To Mrs. Lyon.
Camp Clear Creek, Miss., Monday, July 21, 1862. —Yesterday I was Field Officer of the Day (the officer who has charge of the pickets and outside posts), and I was in the saddle nearly all day and tramping a good deal of the night, so I feel stupid today.
I keep your picture hanging in my tent, where I can lie on my bed, that is, on the ground, and gaze at it and get sentimental, and fight flies. Speaking of flies, the Egyptian plagues, although they had locusts, and lice, and frogs, I believe, were a failure, because they did not have flies. Such swarms of them as infest our camps, drawn here by the debris of a great army, you can not conceive of. They are the common house fly and, like everything else here, are dull and stupid— don’t know enough to go when you tell them to. So much for flies.
