Camp Near Washington, May 24, '63.
We have been ten pleasant, sultry, summer days in camp here,
monotonous, but enough occupied not to dislike the monotony, — dry and cool and
dewy in the morning, and still and cool in the evenings, — with a very pretty
view from my tent front (where we sit under a fly) — nothing striking, only
green hills and fields and cattle, and off on the right the Potomac, and beyond
rise the heights, where they have put forts, — you would not suppose it,
however, it looks as peaceful as a Sunday should. It makes me infernally
homesick, John, — I should like to be at home, even to go to church, — nay, I
should even like to have a chaplain here to read the service and a few
chapters I would select from the New Testament, — you’ll think it must be
a peaceful scene to lull me into such a lamblike mood.1
Lamblike, however, seems to be the order of the day, —
unless, indeed, Grant's success at Vicksburg is to be believed. The Army of the
Potomac is commonly reported to be going into summer quarters.
_______________
1 Soon after, Rev. Charles A. Humphreys was
appointed Chaplain of the Second Cavalry, and joined the regiment in Virginia.
He was cordially received and treated with consideration by Colonel Lowell, and
remained with the regiment until the close of the war, except during some
months in the summer and autumn of 1864, when he was in a Southern prison with
Major Forbes and Lieutenant Amory, all having been captured in a disastrous
fight at Zion's Church. Mr. Humphreys held his Colonel in the highest esteem.
He wrote an article about him, in the Harvard Monthly, in February,
1886, to which I am indebted. It was through Chaplain Humphreys'
instrumentality that the marble bust of Colonel Lowell., which adorns the
Memorial Hall, at Cambridge, was made by the sculptor Daniel Chester French, —
a gift of the officers and friends of the regiment.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 247, 418
No comments:
Post a Comment