Camp of the 83rd P. V.,
Hall’s Hill, Va., Feb. 3. 1862.
Dear Friend P—s.:—
It is just such a morning as would make a misanthrope happy. Byron’s bitterest and most sarcastic strains were, I believe, written in just such weather. It snowed last night and rains this morning and now two or three inches of slush cover unfathomable mud. Great black clouds roll up heavily from the west and slowly drizzle down discomfort in the camps. The evergreens that made our camp look so bright and homelike about the holidays are giving way under the abuse heaped upon them and now they stand leaning at every angle but that of 90 degrees, covered with ice and weeping great pearly tears of grief at their cruel treatment. The smoke curls slowly from the myriad pipes of the camp and makes a desperate effort to rise above the tents, then sinks despairingly to the ground. The cooks stir up their sputtering fires in vain efforts to make their kettles boil, and, as the rain drips off their ponchos, they look as if they would cook one more meal and die. I have been lounging on my bunk since breakfast, drawing the Spanish out of my cigar and working off the fatigue of yesterday’s guard duty, and now I have taken up my pen to answer your letter of the 24th of January. What I shall write, I can’t tell. There is no news beyond what you have in the papers. “All is quiet along the Potomac.” Our marching orders are “played out.” The boys are getting so that they won’t believe anything now. They sit around the fire and while away these dull days the best they can. How time does pass away, though! Here it is the 3rd of February. Seems to me I never knew a winter to pass so quickly.
