Sumter S. C.
Feb. 17, 1869

Dear Fuller,

Waiting for my breakfast nothing but corncake and coffee when it comes but the corn cake is nice--not of the hoe variety--and the coffee is just delicious. We don't use chicory in the South. I doubt if in the whole country you could find a paper of "roasted & ground." Nothing but the genuine berry serves to fire the Southern heart.

You pity the moanings of our poor School Commissioner but you can hardly appreciate his trials. In an old civilization like ours of New England where grown men who cannot read and write are more rare than gorillas how can you understand the state of a half savage country like this of South Carolina, where since the memory of man there was never a free school out of Charleston in the whole state? A lady who had to struggle for a livelihood and who was telling me how in the midst of numerous other duties she had to find time to teach her little boys to read--said to me a while ago; "I cannot afford to send them to school, and really Miss Smith if there were a free school here I wouldn't be too proud to send them there!" Shades of Horace Mann! I wished I could take her into the public schools of Boston--the best in the world--and show her what free schools become in a free country. She spoke the disgrace the people all feel in such a thing. It looks to them as it would look to me to take service in a city for instance--or to you to turn circus-rider. This feeling in the upper classes will keep down the lower classes. I expect to see terrible times when the schools are established and education is compulsory. The blacks are far better of every-way than the whites--the poor whites I mean.

There: my corn-cake smokes upon the table. I send you a sprig of mistletoe berries--hope they won't be quite crushed before they reach you. Love to Mrs. Fisk.

Yours truly,

Jane B. Smith.