Rh almost needless to say that his daughter, knowing the family at Burleigh was living almost without the use of money, did not suggest to him to give that. But what woman could have devised a more compassionate and gracious way of bestowing a gift?

A poor woman in Mississippi has said of him, "The time that my son fell in the well and he was there,— oh! I could have hugged him in my arms. My son told me that the first thing that he saw was that white head bending over him."

", 21st February, 1876.

"The mail of to-day brought me your sweet and truly dutiful letter of the 16th instant. You only want my 'orders,' my dear child, to obey them. God forbid that I should ever give 'orders' to one who is ever ready to anticipate my wishes by the time that I know them myself I had to write that letter to you, painful as it was to me. All that you say of —— I already knew but too well; but the knowledge came too late to be of any benefit to us, and it can now do no good to grieve over it. What we now have to do is to look the thing in the face as it stands, and I will tell Coker that he may look to me for that one hundred dollars next winter. I cannot pay it any sooner, as I find, after my last pound of cotton has been sold, that I have thirty-three dollars and some cents left."

", 14th July, 1876.

. . . "When I fish in the bayous back of the Pass (which I generally do, in preference to fishing in the gulf), I start at sunrise and get back at half-past twelve to one o'clock, and the distance, eight miles, is nearly the same as from Alexandria to Trout Creek. With a buggy and a good horse I never thought anything of the distance; and, besides, I always wanted the family with whom I stayed to enjoy the fruit of my rod. I have caught thirty-two trout (we never counted the perch, goggle-eyes, etc.) in the three hours