Sumter, S. C. Nov. 29, 1866

Dear Fuller:--

You are supposed to be interested in all my joys and sorrows, especially joys, and I am going to tell you what has made me happy this week. And in order to do it to the best advantage, I am going on our economical plan and write between the lines.

The consumption of paper in the department of the South--our portion of it--is really alarming. When the number of letters written reaches an average of ten a week, it is time something was done to make two sheets answer for a letter vide this illegible scrawl. Then to improve the matter still more my head is in a sad state of repletion, and aI cannot tell whether a single word is right or wrong. I feel all at loose ends.

We have moved this week into the house we are to occupy for the winter. It is a white-washed cottage, built after the usual plan of houses here. There is one large room surrounded with little roomlets that seem to have broken out on it like warts. The large room and our roomlet are sealed--that is have an inner layer of boards over the joists and timbers of the house. The other roomlets are merely four barely walls. Closet, peg, or shelf--of these the house is innocent as a hencoop. It is nicely whitewashed which makes it particularly pleasant when you want to brush by somebody and the wall is on the other side--you look as if you had been out in a snowstorm. All the roomlets have outside doors, and the great room has two--all open upon broad stoops. The doors are not troubled with latches or fastenings of any kind. The house boasts two sashed windows; all the rest have wooden shutters, but then we are going to have glass windows when our landlord gets over his hurry. I don't know what his hurry is I am sure. One of his duties is to carry the mail-bag from the station to the post-office, a distance of three-eights of a mile, but that can't be his worry, for he never gets it there till an hour and a half after the ? comes in. Our house is embosomed in cedar trees, dry leaves and turnips. We are so glad to be in a place where we can unpack, and feel as if we were going to stay.

I have begun my winter's work of visiting and have found my winter's pet. It is a poor blind girl who has ha rheumatic fever till her limbs are all drawn out of shape. She has only a grandmother to take care of her, and the grandmother is herself a cripple. Sarah is a mulatto and very pretty indeed. She is a member of the church here on probation, and is to be baptized when Mr. Whittemore comes. I go to her or send for her to come to me every day, to read to her and teach her passages to repeat. Poor girl, she sits there in that poor hut so patient and uncomplaining, that it is enough to make one ashamed to have so little gratitude for so many comforts. Her face always lights up so beautifully when I go in, for she knows my step now, and her grandmother says listens for it all day until I come. Is it not a privilege to be so much to any human being?

One thing the people almost always do when I call is to make me a cup of coffee. It is the only thing most of them can do except bring us a few enormous sweet potatoes--they are so very poor. They make good coffee, too; the only drawback is that they seem to have the same exalted idea of us that the old lady had of Gen. washington under similar circumstances when she assured him that the coffee wouldn't be any too good for his honor if it were all molasses. But I always swallow it bravely and praise it all I can.

I haven't yet got so far as to tell you what has made me happy this week. You remember I told you about Mr. Whittemore to whom I have to write so often and how much I liked his letters, because there is so much individuality about them. I told you he was coming in a few weeks, that he is to be our guest, and that I am anxiously waiting to see if he will fulfil my expectations of him in a nearer acquaintance. He is a Methodist minister--did I tell you that? He is to dedicate the church which is being built here, and in one of his letters wrote me about what was to be done at that time, and mentioned that the Lord's Supper would be celebrated. I began at once to dread the awkwardness of explaining to him the reasons for absenting myself from this ceremony, or else running the risk of deceiving him into thinking me a church-member. At last I resolved to write to him, explaining my position, and appealing to his judgment if I were free to join with the rest or not. I received in return a most kind, most liberal, most Christian letter, which I wish I could show you. He says "Come ye that love the Lord!" is "always my invitation. If you are of that number then are you my sister in Christ, and the blessed Jesus is our Elder Brother as well as Savior. My sister--your own heart is the judge of its acceptance with the Master and fellowship with saints. I shall not send you from the Lord's Supper. I administer not the elements of a sectarian Savior but the sacred memorial of a risen Lord."

You cannot think how happy that letter has made me--not all because I may freely join with my fellow Christians here in the service of love to our elder brother, though that is a great and to me not a common privilege--but because it has given me a friend such as I need here, very, very much. Our work here, if we are faithful, must be a missionary work, and we must have a great deal of religious influence among our people. I, at least, need very much of counsel as to the best manner of approaching them and ministering to their spiritual wants. I must ask such counsel of one in whom I have confidence, and had he written differently, I could never have asked him again.

I must stop. My head is like a humming top.

Now it is tomorrow night, and I am sitting by a blazing fire with this horrid pen to finish your precious letter,--that is I suppose it will be precious in proportion to the effort it requires to write it. I was a little disappointed at not receiving any letter from you today. I wanted some idea to finish up with, having been so destitute of them from the beginning. I thought I had some today, but my carpenter came for me to go over and tell him how to make the pulpit which was, as the immortal Megg remarked, about repeating poetry, "a great mental strain," since I have not been much accustomed to building pulpits heretofore.

How I wish you could come here and see all my people here so I could talk to you about them. Did I tell you about Matt Hampton, who had one "of de bery toughest kind ob massas?" as one of his friends told me. Matt was an overseer--no enviable position for a slave, since he was held responsible for all the misdeeds of those under his charge. "Many de whippin I get, kase de rest didn't do right," said he to me one night. Then I looked at him a great handsome six feet tall fellow, black as night, strong as a lion, true as steel, gentle as a child, and as kind hearted and I fairly burned with indignation. Yet he spoke of it as a thing of course. He has no hard feeling against his master. Could we forgive such wrongs? How much this country has to answer for!

There's a boy come to read--a dear handsome little fellow--who can't come in the day time. Good night-duty calls me. Love to Mrs. Fisk.

Yours truly

Jane B. Smith.
Box 89