Headquarters,
Valley District,
Winchester,
Dec. 5th, 1861.
(This is the regular heading to all documents that we send out.)
Two letter in one day! This is getting worse
instead of better. I do not think that while I was a crane, musing, crabbing,
and spreading the pinions of fancy, I ever perpetrated more than one epistle in
24 hours. . . . But now that Jim Lewis
is going home on furlough, I cannot refrain from scribbling again. White people
here have no chance of getting a furlough; it is only our colored friends who
can escape for a time the evils of war. I had but time to gobble up your letter
this morning before I wrote, but to-night I have enjoyed it as an epicure ought
to eat and be thankful for a dainty. Speaking of dainties, we had for supper
to-night two pheasants and some partridges; that will do pretty well, I should
say! In fact we live very well. Our mess is: the General and myself; Alfred
Jackson, Sandy Pendleton, and George Junkin; very smart fellows all of them
(Sandy most uncommonly so), and as nice as can be, and full of gayety. We have
a merry table; I as much a boy as any of them, and Jackson grave as a signpost,
till something chances to overcome him, and then he breaks out into a laugh so
awkward that it is manifest he has never laughed enough to learn how. He is a
most simple-hearted man. He said to me the other day, “Do you know that the
thing which has most interested and pleased me to-day, is to learn by a letter
from Mr. Samuel Campbell that my lot is well set in grass.” This would make
Clark laugh, that any one should think so much of such a rocky bit of land!
Don't repeat this; it would seem as if I were laughing at the General. Jackson
said to me last night, that he would much rather be at the Institute than in
the army, and seemed to think fortunate those of us who are to go back. I sleep
in the same room with the young men. Jackson invited me to share his room, . . . but I know that privacy would be more agreeable
to him. Besides, I have a notion that he goes to his room many times a day for
special prayer. As to myself, you know anything will do for me and . . . any place to sleep will answer very
well. I sleep on what they call a stretcher, a military cot, with my overcoat
and cape under my head for a pillow. I sleep soundly and get up early. . . .
Well, I have written you an objective letter, and I enclose you a sort of diary
that I keep on my business table, to help my indifferent memory. I do so many and
such various things that I jot them down to prevent my forgetting. This is the
diary of one day, and gives you a sample of my occupations; you must allow that
it would take up a good deal of time to fill up these outlines! Hardly room
left to say — I love you!
Your Husband.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin
Preston, p. 122-3
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