Harpers Ferry Via Dec 16

 

Dear Parents

                   I will try to pen a few lines to you this evening to let you know that we are enjoying good health and I hope this may find you all in the same predicament I have not any news to write but I thought I must write to you even if it was not so cunning for I like to get letters from home and I thought if I wrote often to you that you would do the same by me I dont believe that you have got all my letters for I have written a good many to you since I left Elmira The weather for the past few days has been exceedingly fine like the weather is in October up north but last night we got a heavy rain and this afternoon it is cold and windy again and will probably freeze again to night making rather tough times for those who have to stand on guard. but as good luck will have it I have not had to do guard duty since I came here to Harpers Ferry about all that I have to do is to eat smoke and drill and smoke and eat and smoke and so on smoking being / the principal business I see by Hirams letter that that miserable thing named Emery Lane is a going up on Bald hill this winter to try to teach the young ideas up there how to shoot but I think he is quite out of his place for if he was where he should be he would now be at Fredricksburg doing what he could to maintain the Union as every able bodied man ought to do I presume he has played up sneak and physical disability untill he got his discharge He should never have had a discharge as long as his health was good enough to permit him to teach school but the thoughts of home and of the fair sex and the bright prospect of a new mother must have haunted him so that he could take no rest either by day or night untill he was under the protection of his dear Pa & Ma again

 

I guess that I have wrote about enough of Emery at least as much as he would care about hearing. The drum beats for rool roll call so good night This from your son who is off to the wars C W Personeus

 

I will send this in Walkers letter so as to save three cents

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