Heaven and Hell Read Online Free PDF

uplifting."
    She handed him a small pamphlet of a kind he recognized from wartime camps. One of the little religious exhortations published by the American Tract Society.
    "Thank you," he said, and started to read:
    Verily, verily, I say unto you. Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending ...
    Bitter, Charles faced the window again. He saw no angels, no heaven, nothing but the. boundless dark of the Illinois prairie, and the rain--probably a harbinger of a future as bleak as the past. Duncan was undoubtedly right about hard times ahead. He sank farther down on the seat, resting on the bony base of his spine and watching the darkness pass by.
    Page 24

    Softly, he began to hum the little tune, which conjured lovely pastel images of Mont Royal--cleaner, prettier, larger than it had ever been before it burned. The little tune sang to him of that lost home, and his lost love, and everything lost in the four bloody years of the Confederacy's purple dream. It sang of emotions and a happiness that he
    ^as sure he would never know again.
    r
    Lh
    22 HEAVEN AND HELL
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    to those who suffer.--It would seem almost
    incredible that men will continue to suffer
    when such a Remedy as plantation bitters is
    within their reach. Persons troubled with
    Headache, Low Spirits, Heartburn, Pain in
    the Side, Back, or Stomach, Cramps, Bad Breath,
    and other symptoms of that horrid monster,
    Dyspepsia, are earnestly invited to test
    this Remedy.
    MADELINE'S JOURNAL
    June, 1865. My dearest Orry, I begin this account in an old copybook because I need to talk to you. To say I am adrift without you, that I live with pain, does not begin to convey my state. I will strive to keep self-pity from these pages but I know I will not be entirely successful.
    One tiny part of me rejoices that you are not here to see the ruin of your beloved homeland. The extent of the ruin is only emerging slowly. South Carolina offered some 70,000 men to the Page 25

    misbegotten war and over a quarter were killed, the highest of any state, it's said.
    Freed Negroes to the number of 200,000 now roam at large.
    This is half the state's population, or more. On the river road last week I met Maum Ruth, who formerly belonged to the late Francis LaMotte. She clutched an old flour sack so protectively, I was moved to ask what it contained. "Got the freedom in here, and I won't let it go." I walked away full of sadness and anger. How wrong we were not to educate our blacks. They are helpless in the new world into which this strange peace has hurled them.
    ' 'Our'' blacks--/ have paused over that chance wording. It is condescending, and I am forgetful. I am one of them--in Carolina one-eighth black is all black.
    What your sister Ashton spitefully revealed about me in Richmond is now known all over the district. No mention has been made of it in recent weeks. For that, I have you to thank. You are held in high esteem, and mourned. ...
    Lost Causes 23
    We planted four rice squares. We should have a good small crop to sell, if there is anyone to buy. Andy, Jane, and I work the squares each day.
    A pastor of the African Methodist Church married Andy and Jane last month. They took a new last name. Andy wanted Lincoln, but Jane refused; too many former slaves choose it. Instead, they are the Shermans, a selection not exactly certain to endear them to the white population! But they are free people. It is their right to have any name they want.
    The pine house, built to replace the great house burned by Cuffey and Jones and their rabble, has a new coat of whitewash.
    Jane comes up in the evening while Andy works on the tabby walls of their new cottage; we talk or mend the rags that substitute for decent clothing--and sometimes we dip into our "library." It consists of one Godey's Lady's Book from 1863, and the last ten pages of a Southern Literary Messenger.
    Jane speaks often of starting a school, even of asking the new Freedmen's Bureau to help us