Chapin’s Farm, Va.,
December 26, 1864.
My Dear Sister L.:—
This will not reach you in time to present my respects in a “Merry Christmas,” so I will wish you a “Happy New Year” and many returns of the season, and tell you how I spent my Christmas. There are so few Sundays in the army that the occurrence of the holiday on that day was no drawback. The military part of the festivity was a Division Dress Parade and the social, or our social part was a dinner at “Ye Quartermaster’s.” Lieutenant Burrows is a capital hand at carrying out anything of that kind and he determined to do the thing up right.
We had two guests. Colonel Samuel C. Armstrong,[1] of the Eighth, and Lieutenant Colonel Mayer of the Forty-fifth, two men who would be considered acquisitions in almost any social circle. Colonel A. was born in the Sandwich Islands and Colonel M. in Buenos Ayres, South America, and both are full of stories of adventure, travel and society. Mayer is the hero of half a dozen duels, which is not much of a recommendation, I know, but the custom of his country makes it a very different thing from dueling here.
I will not undertake to describe our dinner in detail, but we had oyster soup, fish boiled, roast fowl (chicken) and mutton, potatoes, peas and tomatoes, oysters, fried and raw, and for dessert mince pie, fruit cake, apples, peaches, grapes, figs, raisins, nuts, etc., and coffee, and for wassail a rousing bowl of punch. The band of the regiment played in front of the house during dinner, and the leader says he played three hours. The long and short of it is we had as elegant and recherche an affair as often comes off in the army, enjoyed ourselves thoroughly and nobody went home drunk.
Do you know that since my last letter to you I have passed my twenty-fifth birthday? And now I am beginning my twenty-sixth year. My years would indicate that I ought to be a man, but I must confess to much of the boy in my nature yet. To be sure I have grown some in strength of character since I was twenty-one, but I seem to be a long way off from the condition of a man in society. Do you think I will be married before I am thirty? I don’t see much prospect of it. I am twenty-five and not in love yet, and sometimes I think it is the best thing that could have happened to me that I have been beyond the reach of temptation in that line, until I had strength of character enough to look at this matter as a man should. God willing, I mean to have a wife and a home, but when, is beyond my knowledge.
I send you an excellent picture of my late captain. I send it to board only, for money would not induce me to part with it if I lost my others. I think you have a picture of Lieutenant Thos. Young, who is now captain of “E” Company.
I have again been obliged to decline a captaincy, for the present at least. It is gratifying to me to have had it offered to me, but, in the present state of my health, I told the colonel I did not think I ought to accept it. I would rather be a quartermaster on duty than a sick captain.
[1] Note—Founder of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. He was for more than thirty years at the head of this institution, which has done so much for the colored race. Booker T. Washington was one of his pupils.
