The last picture I have of you was a drawing made soon after your marriage--sad, bad, unhappy incident.

I have kept it by me always.

It warms my heart in winter; it cools my eyes in summer.
My estate is neither North nor South, but farther South than North.
In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert.

I'm writing in the summer now.

I look out of the window and see hundreds of acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at work.