Dedham, November 7, 1885.
On arranging and looking over my books and papers for my “den,” I found this diary. Enclosed in it were the following notes, written on a sheet of letter-paper. I had been paroled the December before this, and had just been exchanged.
April 1 – I at once started for the front to join my regiment, but too late to join in any more fighting. It seems to me appropriate that the beginning and ending of my military life should be written in the same book. When I am dead, it may interest my grandchildren to read these notes of a young boy, for I was only nineteen and three-fourths years old when I started on the Hilton Head Expedition.
