LXVII
IT bids fair to be a very hot day, so I am starting my letter just as early as I can get down to business. Father got over the river three or four days ago. Dan. Clark [U. S. Senator] took it up with the War Department and Gerry got his pass. He is going to stay several days longer, and you can imagine how much I am enjoying his visit. He is spending a good part of his time visiting the hospitals and hunting out and cheering up the New Hampshire men he finds there. He doesn’t say anything, but I have my doubts whether the lodgings here are fully up to his standard of comfort. Rod. Manning and I, in our capacity as chambermaids, make up the best bed we can with the materials at our command, and give E. G. the middle berth, with us under the eaves. But the ground is hard, and a knapsack or pair of shoes is not a real good pillow until you get fitted to them. Our guest grunts a good deal and turns over pretty often, and this morning I woke up before daylight and found him outside, sitting on a cracker box, over a little campfire he had nursed into action.
Since my last letter we have moved our camp about two miles, over to Fairfax Seminary, a brick building now occupied as a hospital, on the heights overlooking the city of Alexandria. Our camp is right to the rear of Fort Ward.
Did you ever know Joe Locke?—[Joseph L., a Manchester boy.] I saw him yesterday. He is in the Thirty-third Massachusetts, which is temporarily assigned to this brigade.
Father brought up from the city, yesterday, a big bag of flour, butter, and about all the other “fixings” he could lug, and there will be high living, for a time, in our tent. The laugh was on him, good and hard, the day we moved camp. He started out in the morning from our old camp, to visit the hospitals. When we arrived here he was at the Seminary, only a few rods away. He watched us come and pitch our tents, without any idea that it was the Second Regiment, and when he got ready to go he tramped back to the old camp, only to find himself among strangers. Fortunately, some one was able to direct him, and in due time he was back here with four extra miles of travel to his credit.
Those boxes that the boys sent for from Harrison’s Landing came along yesterday, but a great deal of the stuff had been so long on the way that it had spoiled. When I see these new regiments coming out now I remind myself that when my term of service is ended they will be only half way through. But I hope that with the new calls for troops there will be enough to finish this up in so short a time that we can all be home before long.
Two or three of the boys supposed to have been killed at Bull Run have turned up in the hospitals, but poor Frank Robinson is undoubtedly dead.
What company is your brother in? I will hunt him up if I can get to his regiment after it arrives. [James K. Lane, Company G, Eleventh N. H.]