William Wirt Henry to Mary Jane Henry
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Yours of the 20th came by last nights mail. I am sorry to hear you have the
“blues just a little” for I am afraid you have them
more than you tell me. I very well·know you have had to pass through one of the
severest trials of earth, and many faint hearted ones would have given up in
dispair long ago, but I am proud to say you have stood it well, and it makes me love you more, and feel proud of such a wife.
This is Sunday forenoon - it is a bleak, cold, rainy day, (by the way the first
of the season) and if I do not look sharp I shall find myself writing in the
same strain - for there is nothing I believe in a soldiers life, so depressing
to the feelings as such a day as this. There is nothing going on over the
Camp. Officers and men are huddled together in their little tents,
trying to kill time, some one way, some another. You say you was thinking of me
last sunday and “wondering what I was doing”. Are you doing the same to day?
Well now I am writing you, that is quite plain. I·have had a good hreakfast at
the mess room ¬ which I will describe hereafter. “Our Mess” is composed of Col.
Jewett Surgeons Childe, Rutherford and Clark (so you see I shall not want for
medical attendance if I am sick) Quartermaster Valentine, and the two Suttlers
Reed Bascom and George Skiff quite a jolly mess as you will perceive.
The·Suttlers furnish the provisions and we live well. We have got a Log Cabin
fixed up for a Kitchen and dining room - covered with the deck of an old Canal
boat which we “borrowed” After breakfast of course I had
to take
a good long smoke in my “Old Camp Griffin” pipe, with the
Col. in his Tent, told several “California stories” talked of the prospect of
advancing this fall and winter, &c. &c. It rained so hard we did not
have our usual Sunday morning Regimental inspection, so I am here in my tent
without any fire, sitting on my trunk writing my blessed wife. It will soon be
dinner time – after that or this evening, I will give you the rest of the
history. About you coming out, or my going home - I belive we had best not make
any calculations about it. If I should get sick I should send for you at once.
If we go into winter quarters where we are now, (which looks very likely endeed)
I am going to build me a good nice “Log Cabin” and send for you if I am
satisfied you would get here before we were ordered off. At present I can tell
nothing about it.
It may come all right for
me to go home sometime before long -.we cannot tell. I think that
would be much the best way, for it would be a very hard thing for you to leave
the "little pets” in strange hands and wend your way to the Potomac unless you
could do good by going. “Dinner is ready Maj” says Geo.
so here ends the first chapter -- After Dinner
We had stewed Rabbit for dinner, wasn’t that good. I have written a good long letter this afternoon to “our sister Katie Parker” - she wrote me a very good letter indeed. She is a “good sister” but Oh! my loved sister Katie she is not - but we must submit. God’s will be done not ours. I do not expect to get a chance to send this to the City for a day or two so will leave it open to tell the news if anything should happen.
Oct 28th Yours of the 21st came in by the mail last night. I was very much surprised to hear Delia had got home – tell her I cannot get a pass for her here half as quick as she can get one from Vt. All she would have to do there would be for Father to go up to Montpelier and get E.P. Walton to send and get it. The request wants to come from Vermont direct - and he is the man that could get it, but she must not think of going back so soon. I think if we go into Winter quarters here as it looks now that I can get a furlough for a few days sometime about the last of Nov. or first of Dec. - and when I come back could fetch her along with me as far as she came on my road. She must wait for I want to see her very much. Why does she go back at all at this time?
Yours as ever William