Harriet Roosevelt Woolsey to her sisters on the Virginia Peninsula, Georgeanna Woolsey and Eliza Howland.
New York, June.
Dear Girls: I write more for the sake of sending a letter by Dr. Draper, than because there is anything to tell you about. . . . I think Abby looks miserable and needs rest. I don’t believe even you, “the working sisters,” as Dr. Ferris calls you, do as much as Abby does, for there is certainly something that pays in giving nice little things to soldiers and having them so grateful to you and seeing them get well under your care,—there is an excitement in it all which cannot be got out of homely unbleached cotton, yards and yards and hundreds of square yards of shirts. . . .
Think of my having a chance of becoming a nurse up at the Mott Hospital in Fifty-first street. Mrs. Ferris offered me a place of that kind, out of consideration for my merits and the one hundred dollars Uncle E. had given them the week before, but I foolishly gave in to the family row. They had me laid out and buried twenty times over of malignant typhoid, diphtheria, and other ills which flesh is heir to.
. . . Carry is engaged in finding a summer retreat for the family. . . . The combinations absolutely necessary are: sea and mountain air, a place near the city with speedy communication, and no New Yorkers.
I send Charley’s wine, Dr. Draper having offered to take anything for us.
