April 22 — I took the train this morning at Staunton and arrived at Gordonsville at noon. In passing through the Blue Ridge tunnel to-day I perceptibly felt the difference in the climate between the west and east side of the mountain; the west side was considerably cooler.
This morning when I got on the train at Staunton I met a citizen, an old acquaintance from New Market, who remarked that if I had any money about my person or pockets I would better be careful and look out a little for pickpockets, as he had just been relieved of fifty dollars in a rather mysterious and unexplainable manner. My purse was very flat and emaciated indeed, but I pushed it down a little deeper in my pocket for future reference. However, its inherent vitality was very low and its powers nearly exhausted. I stepped from the train at Charlottesville to buy a pie, but found that my poor flat purse was gone, sure enough, and I got no pie. Some hocus-pocus and sleight-of-hand performer without my permission extracted it from my pocket between Waynesboro and Charlottesville; the performance must have taken place while the train passed through the tunnel. My purse contained two Confederate postage stamps, three dollars in Confederate currency, and three quarter dollars in silver. “‘Twas something, nothing; ’twas mine, ’tis his”; he robbed me of that which not enriches him, but made me too poor to buy a pie. It must be a depraved and despicable grade of rascality fortified in a big bunch of meanness that will rob a Confederate soldier in this year of 1864.
I arrived in camp this afternoon, two miles west of Gordonsville.
