XXVI
WE are having some of the worst weather the almanac can dish out to us, and the hospital is full of sick men, some seriously ill. I have, myself, been off duty for several days, but am now on deck again all right. It is surprisingly cold, and tents are not the warmest sleeping apartments in the world. I hope they will take us off down south before long or give us good barracks.
I had a letter from my uncle Nathaniel the other day. [Nathaniel Columbus Knowlton of New London.] He wrote that after he went back from Boston, where he went to see me off, a girl came to my father’s house, whom they introduced as Miss Lane, and who seemed to be very well acquainted. About a month after, Addie told him who you was. He approves.
The two aunts you met at my house are all right. Aunt Polly is the wife of my father’s eldest brother, Joshua. Aunt Olivia was reared down south, in a Catholic seminary at Charleston, South Carolina. Her father, Captain Bailey, was an old time sea captain. Until recently she has been very decided in her southern predilections. But a summer spent in Charleston two years ago changed her sentiment very radically. Her husband—my uncle William—is in the Massachusetts Eighteenth, which is now at Baltimore.
There is quite a little force of cavalry here with us now. They make a brave show in their drilling. Gen. Hooker, who commanded this brigade, now has a division, and Col. Cowdin, of the First Massachusetts, commands the brigade. I believe we shall move from here before long. The boys are getting impatient, and will be very discontented if they hold us here much longer.
You write me of your fingers being cold. If you could only know how cold I am this very minute, you would realize the pleasures of letter-writing in camp. It is a cold day, and I am writing in a wide open tent, which is just the same as out of doors. But we have lots of good times, notwithstanding the cold; and when we get around the campfires at night, we talk of home and the jolly times we will have when we get back to Manchester.