Camp Dwight Brashear City LA

March 1^st 1863           

 

                        Dear Wife I will try again to write you a few lines this afternoon as I am not very busy My last letter that I wrote you (it was last Monday) I did not write a very long letter as I did not feel very well at the time But I will try this time to make it up and give you a long one I recd a letter from you last Tuesday that you wrote the 8^th of Feby but the one that you said you wrote a few days before that I have not yet got. But hope I shall soon

 

            We are yet stationed at Berwick Bay and it looks now as though we should stay here for a couple of months yet But it is all uncertain how long we shall stay at a time in any place. the reason that I think we shall stay so long is because there is so many sick in the regiment there is now 70 sick in the hospital and about as many that is on the sick list that are in their tents not quite so sick yet they are excused from duty. the health of the regiment is improving and probably will keep on if they stay here for it seems to be a healthy location here the river is about a half mile wide here and the land around is higher than the water while in all other places that we have been the water is higher than the land and they have had to bank up each side like the canal to keep the water from flowing over the land

 

            The weather is getting to be quite warm here now the leaves are putting out on the trees in the woods and the cherry trees & peach trees are now out in full bloom. white clover is up about 3 inches high and all blown out so you see spring has set in here in earnest But we do not see much preperation for farming for there is not many of the planters that is left on their plantations to cultivate the land 

 

You wrote in your last letter that Frank & Lilly was eating apples & the robins were enjoying them selves with singing & turning sommersets well I am glad that you have some thing to amuse and divert your mind with a part of the time for I am sure that I could enjoy myself to see the robins perform and more than that to see the children eating apples, although I have none to eat myself but I am very glad that the children and you can have them to eat when I eat one it costs me 5 cents so I do not eat many But I want you to eat some for me and then tell me if they taste good for I can even here enjoy any thing that does you good. I have orranges to eat here in the place of apples I eat one every morning before breakfast the Doctor said it would be good for me to eat one or two every day I wish that you could see the piles of orranges that I have & have as many to eat of large nice ones as I have had I have bought the largest and nicest kind for a penny a piece

 

            I am working in the hospital now I commenced working there the Hospital the 29^th of Jan & worked a week when I had the diarea so bad that I had to quit I was some three weeks out of it when I went back and worked one day and then was taken with the scarlet fever very bad I went to the Hospital and was sick there about 10 days when I got up again but the doctor would not let me go back to my tent he said I must stay until I was perfectly well he excused me from all duty and kept me in the hospital until I was well. It seemed that he took all of the care of me that he would if I had been his brother he has used me first rate and seems to think a good deal of me / Now that I am at work in the hospital he tells me to be very careful and not work to hard until I get stout again I feel better now than I have since we left Camp Mansfield at Carollton the 7^th of Jan I was taken sick that day although not very and have not been to say well since until now and now I am feeling first rate. there was a letter came in camp the other night from arcadia that said that the story there was that I was just dead with the consumption. have you heard anything of it if you have just set your heart at rest for so far as the consumption is concerned I have not had even the symptoms of it yet. I have not had any cold so that I have coughed since I have been South I calculate to take care of my self as much as if I was home. when you hear these stories about me you need not believe them until I tell you myself. I now say that my health is good and when I am dangerously sick you shall know it If you and the children are enjoying as good health as I am at present I am very glad and hope that it will continue                      But for something else

 

I will tell you the prices of some things down here Butter is 50 cents a pound flour 10 cents potatoes 5 cents a pound Dried apples very poor 15 cents a pound milk 20 cents a quart eggs 50 cents a dozen Candles 80 cents a pound very poor black tea two dollars a pound Saleratus 30 cents Soda crackers from 20 to 40 cents a pound

 

            As to that matter with Jesse Owen it is nothing more than I should expect for he is so small & mean and stingy that he would rob a poor man of the last cent I never told taylor that he need not pay only $2.75 but you keep the bill and when I come home I will make him pay the other 25 cents. / Jesse told me that if I would leave them accts with him he would collect them and not charge me anything for it you may tell him so for me if you want to But do not get him to do anything for you unless you can not get any one else to do it for you he has no more principle than a Hog I wrote to Reynolds last week But did not send him any seeds for it is not the right time in the season to get them but If I can get any at any time I will send them to him for I think more of him than any other man in Arcadia although I think a good deal of T. F. Horton

 

            You wrote of not having any papers to read we do for there is hardly any one of the Company but what gets papers from home at every mail and we all read them and then we have New Orleans papers every day yet any thing in the shape of reading that comes from some. When you write to me again I wish if you have the money to spare that you would send me about ten penny postage stamps I want to some papers home and I have to pay a cent and a half a piece for them here I sent you two weeks ago last Monday a certifficate for forty dollars I sent in care of Reynolds I hope that you have got by this time for you must begin to need it pretty bad. I received a letter from aunt Sally Hibbard a few days ago but have not yet answered it but I will soon. Tell the children that Pa thinks of them every day and that I am glad to hear from them and that they are pretty good children when I can get anything that I can send them I will send them some thing to please them I have been three days a writing this but I will write again soon

 

Write often to me and I will write as often as I can to you But I must stop now for it is time for to feed the sick take good care of your self and I will try to do the same

 

yors as Ever    L. V. Tucker

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