February 7th.
This has been a beautiful spring day. I have been thinking
lately about gardening. If I were at home, it would be time for me to begin to
prepare the hot-bed. Don't you remember what interest we used to take in our
hot-bed? If we should be privileged to return to our old home, I expect we
would find many changes. An ever-kind Providence is showering blessings down
upon me. Yesterday Colonel M. G. Harman
and Mr. William J. Bell, jun., of Staunton, presented me with an excellent horse.
As yet I have not mounted him, but I saw another person ride him, and I hope
soon to have that pleasure myself. . . .
Just to think our baby is nearly three months old. Does she notice and laugh
much? You have never told me how much she looks like her mother. I tell you, I
want to know how she looks. If you could hear me talking to my esposa in
the mornings and evenings, it would make you laugh, I'm sure. It is funny the
way I talk to her when she is hundreds of miles away. . . . Jim has returned from Lexington, and
brought a letter from “Cy”,1 asking permission to take unto himself
a wife, to which I intend to give my consent, provided you or his mother do not
object. . . . I am so much concerned
about mother's health as to induce me to recommend a leave of absence for
Joseph. I send this note by him, and also send the baby a silk handkerchief. I
have thought that as it is brightly colored, it might attract her attention.
Remember, it is her first present from her father, and let me know if she
notices it.2
_______________
1 A negro servant.
2 This handkerchief has ever since been sacredly
preserved as a precious relic.
SOURCE: Mary Anna Jackson, Life and Letters of
General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson), p. 415-6
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