Howard Grove Hospital Richmond, Va. June. ‘68

My dear Miss Lowell:

I have run away from home, desperate to get where I can reach you; and now I will talk right on, saying whatever comes to my mind. On my way here, I walked through the streets where black-smith’s shops and stables centre, and urged the laborers to abstinence from liquor and tobacco. Here one can seldom urge the expense as an argument against its use, because it costs nothing to the thousands of colored-people who are employed in the tobacco warehouses; and tobacco-lovers outside of the warehouses find many ways of keeping up the weed, without dropping coin in change. Yet there are many who leave their money in cigar-shops and never learn the way to the Freedmen’s Bank.

I embrace every opportunity to suggest building up dollars by saving pennies, and investing them singly in bank-stock. Of course, I say that the dollar must not represent an essential need unmet—but I say to them it is well to put money that may be idly spent or lost where it can be found when a real need must be met. Not many days ago I joined a bright looking working man in his walk, and asked him if he ever went to the Temperance meetings. He said, “Yes,” adding that he never drinks. In reply to my question, “Do you ever put your money into the bank?” he said, “Yes, I put in $35 last year; and I don’t want to touch it. I want to buy some land, sometime, but not now. I want to buy when Government sells.” “Why do you think the govt will sell?” I asked. “Uncle Sam gave it out so, during the war,” he replied with confidence and simplicity, adding, “I served two years and a half in the war.” I felt, all the time that I was walking by the side of a noble man. No invitation is more welcome to an intelligent colored man than this, viz. “Come, and let us reason.” It is pleasant, indeed, to talk with the thoughtful and earnest; to catch the serious light of their eyes, and to take counsel with them. Paying, as one does, most justly, due reverence to crude opinions, or prejudices honestly held and honestly expressed.

At one of the temperance meetings a man said, after signing the pledge, “I ‘se taken the pledge tonight, not hastily, but wisely, I hope. I had a great deal of trouble, and instead of applying at the throne of grace, as I ought to have done, I thought I would seek consolation in liquor. - Its stronger than any chain. Its the worst master you ever had in your life. It’ll make you sell your soul.”

One speaker said, “Those who have made money by the sale of liquor must be made to resort to the pickaxe and the hoe.”

One very interesting speaker said his father was president of a colored temperance society formed more than thirty years ago. He said he intoxicated himself when be was five (or seven) years. old, and, in shame, he next day signed the temperance pledge, which he had always kept. For some years no colored person was allowed to join the 1st African Church without having first signed the temperance pledge. The colored men love their pipe. They often say to me, “I can give up whiskey much easier than I can tobacco.” But instances where the unwholesomeness of both are acknowledged, and neither are used, are by no means rare. Though Parton would say, if he should look upon our numerous and busy tobacco-houses, “It does not pay,” we tobacco-haters are half-reconciled to their activity, because they bring present relief into so many households.

Still, we see all around us the demoralizing influence of idleness, and the depressing influence of unsuccessful clamor for remunerative work. Not a few hardworkers are growing thin and weak by trying to live on promises to pay. Still, here—as elsewhere, people with ready money leave their washing-bills unpaid; and I visit many women stooping over their washtubs, weak in body and hopeless in mind, who say, “I keeps on washin for em, for if I leave em they’ll never pay me what they owe me.” So wearing care and scanty food unite with their task-masters in grinding them very small. It is astonishing what light food sustains men hard-working. I have seen a coal-heaver sit down to a dinner of half-baked corn-bread and coffee. I have seldom seen a greedy col’d child, and I have never seen one who would not give up his dinner for almost anything that would bring him pleasure.

Children of the poorest and most distracted mothers seem to pick up certain general all-pervading ideas of neatness. In all my schools a general cry would be raised if a child should return an undrained dipper to the water-bucket. And until taught economy by the teachers few children would pass a schoolmate a dipper of water to which he had put his own lips. Anything like an oath sets a whole schoolroom on fire,. and if it is heard at recess, the children rush to their teacher with Oh’s! and Ab’s! and staring eyeballs.

I have often told you how rare it is to find a dirty colored-house. A curiosity-hunter from the North might think the neat-houses the rare ones; but to one unfamiliar with the homes of the poor, simple barreness and poverty express filth.

Our brightest and most advanced scholars are leaving us for the factories, and a religious revival, which has spread its wings all over the city, has shut the eyes of many at their desks. The new spirit takes the same phase in every school. The children refuse to join in the singing, are disinclined to go out at recess, and are very unwilling to lift their heads from their desks. Sometimes a child is two or three weeks in this condition, and the teacher is perplexed to learn her duty in the premises. The children are unwilling to stay away from School; and yet their presence is unprofitable to themselves, and distracting to the others. In the majority of instances, the children fall back into their former careless, hard ways. One of my most rebellious boys, an urchin who has the past winter been dismissed from two private schools for insubordination has been religiously inclined for sometime; but his natural surliness and unwillingness to obey have held him back. A few days ago I sent for his father, who works near my school, and told hint of some special misdemeanor. I was Particularly interested in the tone of The Father’s condemnation. “I thought, my son, you had experienced religion! You should show in your life that you have done so. Religion will break your self-will; it will make you humble and submissive. You disobedient! and speaking in church as you did last night! You shall not go into the water, young man, until you show that you have changed. Obey, your teacher. Don’t use your judgment.” I find that most religious col’d people demand a change of heart, and a change of life from all who are quickened by revivals.

Mr. Forester, an intelligent colored man (at whose [?] Miss Stevenson, my sister, and I boarded, for a while, three years ago) and a leading member of a Methodist Church in this city said, in church, a short time ago, “Our children are not taught hell either in our week-day schools, or Sunday Schools.” Our (Boston) ladies, some of whom heard the statement, felt that the censure was meant for them because they teach on Sundays in Mr F ‘s school.

One morning on my way to school, I passed two or three abandoned women, who were listening with respectful and serious attention to a tall, dignified-looking woman who was showing them the better way. I stopped near the group, and heard her say, “He says come just as you are. Does not he,” she said, appealing to me. “Come ragged, come naked, come filthy, come just as you are. I hate nobody, I only bate their ways. And I’m bound to urge everybody to love the Lord. My soul was set free long before the fetters fell from my body. God gave me his freedom, but the little children of this earth would not give me theirs. I brought religion with me into this place. I’m so glad I did, for I could not get it here.”

(She keeps a small eating house in a low neighborhood.) “I want all these women to find peace. Nothing that can happen to them will trouble them if they will seek religion, not the noises, and coming and dying away of a revival, but something deep, to live by. And then they will have peace in heaven. God will say ‘Sit down, your feet are sore, and rest. You’ll never have to work more for a mouthful of food, or a rag of clothing.’ You are a Yankee God sent the Yankees to Richmond. I always knew they would come. I said they would come, and I said never a gun would be fired, and no gun was fired.”

I today attended a monster baptism of two hundred and thirty persons (colored). But few of them lost their self-control. Now and then a woman would “Thank God! thank God!” with exultant emphasis. And two or three gave way to physical excitement. The officiating minister (a colored man) and the deacons checked all such demonstrations. And the minister said, after some shouting, “We shall expect that all who shout, will fall back into the ways of the world again.” Thousands crowded the church as spectators, and, at times, the buzz of tongues was beard. But the vast multitude was under the ready control of the quiet, dignified preacher, when he said, “My friends, remember that this is the house of God. We are not in a theatre. Let us have quiet.”

Judge Underwood, Chief Justice Chase, and Henry A. Wise sat in front of me this morning. It was a strange sight indeed, to see H. A. Wise walk in as the companion of Cf. Justice Chase, “ - Phillips, Greeley, Charles Burleigh, and others would, perhaps say Chase hopes to employ Wise as a paving-hand on the White-house road; but I am willing to believe that their seeming intimacy indicated that Wise is turning to the right. Not long ago he said, “I will say one thing for the North, it does not mete out to us what we, as victors, should have given it. We should have disfranchised the entire people, and they Would have found no mercy at our hands.”

I saw in her home, today, a very interesting colored woman who reads the Anti-Slavery Standard with great readiness’ and with understanding. She was sold from her fathers at five years of age, and he was her sole teacher. Miss Canedy found two of her boys lying on the grass the other day—reading Wendell Phillips’ and Sumner’s speeches. One of them asked what Charles Sumner meant when be said, “The God of Christianity is not the God of battles.”’ ‘Why,” said the young man, “we always said after a successful battle, God gave us the victory.”

I have some classes in the “Lincoln Primer,” which has a picture of freedmen dancing in honor of liberty. One day a very black, thick-lipped, broad-nosed, savage looking boy of mine (who has gone right on, with marvellous strides, from his A.B.Cs into the Second reader) made the discovery of the picture and made merry, from his woolly crown to his shambling shoes, crying out, “So glad they’re free, dun gone and put it in a book!”

Oh, I must decline for you the verb “Dun” as I hear it daily used.

Present
I dun it
You dun it
He dun it
we uns dun it
They uns dun it
You uns dun it

Perfect
I gone dun dun it
You gone dun dun it
He gone dun dun it
we uns gone dun dun it
You uns gone dun dun it
They uns gone dun dun it

First future
I gwine dun it
You gwine dun it
He gwine dun it
we uns gwine dun it
You uns gwine dun it
They uns gwine dun it

Imperfect
I dun dun it
You dun dun it
He dun dun it
we uns dun dun it
They uns dun dun it
You uns dun dun it

Pluperfect
1 dun gone done it
You dun gone done it
He dun gone done it
We uns dun gone done it
You uns dun gone done it
They uns dun gone done it

Second future
I dun gwine dun it
You dun gwine dun it
He dun gwine dun it
we uns dun gwine dun it
They us dun gwine dun it
You uns dun gwine dun it

One of our teachers asked a child the meaning of forget. “When you are sent for a thing to fergit fur to git it,” the child replied. I wonder if I ever told you a Norfolk child’s definition of irrational—’ ‘It’s rational when you have rations, and irrational when you do not.” I bad a little imp in my school early in the winter who was known as Moses Propkins Juice. After careful inquiry, his name was found to be, “Moses, the prophet, the King of the Jews.” I had in my night school, a man who persistently read Abercrombies philosophy, until I happened to think of the “Freedmen’s Book,” as a most refreshing substitute. He was deep in its pages when the ladies from Roxbury accidentally found their way into my school. Let me beg you to thank them for looking there again for me; and will you also state to them that I very much regretted [manuscript ends here]