June 10.— Lewis’s Kentucky brigade has been lately in an engagement, and has lost heavily. Many of the men are killed and captured. In it were three brothers, named Laws, from Louisville, Kentucky; one of them, Frank, I knew well. He was an excellent young man. He and one of his brothers left here not very long ago to rejoin the army. We have been told that all three are prisoners. Frank was mortally wounded, and is supposed dead. The youngest is wounded, but not so badly. O, my heart aches when I see the very flower of our land snatched away as they are. A friend, in contemplating a battlefield, writes that his heart is almost broken; and it is not much wonder.
There is not a day passes but we hear of the death of some of the men we have had here as nurses or patients. I bid good-by to many a man, and the next thing we hear he is dead and gone.
A week or two ago I received from Dr. Quintard a package of books, “Balm for the Weary and Wounded.” It is a work prepared by himself for the soldiers. The little fellow of the Twenty-ninth Alabama has got one, which he seems to prize like gold.
