Sumter, S. C.
Jan. 12, 1868

My dear Fuller,

It is a nice easy night, and looks like a snowstorm out of doors--we are not likely to be "Snowbound" however--and having nothing better to do I will try to answer in detail several of your last letters. Don't you wish you had a magnificent great bunch of holly all full of clusters of bright red berries--such an one as fastens my eyes every time I look up.

I don't know that I can give you any reason than a "woman's reason" (i.e. because it is,) why works of art are so much more valuable than the natural things of which they are copies, but everybody knows that it is so. One of the nicest little mantle-ornaments I ever saw was a little bronze match box made to imitate an old worn-out shoe with a patch on one side. I don't think anything could be much less interesting than the original model of such a thing. I do not think it a repulsive thought by any means that from our dust springs beautiful things of nature. Don't you know the little song:

"Tis thy dust my darling gives life to each rose,
Tis because thou hast withered the violet blows."

But personally I have not much of that kind of feeling. It is my father's memory alone I honor when I lay a wreath upon his grave, and the stone inscribed with Edward's name is as dear to me as if his dust lay beneath. "They mourn the dead who live as they desire:"--I wish I did that!

It is rather a dangerous--or at least an unwise--question which you put concerning my inconveniences for people are usually given to loquacity on that topic, and I have no reason to suppose myself an exception to the rule. I don't know however that I have any worth mentioning except the other inhabitants of my house, and the necessity of remaining five hours per day in a cold room. The last will abate as the warm weather approaches; the other is probably a dispensation sent to teach me patience and forbearance which it hasn't done yet I am sorry to say.

I am very much afraid a "day in my school" would bore you excessively, and a description of the same scarcely less. But since you desire it you shall have it. Let me premise that my school is not in the least what I should like to have it;--I have a very grand ideal, but it is on the top of a mountain--plainly visible, but very difficult of access.

Well; come into my schoolroom, followed by a crowd of darkies little & big. (If it is Monday morning, the first thing will be to put up the movable partition which divides my apartment from the primary school-room, which is presided over by the Misses Hunt. That is one of my "inconveniences"--the partition I mean-when it is down.)

They fly to my aid in taking out my books, arranging my chairs & table, ringing the bell etc. Then at the sound of the bell all is quiet, & they read in turn from the New Testament. Then we all read together a Psalm, repeat the Lord's Prayer, and sing. I call the roll, let in the tardy ones, and then the business begins. I have six classes in reading. The class in the 5th Reader comes first. They are all girls and were Miss Breck's especial pets. They are all preparing for teachers. Consequently I drill them a great deal upon the elements, analysing words, examples in emphasis & inflection &tc. The next class--in the 4th reader--is my pet class. It is almost all boys, and has been under my instruction from the Primer upward. The delight of their lives is to read in concert some such piece as G. W. Hellen's, beginning "Wake your harp music!--louder! --higher!" and I drill them a great deal in that way as well as in the other exercises mentioned. The next class--in the 3rd Reader--is small, and has not much to inspire one. Then follows three classes in the 2nd Reader, which I should like to condense into two, but cannot on account of dissimilarity of books. In connection with their reading lessons I teach them the parts of speech and some elements of grammar. Then the sound of my bell calls the attention of the whole school--(there is a pleasant fiction to the effect that all are instantaneously "in order," but the facts of the case are slightly at variance)--and I drill them in Mental Arithmetic,--which they like, and in which some of them are very expert. Then it is 11 1/2 (we begin at 9 exactly) and they have a recess of half an hour--sometimes more if I have a good deal to do in hearing loose recitations and the like as I often do. When them come in I have another general exercise such as teaching them the parts of a circle (they can give you the geometrical definition of the same, and--more than that--explain it) applying it to mathematical Geography, teaching them about the parallels, zones, &tc.--always presenting the thing first and then the name, and when I give the name teaching them to spell it, and making all who can, write it on their slates.