Headquarters First
Brigade,
Fourth Div., Seventeenth
Army Corps,
Department Of The
Tennessee,
“Camp Kilby” In The
Field,
January 9, 1864.
My Dear Mother And Wife:
I have just finished packing a box of books, old, some of them well-worn,
and all of them, with one or two exceptions, have given me solace. You will
find stories to interest the children at least, mayhap some that in revision
will interest you. I quite envy the pleasure you will, I think, have about the
fireside in the perusal of the old stories. John Randolph, in one of his
letters, says, “Indeed, I have sometimes blamed myself for not cultivating your
imagination, when you were young. It is a dangerous quality, however, for the
possessor. But if from my life were to be taken the pleasure derived from that
faculty, very little would remain. Shakspeare, and Milton, and Chaucer, and
Spencer, and Plutarch, and the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and Don
Quixote, and Gil Bias, and Tom Jones, and Gulliver, and
Robinson Crusoe, and the tale of Troy divine, have made up more than
half my worldly enjoyments.” I sympathize and agree with what he says. Everyone
of those books is dear to me now. I got the second volume of Tom Jones by
accident the other day, and devoured the whole of it at a sitting. So I would Robinson
Crusoe, and I have never ceased to regret the loss of my first copy of the Arabian
Nights, which someone of the . . . family borrowed and forgot to return.
You remember Uncle Jones made me a Christmas present of it, the first
copy I ever saw and I incontinently devoured it, lying on my belly in front of
the chamber fire at the immortal “Saunders and Beaches,” while they took turns
reading French to you downstairs. The sensations produced upon me then by that
book are vivid with me now. Still imagination “is a dangerous quality for the
possessor.” Certainly, there is no pleasure so lasting, none to which we can so
frequently revert and with so little danger of satiety; but a fine mind may be
given up entirely to the pleasures of fiction, and by too free indulgence be
enervated for profitable labor. Upon retrospection, I am satisfied that this
was the case with myself. I read hugely, enormously, for a boy; more before I
had reached my teens than many tolerably educated men in their lives. My
reading ruined me for everything else except belles lettres and the
classics. “Belles lettres and the classics” will do for the amusement of
the fortunate recipient of hereditary wealth, but will hardly answer to get a
living out of. Therefore, be a little cautious with the novels and the tales;
they are all alike. Is there any chance for the Latin? I hope reasonable effort
will be made in this behalf. You will be surprised at the change it will
effect, the facilities it will give the learners in whatever else they are
striving to acquire.
In respect to my camp, I am in what may be called a howling wilderness,
deserted by all save prowling guerillas and my own soldiers. My regiments are
scattered along a chain of bluffs, desolate and cheerless — this winter
unusually bleak and cold. They are in tents or rude log huts. Timber is scarce,
and water that is fit to drink, hard to get. The roads are so cut up as to be
almost impassable. I am companionless, solitary; so far as interchange of sentiment
is concerned, entirely alone. ... I make raids to the front in search of
guerillas, and for forage and cattle, riding far and returning fast to my
stronghold, sometimes imagining myself a Scottish chief, and living very much
as the Scottish chiefs are described to have lived. I wish I had a Scott beside
me now and then, to sing my lay. Where, or when, this life will end, I cannot
say; I have no prescience of orders. I think we wait the action of Congress. We
can't soon move far on account of the roads. Still, my camp life does not, with
me, contrast disagreeably with the life I led at Natchez. Sudden change, rapid
transition, is familiar to the soldier, who must learn to accommodate himself
to camp or court. So long as my health is spared, I can contrive to be happy
after a fashion under almost any circumstances. “My mind to me a kingdom is.”
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 348-50
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