Middletown, Maryland, September 26, 1862.
Dear Uncle : — Lucy is here and we are pretty jolly. She visits the wounded and comes back in tears, then we take a little refreshment and get over it. I am doing well. Shall, perhaps, come home a little sooner than I expected to be able to. I am now in a fix. To get me for the Seventy-ninth, some of its friends got an order to relieve me from the Twenty-third from the War Department. So I am a free man, and can go or come as I see fit. I expect, however, to stay with [the] Twenty-third.
Shall probably start home in ten days or so. I got your letter of the 18th. You need have no anxiety about me. I think I shall come home by way of Cleveland and Fremont, stopping a few days with you. Love to all.
H.
S. BIRCHARD.
