13th.—I have been made very glad by the receipt of a letter this morning from my dear M――. It is older than her letters used to be when they reached me; but whether old or new, her letters never lose their freshness. They are like the beautiful evergreens, standing in mid-winter amid the bare and ragged oaks. When I cannot get a new one I often go back to one of the old, and always read it with pleasure and instruction. But she does ask so many questions for me to answer. * * * *
At Fortress Monroe and at Norfolk lie the Merrimac and the Monitor, in sight of and watching each other, like two dogs with a bone between them, each wanting and neither daring to take it. By the side of the Monitor lies the Mystic, (now named the Galena,) and the little model of Stevens’ battery —all iron-clad. By the side of the Merrimac lie four ironclad gun boats. Either of these miniature fleets, unwatched by the other, could in a few days destroy the whole wooden fleet of the other party, and burn its principal cities. Either one, unwatched by the other, could change the whole aspect of the war, and work a revolution which would shake the world and indelibly stamp its future. For these reasons they do not fight. There is too much at stake for either to venture. Suppose a fight in which the Merrimac should prove successful; the mouth of the James and the York Rivers would be effectually closed to us, our supplies entirely cut off, this army starved out in a week, captured or destroyed, the iron fleet of the enemy free to go where it pleased, and, in twenty days, the destruction of Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore and Boston, would be as certain as that the enemy should wish to destroy them. The stakes are too large. We dare not risk the wager.
