Nov. 18th.
Dear Eliza: Your most delightful letter has just been read aloud amid the cheers of the assembled family. What a splendid time you are having with your brigadiers and serenades. How I should like to sacrifice myself and join you in a few of your “noble” sprees, and become acquainted with some of your suffering generals. We, meantime, have been devoting ourselves, giving all our time and energy to the work of soothing and captivating a poor nervous soldier, Major Anderson. I suppose you heard that we started on our Christian enterprise the day after you left again for the same work. When we reached Tarrytown, the scene of our labors, we were received, as such heroines should be, with a great deal of state, and as we found a dinner-party of some twenty awaiting us we rushed up stairs to dress in our red silk and our mauve. . . . The whole regiment of us encamped in the house for the night and we had a jolly time.
On Wednesday, General Anderson, wife and son arrived. Mrs. A. is a great invalid and did not appear for the first two days, and when at last she was announced I looked to see a pale shadow glide in, and was astonished by the sight of a little, fat, plumpy woman with big bare arms and a good deal of jet jewelry; quite a talkative, frisky person. The General is lovely, quiet and gentlemanly and devoted to young ladies—a very important requisite in a hero. His health is very much shattered but his loyalty is unshaken. We were speaking of a lady who was engaged to a Southerner. “Break it off,” he said, “break it at once, he is a lunatic; I would as lief go into an insane asylum and argue with a man who calls himself Christ, as reason with a secessionist.” Mrs. Anderson said she never saw such a change as being up in Tarrytown made in her husband. In town he was worn out by callers and indifferent people who came to see the hero and ask him why he did not do this and that and the other at Sumter; and propound their own theories as to how he should have acted. . . . We told General Anderson you were in Washington doing what you could, etc., and he said “God bless them, it is a good work they are doing.” . . . We were sorry to come home on Tuesday, but had to, as I had invited the _______s and Mr. ______ to dinner. When we got home about an hour before dinner not a soul was here, Mother and Abby gone to Sing Sing for the day, Jane dodging a procession on Broadway, and one dish of chops ordered for dinner! We sent William out for jelly-cake, beef, etc., and with a spread of linen and glass, which fortunately was not in the closet of which Mother had the key, we set out quite a nice little table. . . . Cousin Mary Greene, Gardiner, and little Gardy arrived yesterday; the two last are still here. Gardy cuts into every conversation, asking innumerable and unanswerable questions: is now reading Ferdinand Second as pastime! aged ten.
