Baltimore Md.            

Aug 6^th 1865.

                       

Dear Sister.

                                    I am writing a few lines to you this morning in answer to that letter that haint come yet. The one I shall expect to day sometime.

 

            You see I have been waiting a few days to get a letter from you before I write. But I cant wait any longer.

 

            I want you to send me Five Dollars so that I can get it in tonights mail. Do you understand? If you cannot get it to me in that time send it so I shall get it as soon as impossible I have been out of butter for the last three or four days / and I am beginning to feel rather hungry.

 

            We generally have tomatoes but we have had to deny ourselves of them. It is an aggravation and an awful one too, to see so much stuff selling all around and so cheap too. Potatoes sixteen cents a peck, peaches thirty cents watermelons great big ones at twenty five, and your choice at that. tomatoes eight cents, and all other stuff in proportion.

 

            McKenzie, Ayers, Laning and myself went to the market last night to lay in our supplies for Sunday. Ayers and Laning hadnt any money, McKenzie had somewhere near a dollar, and I had "two cents". I got tomatoes with my money, two quarts, enough for breakfast and dinner / McKenzie laid in the green corn, cabbage and peaches. As we are not in partnership just now we do not get any benefit from his purchases except a few of the peaches.

 

This market beats all my first wife relation at all, at all. Old Quincy market is in the shade a good ways. It extends a full eighth of a mile on Camden street, and the depth of a square the other way. The tables are loaded down with all kinds of stuff found in a market and last night after they lit up it looked perfectly splendid.

 

            All I could think of was some great big overgrown levee or fair, whatever you call him, on the grandest scale possible. The passage ways crowded somewhat after the fashion of Milford cattle show / Any quantity of good looking girls asking you to buy their peaches, watermelons, cakes &c and all my cash in hand amounting to the sum of two cents. Just think of it.

 

            I do not want to go on anymore two cent excursions so about next Thursday night I shall be in expectation of picking a green back out of a letter.

 

            I got a letter from Hobart yesterday my overcoat is still there I shall let it lay a while longer and then send for it.

 

            It is quite warm pleasant spring like weather now. water boils in fifteen minutes in the sun—if there is a little fire under it. First rate times for bed bugs mosquitoes, flies and other vegetables. But I must close hoping soon to hear from you L C Cook

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