Winchester,
Sunday Night, Dec. 8th, 1861.
Dear Wife, — I
feel a little sadness to-night . I expected a letter from you and it did not
come. I was disturbed in my sleep last night, and am heavy. Frank’s company
went out on an expedition two days ago, and I have not heard the result.
After church this morning, the General and I walked to the
cemetery of the town, and spent some time among the chambers of the Silent
House, where grief that is tranquil now perhaps, has made enduring in marble its
first fervor of anguish. “Lovely and Beloved Daughter — Just Eighteen!” That
was an arrow through two hearts, but if they truly loved one another, as the
wound closed, the two hearts were knit the closer in the healing.
A son cut off in his promise: a mother erects the stone;
perhaps she sorrows for him yet. A broken column: I looked, and the husband was
forty-nine years old; the broken column shows that the wife thought that he was
still young, and that the abrupt end of his career was untimely. . . . Many men
seem to have died between fifty and sixty, and many women between forty and
fifty. We will apply our hearts to wisdom, dear wife. One pair had lived beyond
sixty, and died — the husband in January, the wife in February; that was sweet,
was it not? I seldom meet with epitaphs that strike me, but I enclose one that
I copied from the stone over the grave of a young wife. I think you will join
with me in thinking it a sweet piece of dying joyousness; a little too
tripping, perhaps, to be unexceptionable, but with such a holy gladsomeness
that it disarms criticism. . . . Dear
Wife, let us kneel down and thank God for his goodness to his unworthy
servants, and pray for Jesus’ sake that he would keep us and ours, and save us
all at last.
Your Husband.
P. S. General Richard Garnett has been assigned as brigadier
of the Stonewall Brigade. He is a son of Colonel Garnett, and I should say a
good soldier and a pleasant man. It was my office to take him out and introduce
him to the brigade which is encamped five miles from town. Nevertheless the
brigade ought to be commanded by one of its own colonels; they have made their
own glory, and a stranger should not have been made to share it. Colonel
Taliaferro reported to-day with four regiments from the command on the Monterey
(?) line.
_______________
Here is the epitaph referred to in the letter: —
Plant ye a rose that may bloom o'er my
bed,
When I am gone — when I am gone!
Breathe out a sigh o'er the blest early
dead,
When I am gone — when I am gone!
Praise ye the Lord that I'm freed from
all care,
Serve ye the Lord, that my bliss ye may
share,
Look up on high, and believe I am
there,
When I am gone — when I am gone!
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and
Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 124-5
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