Abby Howland Woolsey to Mother.
New York, April 26th.
My Dear Mother: We are all bright and well this fine morning. Jane and Charley have gone to the Philharmonic rehearsal and Carry is practicing some of her old music on the piano, in a way to make you, who love to hear it, happy. Mr. Prentiss came in last night to see us, looking well, but queer, as he always does in a black stock. He had been hard at work moving his books, and did not intend to go to prayer meeting, and evidently didn’t suppose we had gone, or he wouldn’t have come to spend the evening with us. He told us much that was pleasant and funny about his visit in Washington, which, short as it was, paid him well, he thought, for going. . . . He hopes E. and G. will get their wishes and go to Fort Monroe, as they are in a state of mind to be fretted and troubled if they don’t. . . .
Very few of the wounded brought by the Cossack from Newbern were landed here. . . . All were crazy to get home, all full of spirits and fun. The five or six who were carried to the N. E. Relief only fretted at having to spend a night longer on the road. The man with both legs gone smoked his pipe and read his newspaper. His chief anxiety was to go into New Jersey by a certain train. . . . Five or six ladies were at the rooms, Jane among them, yesterday, a lady apiece and several men to each volunteer. . . . No wonder it dazed an Irishman just released from four months imprisonment in Richmond. “Begor,” he said, “I can’t pay for all this!” . . . Jane says there is nothing much for the present set of ladies to do, except to rearrange the piles of shirts, etc., on the closet shelves—changing them about from the way she had fixed them! They immediately proceeded to that work, and each new set of ladies will have that, at least, to occupy them. As for the Park Barracks, a portion of them have been scrubbed and whitewashed, the bunks taken down, neat iron beds all made and put up. Mrs. Mack is to live there as Matron, and, for the purpose of a mere halting place and infirmary, it is as good an one as they could have, though too many ladies were on hand, switching things over with their hoops, giving unlimited oranges to men with the dysentery, and making the surgeons mad. There were, beside, half the medical students in the city, all staring and eager for jobs;—no difficulty in the men’s having all, and more than all, the attention they want. One good thing Mrs. Woodruff did, at Mrs. Buck’s suggestion,—sent over to the Astor House for a steward, and through him ordered a good dinner brought in of tender beef, fresh eggs, etc., for the twenty or thirty New York and New Jersey men who were resting there. It will be charged to New York State, which supports the Barracks. . . . We have Lloyd’s map of Virginia hung under the front parlor picture of the Virgin, along the back of the sofa, and we sit there and read the papers and study it.
