JUST BEFORE THE WAR. I TURN in review to the years, so rife with interest, just preceding the war. In 1855 my husband went into business in New York City, and I, with my two eldest children, accompanied him. It seems but yesterday that we strolled together through the old historic precincts of New York. I used to sit in Trinity churchyard for hours while my children played among the tombs, scratching the moss from the letters, and I wrote or studied, surrounded by the noise and clamor of trade, but as much alone as if in the heart of a forest. There, during the earlier part of our residence, I wrote my press letters and read. Later we moved up town, in the very heart of the city, where we were living when the events preceding the war begun to shape them selves into such ominous foreshadowings. Our summers were spent in the city, our winters in the South. In 1858 we had for our companion much of the time a most beautiful Boston girl, whose father had spent all his life in Mexico. He had come on to Boston and was carrying his daughter to Mexico to make a trade in a silver mine, she to be a part of the stock in trade, as wife of Don Josie Patillo, 59 years old. The whole party was stopping at our hose. A gallant black-haired friend of ours fell desperately in love with her, and carried off this lily of loveliness right in the face of the swearing old pirate, her father, and Don Josie. The excitement over the matter in our hotel was about equal to two fires and a murder, and I was pounced upon for helping it on.