Next morning we had a look at the city, and a sad one. This was a noted seat of culture, wealth, and fashion before the war, the dread marks of which were still plainly seen on every hand. The main street, that was a pride to the State thirty years ago, was burned by the Confederates themselves to save it from the "invaders." Large squares of house lots are vacant still, grass-grown, and ruin-covered, with here and there a poor, shaky-looking store cheek by jowl with a board shanty filled with negro children.
In walking through this city one could not help moralizing on the awful affliction that befalls a defeated country. Here are the men, middle-aged and still young, who remember the proud and gracious old times, and who are doomed forever to contrast them with the sordid and compromising efforts of hopelessly broken fortunes. Over all the country round about Elizabeth City the fierce waves of war had rolled, leaving a fearful mark. We saw noble houses, once filled with beauty and luxury, now crowded with colored working people; gardens in which the roses, reverting to single-petalled wildness, struggled for sunlight under burdened clothes-lines.
But we saw one house to remember with pleasure, with a rose garden in front of it like a picture
