Camp Sedgewick, Va.

Near Brandy Station.

Nov. 22. 1863.

                       

Dear Sister.

             Yours of the 15^th was received Thursday morning before breakfast. It gave great pleasure to again hear from you, for you have become my main correspondent of late and if you should drop me I should not know any thing that is transpiring at home and in your neighborhood.

 

            I said you were my main correspondent but at the time I did not think of my old friend Jos. M. Wood. he still sticks like a brother. I had another epistle from him Friday night. He writes to Lieut Turner and Commissary Sergeant Chenery, and these with myself are I think his only correspondents in the reg^t. He is feeling rather grouty towards / Chamberlain his old mate, and the Capt. he seems to think they have dealt hardly by him and I think so too, if he represents things in their true light. still in my opinion the greatest blame rests with himself.

 

It rained again yesterday like big guns. in such days we have to go to bed or else stand out doors in the wind. one day is most generally sufficient to satisfy all, and the sun is looked up to as our best friend. It cleared away some time in the night and its now cool enough for a Greenlander with a good strong fresh wind from the N.W.

 

I went over into the 3^rd Corps last Tuesday on a visit to the 40 N.Y. Mozart regiment. I saw Alonzo Nelson the only one in the reg^t that I knew, and stayed three or four hours. he has got to be a big fellow now but in all other respects he is the same old sixpence. They hadnt a mouthful of anything to eat for dinner and what was about as bad they didnt know when they would get anything. Probably they have had a dinner of some kind by this time. 

 

The Paymaster is on a visit to us again. A new one this time. Has Old Daniel Thurber absconded, or stoped with any fair damsel of late. if he is missing I think I can furnish some information on the subject. If there ever was a person that looked like another this paymaster looks like old Mr. Whaley. He pushed out $26. dollars to me, $20. of which I will push out to you, which you in turn will push out to Mr. O. Cook and you will greatly oblige your humble servant and well wisher whose name you will find below. The State Commissioner is here but I concluded to run the risk of sending it through the P.O. We have not moved from where we were when I wrote last Sunday. Our camp has been named in honor of the old Rat that commands our Corps but we are still in the same place. Dazle Hell as Ans. used to say. The past week has been a very quiet one nothing having transpired to break the usual monotony of camp life unless it was the arrival of the pay master and he does not produce the sensation that he did in the early part of the war 

 

In my travels this morning in the direction of the site of a rebel camp I came across the grave of a rebel in a nice little grove. A board at the head had the following written in pencil marks—Harris, Co. F. 47 N.C. Troops. Executed for desertion about noon the first day of Nov. 1863. Aged forty nine years. That seems to be the way they treat deserters in the rebel army. I think if it had been adopted with us two years ago there would have been no need of a draft next fifth of Jan. But the big Book says "every thing is for the best" and perhaps it is so. I suppose before you will read this that another Thanksgiving dinner will be mashed up into shoe strings. I hope when you are eating you will think of my dinner of fried pork and hard bread with worms as fat as the big white ones you sometimes see in following after the plow. I wonder if I shall take another ride down Acquia Creek this year and get ship wrecked on the Potomac shore. I guess not. We are living better now than we have been of late we are going to have beans for dinner and a plenty of soft bread. we are getting potatoes again and with all we can manage pretty well. I got two pounds of butter this morning paid fifty cents per pound. right smart price you would think I suppose but we think its cheap. L. C. Cook.

 

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I think Thanksgiving day will find us on the Rapidan

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