CAMP HASTINGS, March
12, 1865.
MY DARLING: — I am
very glad to have heard from or of you several times during the last
week. While your rheumatism stays with you I naturally feel anxious to hear
often. If you should be so unlucky as to become a cripple, it will certainly be
bad, but you may be sure I shall be still a loving husband, and we
shall make the best of it together. There are a great many worse
things than to lose the ability of easy locomotion. Of course,
you will have to use philosophy or something higher to keep up your
spirits. I think of Mrs. Little as giving more happiness to her
household by her cheerfulness and agreeable ways than most of the
walking women I know off.
It is lucky you
didn't come to the inauguration. The bad weather and Andy Johnson's
disgraceful drunkenness spoiled it.
I have bought a
"Gulliver's Travels” which I will give to Webb if he can read it. I
remember he was very fond of my telling it, and with his
sweet voice often coaxed me to tell him about "the little people.”
We are under General
Hancock now, and like him. He is [a] noble man in his
physical get-up — six feet three and handsomely proportioned. So far
as he has arranged, matters are satisfactory to me. I keep my brigade, Sheridan
is still absent. Of course some solicitude will be felt until he gets
through. The last accounts are favorable.
Hastings is promoted lieutenant-colonel,
Thompson, major. Good! McKinley and Watkins, Twenty-third, have gone
with Hancock to Winchester or somewhere else up the Valley. Dr. Joe visits the
"Pirates” (Semmes family, but intensely loyal), but not with any reputed
designs. — Chaplain Little runs with his wife all sorts of schools and is
useful and a favorite with all sensible people.