Camp Of the Sec R.I. Reg

Near Fredericsburg Va.

Feb. 24. 1863.

                       

Dear Sister.

                                    I have been waiting ever since last Friday for a letter from you and am waiting still. It must be your letter has been miscarried or perhaps you have not been well and have not written at all. The mail has just come in but no letter for I. Yesterday the mail brought me a pair of stockings from Woonsocket 21 cents postage on them. some difference between them and the mittens was there not? I have now got two pair of good ones that will stand the racket quite a while if they wear anywhere near as long as I think they will. 

 

We have been having a turn of real New England weather. Sunday it snowed hard all day. I should not wonder if there was as much as a foot in depth fell though it melted some as it come and settled it together harder than it otherwise would have been. It was pretty cold all day, so cold that our new Colonel took off the guards through the daytime and had only one man on through the night. We happened to have a good pile of wood in the house cut and split so that we could keep warm and comfortable. It is no fool of a job now to get wood in fair weather, and you might know how it would be to turn out in a snowstorm to go a mile after it. We do not get any under that distance and we oftener go further than that than less. It makes a fellow puff and sweat some when he gets a stick of walnut wood on his shoulder that will weigh about / seventy five pounds. I can take a stick like that and go to camp with stopping twice to rest. it starts the grease however in cool weather.

 

I want you to come out here one of these fine days and take supper with me. I tell you we are living like pigs in clover now, have soft bread once in a while and potatoes once in two whiles. they are issuing flour to us also occasionally. Saturday night Lewis mixed up a batch of dough that we made into doughnuts and they were good ones too. I have eaten poorer ones a good many times that were made for sale. we made about seventy I should think all three of us eat all we could of them for supper gave away about a dozen and had a breakfast of them the next morning. Parkhurst took one to send home in a newspaper. I rather think there will be some crumbs by the time his folks get it. We use baking powders to make them rise I wish we could get a paper of Sally Ratus / from home. it would go so much further we have to give twenty five cents for a small box of these powders and it is soon used up. We dont have molasses to sweeten our doughnuts with but use sugar, have plenty of it and it makes awful good ones. I wish I could draw a picture of our hotel and send it to you. It would make you think of sleeping six in a bed I guess. It is about eight feet long and five wide, the sides are raised up about two feet with logs and on top of these rests the tent, one end (the front) is boarded up with a door in it, the other is covered with a piece of tent. Our bed is in the back part, the foot of it coming to within three feet of the door. this three feet of space is dug down about eighteen inches and at one end is the fireplace, dug into the bank just like an oven. the smoke passes up on the outside through a wooden chimney covered with mud on the shelves inside are mixed up all together flour pork, fresh meat, potatoes, onions, vinegar, pepper, salt, matches, yeast powders, hard tack, soft bread, soap knives and forks, tin plates, tin cups, canteens, spider &c. &c.

 

[cross written between lines upside down]

 

The guns are hung up on hooks on the logs the knapsacks are used for pillows and the cartridge boxes generally hung outside. the wood pile is under the shelves and when it is not too high makes a good seat to sit on. I suppose you would think I had named over articles enough to fill up our shanty, but we have eight men in it at one time besides all that mess of trumpery. I am afraid now that I have given you a description of our hotel that you will form a bad opinion of it and not accept my invitation to supper with me so I am sorry that I have been to the trouble of writing it, but it cant be helped now.

But if you conclude to come just let me know a day or two beforehand so as to sweep up a little and wash down the windows

 

            I guess I will not write any more at present wait and see when your letter will arrive. I should have written before only I have been waiting to hear from you.

                                                                                                           

Lowell C. Cook.

 

I shall have to call on another supply of postage stamps when you write again

 

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The Thirty seventh Mass are losing their men pretty fast four died one day last week. they have a funeral most every day.

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