Falmouth, Va., Feb. 25, 1863.
Dear Cousin L.:—
Though I receive a good many from here and there, your letters have had a charm for me I found in no others, and I have felt uneasy and restless when the mail has come night after night and no letter from you. I don’t know but I am babyish to think so much of my letters, but it is almost all I have to do now, to read letters and write and think, think. I get tired of this thinking, too, so don’t blame me if I write the second time in return for yours.
I received a letter a few nights ago that interested me very much. When I left home there was a young lady teaching in the village academy. She called the day I left to bid me good-bye and godspeed, and remarked that “she could not shoulder the musket but she was going to the war, not as la fille du regiment, but as nurse.” I am afraid I smiled a little incredulously. I did not think she was really in earnest, but was only saying something to express her sympathy for the soldiers, and every one had plenty of that. Before I left Erie, however, she had gone—tendered her services, been accepted and sent to St. Louis. I heard no more from her till I received that letter, and supposed she had long ago returned to her friends in Indianapolis, but all this time she had been in the army wherever she could soothe the pain or add to the comfort of the sick and wounded soldiers. Six months she was a prisoner among the chivalrous butternuts, much of the time in Corinth. I must confess I admire her spirit, don’t you? She was not bound, as our volunteers are, for any length of time, still she has not deserted yet. “Weary often, but never tired,” she writes.[1]
One of my tent mates left me yesterday morning to report in New York. He goes to receive a commission in one of the black regiments. He has been in the service three months, has never seen a fight except from a distance, and cannot tell to-day whether to hold his gun at shoulder arms with the barrel or rammer to the front. He has been a bugler, an orderly, and the brigade postmaster since he came out, and has never drilled at all. Friends got him the commission. If our negro soldiers are officered by such men, I’m afraid they won’t amount to much.
Whenever you have leisure, remember that I would be very thankful for a letter. Do not think me too much a reprobate. I have made a discovery—there are some in the army who try to live Christians. The other night I stumbled on a little prayer-meeting. The gathering was small, only seven, but it did me more good than many a sermon has.
[1] Note.—Her name was Ada Johnson
