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mother and sisters could talk about was the blockade and how they can’t get any coffee or sugar. I came back to the Academy feeling worse than if I’d spent Sunday here alone. Is there something wrong with me, for feeling like this?
    Today Mrs. Elliott let me spend nearly the whole afternoon at Mrs. Acklen’s, copying an Italian painting of St. Peter in Chains. Enclosed is my sketch—quite clumsy—and a study of Mrs. Acklen’s dog sleeping.
    I hope all is well with you on your Island tonight.
    Your friend always,
Susanna
    Cora Poole, Southeast Harbor
Deer Isle, Maine
To
Susanna Ashford, Nashville Female
Academy
Nashville, Tennessee
T UESDAY , N OVEMBER 12, 1861
    Dearest Susanna,
    As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country
. Your letter must have reached Boston only days after I left the city.
    Needless to say, I fainted with horror at your shameless conduct in going “down the line.” Nothing less will do for you, wicked girl, than to forever after wear a large red “C” sewn on your garments for, “Curiosity.” Did you don a false mustache? How did you disguise your voice? It has always amazed me that the men in Shakespeare’s plays never caught on to the fact that there was something a trifle dainty about “Cesario” and “Ganymede.” Did you smoke a cigar? I search in vain for even one sketch.
    It has been snowing heavily since yesterday noon. We feared Papa might be trapped here when the storm came on in earnest. Ollie has stretched ropes to the barn from the back door, so that Mother and I hold on to them when we venture out to feed the hens and milk the cows and goats, without fear of straying in blowing snow.
T HURSDAY , N OVEMBER 14
    Still snowing. With the house “banked” in spruce-boughs, the shutters stay closed from November to March, and the dim daylight can only be seen in the attic. As a child I thought nothing of this, but once I went to the Seminary on the mainland, I would look back on these dark winters, and wonder how I could have endured them.
    In truth, I had good need for the cheer your letter brought me. Upon my return last week, Elinor and Deborah came to the farm to welcome me. The silence that fell on them when I said that my Emory had joined, not the Union Army, but the Confederate, went to my heart like a dagger-blow. They recovered quickly, and gave me loud and angry commiseration, assuring me I will still be welcome to the Ladies Reading Circle that we three founded when we were barely schoolgirls.But as they were leaving, Elinor took me aside, and told me, quite seriously, that I had grounds to divorce Emory, for desertion.
    Mother had put me to work at once, helping her finish her cheeses, and then make the soap. Between aching shoulders and washing the grease from my hair, I had little occasion to think. Yet now, snowbound, my thoughts return to their silence, and the look on Elinor’s face. No one here speaks of Emory. Mother reads the Bible to Peggie and I offered to teach her writing and ciphering, but she manifests no interest in it, preferring to sew. With the house closed up, everything in it smells of smoke.
S ATURDAY , N OVEMBER 16
    Sunlight this morning like the trumpets of angels, but oh my, it is bitterly cold! Ollie and I donned snowshoes and dug out the path to the “house of office,” filled with childish delight to be out-doors again and able to breathe fresh, sweet air. The summer kitchen is stacked with cut wood to its low ceiling, and more heaped around the barn. All afternoon Ollie and I have lugged in buckets of snow to melt for water, for baths tonight. This means the parlor will have a fire this evening, and there will be oceans of spilled soapy water to be mopped from the kitchen floor before we can go to bed! The weather looks to hold clear for church in Northwest Harbor tomorrow. Mother and I will bake, for coffee in the church hall between services, the scent of ginger and molasses almost better than the cakes