Saturday Evening, January, ‘62.
I received yesterday from Mr. Stephen Williams thirty dollars, on the part of Mr. Alexander Van Rensselaer, “for a soldiers’ library.” Stephen, good old soul, said, “ Oh! I’ve got this commission; now won’t you help me? I don’t know about libraries; you can consult Howland,” etc., etc. . . . It will buy about forty plain books for a hospital or regiment. Would the 16th or any regiment in the brigade like one? . . .
Lizzie Greene sent a box of flannel shirts to a Connecticut regiment lately, and put a dozen cigars and a paper of tobacco in a pocket in each— “true Christian philanthropy,” William Bond says;— “send them something they ought not to have.” . . . We have been trying to persuade Mother to go down to Washington with Hatty and Charley, and take a look at things, but she is not to be prevailed on, I am afraid. Charley’s lame hand will prevent him from going for a while, but I think he and H. will go on while Carry is in Boston. Carry goes on Wednesday to Mrs. Huntington Wolcott’s and afterwards to Miss Parsons’, (lately engaged to a tall Captain Stackpole in a Massachusetts regiment now at Annapolis, expecting to go up the York river with Burnside’s expedition). Abby saw Mrs. George Betts to-day, who says her husband (in Hawkins’ Zouaves) expects to join the same expedition immediately. Transports are to take them at once from Hatteras to the rendezvous at Fortress Monroe. They have suffered severely at Hatteras; the mortality in George Betts’ regiment has been very great….
Malvina Williams says she hears G. and E. are known in Washington as the “Angels!”
Mr. Prentiss came in just now for a little call, cheery and bright, asking for your photograph to put in a book he had given him for Christmas. So you can send him one. It’s a good book to be in, Mr. Prentiss’ good book. . . .
William Wheeler, who has been very ill with camp fever, writes home that he has received great kindness from Miss Jane Woolsey, meaning G., and “was delighted with her.” I begged his friends not to mention it; it was but little I could do! But tell Georgy. . . .
Would you like three or four dozen more gloves for your men, lonely and cold sentinels, for instance? Spake the wurred. Mr. Gibson sends a lot of London papers all deep-edged with black for the Prince Consort (rest his soul) and their own sins (bad luck to them) I should hope. The “whirligig of time will no doubt bring in its revenges.” . . .
I had a vision of you to-day, as might be a year ago, sitting on the box seat of a sleigh, with a fur cap with ears, and, shall I say it, a roseate nose, visible when you turned around, skirrying over the crusty roads with the blue bloomy hills lifting, and the white fields rolling away, with the wonderful sparkling rime on everything and the heavy snow breaking down the fir-branches. The vision passed, as Cobb would say, and I tried to make another out of your present circumstances and didn’t succeed at all, which proves that your normal state is not warlike.
Young people at home could not be kept on the nervous strain all the time, and an occasional festivity served as a breathing place, though the regular occupation of the family followed hard upon it.
