Camp Of The Sec R.I. Reg.

Near Fredericsburg, Va.

March 15 /63.

                       

Dear Sister.

                                                Your letter came safely through and reached me Friday night. I found two postage stamps in it. The letter you sent me with eight in it has not arrived yet. I think somebody else in the regiment has got it, and getting the benefit of its contents. Hasnt that dollar got to be pretty small by this time? I have got ten stamps now, borrowed a quarters worth of one of the fellows in the tent with me. He had a dollars worth come in a letter. Well what do you think. I have this minute got that letter of yours with the postage stamps all safe. 

 

The mail carrier just stuck his head into the door and gave it to me I had given up all hopes of seeing it and had just wrote the minute before that I guessed somebody else had got it, when lo! and behold it was put right into my hand. Well I am glad it has come. now I have got eighteen, enough to last me till pay day, I hope. You talk pretty strong in your letter of sending a box to me, but it is so long ago that I guess I shall not pay much attention to it. A large number of boxes have come to the regiment by Express since I wrote you last, come right through straight work. They are beginning to talk "march" to us again but they keep giving furloughs the same as usual I have thought all along that these would stop when the time arrived for field operations One man went home this morning from / this company. I got a letter last night from Eva together with a little mite of a picture. It is her all over, no mistaking that. When I first looked at it I almost thought I was at home. It looked as though it might speak. Have you been having any winter weather up your way this last week? We have here. I believe the nearer it gets summer, the colder it grows, but Monday was a very pleasant day. all the rest of the week has been cold as Greenland. It is clouding up today, wind N.E. and it looks as if it might snow. Tomorrow we go on picket, I suppose, as it is our regular day for picket duty. I hope it will not be so cold as it has been back along but I would rather have it cold than have it stormy.

 

I got a letter from Aunt Sarah the other day in answer to one I wrote last spring. she did not get it till ten months after I wrote it. some body else got it and read first, so you see it / to her second hand. It seems to me my letters have a strange habit of going wrong and being opened by the wrong persons. Two that I have written to Mary Cook have got off the track. both times however, to another by the same name

 

I dont bunk alone. I am with the same fellows I have been with all winter. The diarhoea (how do you spell it) is quite prevalent in this regiment. I suppose it is caused by the water we drink. it works strange, everybody comes down at the same time with it: every morning at reveille half the regiment has to start on the run. I always think of squatter "sovereignty", that there was so much said about in the Kansas troubles, when I see the squatters settled down in the rear of the regiment It is not so bad now as it was a week ago. Jo says he is coming to court my sister after the war is over, that is what he has told me several times since he came back. I am going to see if he knows this picture by and by.       L C Cook

 

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The way that mistake was made was this. you wanted to know what Brigade, Division, Corps &c I was in. about sending the box, what I meant was to not put on anything except the regiment as it was unnecessary to put on my directions as to what Brigade &c but the Co had ought to be on of course But its all right now the letter postage stamps and all is safe

 

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I guess I shall have postage stamps enough for the present without troubling you any more very soon.

SOURCES