I went to the supper
table last night too sick to eat anything; left the table and laid down on a
lounge until the hotel keeper could show me a room; I retired early and slept
well; got up this morning all right, but did not go to the breakfast table;
took a lunch from my own haversack; walked out in town; went to the ten-pin
alley and spent an hour rolling; had not played a game before for eight years,
and enjoyed it very much; smoked a cigar, a notable scarcity in these times,
and returned to the hotel, where I wrote a letter to Judge Devine, and one to
my dear wife; may heaven's choicest blessings rest upon her and my sweet
children; went to the dinner table and found the landlady apologizing for some
defect and two young females discussing the merits of the Episcopal and Baptist
faith; got through dinner somehow and walked down to the quartermaster's office;
got the Vicksburg Whig; stretched myself out on the counter; read and took a
nap; got up; went to the armory and would have enjoyed looking over the work
very much but felt sick; it produces four Mississippi rifles per day at $30.00
a piece on contract with the state; I am now sitting at the foot of the hill
below the armory.
SOURCE: John Camden
West, A Texan in Search of a Fight: Being
the Diary and Letters of a Private Soldier in Hood’s Texas Brigade, p. 16-7
