Mrs. Mary Slaughter, matron of the Colored Ladies’ Home, has just returned form a very interesting trip in West Virginia, spending a few days near her old plantation home, where Col. Meyers, her old master, lived.

Mrs. Slaughter said this old plantation was near Martinsburg, and that she went back to this place, where she visited some old colored friends, staying at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Blake. Mrs. Slaughter explained there are not many of her old friends left and those who are living are getting up in years.

This trip to Mrs. Slaughter meant but one thing, “that everything material perished and decays, only the soul is eternal”, so she told me.

She first went to visit the “big house,” they called the home of the owner of the plantation. This, she said, is falling down. “There was only Col. Myers, his wife and two children in the family. All have died, and there is no one to look after the place. “It looked very desolate. Everything had gone, and I could not help but think that nothing much that is of this earth lasts, it truly is dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” she said.

Altogether her trip, which lasted from Saturday to Tuesday, was filled with interesting experiences, and while some sorrow was mingled with the pleasure, she felt very happy to have had the opportunity to once more go back to her old home, see the old friends and then come back to her work in the colored home here.