(Please direct care Gorham & C^o)

Providence Jan 31/63

 

Cousin Waldo

                        I received your letter of Dec 27 on Jan 20, and I suppose you are waiting for an answer. We were very sorry to learn of the accident which happened to your father the other day. I have no doubt you would like to be at home just now, to make things as comfortable as possible. It is to bad for Mary to be obliged to leave school just now when she has so good a chance, but it is hardly of any use to dwell upon these things. Your mother and Mary are just the persons to put on a cheerful look and say "it might have been a great deal worse" and then set about doing the very best that can be done under the circumstances. Aunt Abby and Georgie wrote us about it. Georgie spoke of a rumor that your regiment was to be allowed to reenlist. If that is true, and you feel like / reenlisting you may get home after all. I hope by this time you have got into winter quarters for if you have not yet, winter will be all over with before you get a chance Georgie also mentioned that she had seen a soldier from your regiment or some other in the vicinity of yours who said you looked very thin and worn out. If he saw you after you had been penned up in Knoxville two or three weeks I have an idea you must have looked as if you could eat something. I guess if some of the chaps round home were kept on quarter rations for three days there would be a good deal said about it. Your question about George he has answered himself. Charles is in the fish market yet, though I suppose he will answer your letter soon and speak for himself. Father and Mother are as well as usual. Grandmother alias Aunt Betsy is also in as good health as ever. Lizzie is in the High School striving as your sister is to qualify herself how "to teach the young idea how to shoot". I was glad to / learn that you received the papers I sent you I will try to send them oftener after this. You expressed your disbelief in the story that Burnside was going to take command of the 9^th Corps again, but it must be true for he made a speech in Boston lately in which he said he was authorized to recruit his old corps up to 50,000 men. It seems to me if anybody wanted to enlist now is the chance. Raw recruits now receive six hundred dollars ($600.) Bounty and Your Pay for three years. but what is that to a man who has a family to support? What is that to induce a man to leave the comforts of home and the society of his family, to risk his life and endure the hardship and exposure incident to active service, for hardly more than common laborers get at home? Talk about patriotism. There is more real patriotism in the ranks of the Union Army than there would be in a dozen armies composed of the stars, eagles, leaves, and bars of / in the service of the Gov. I hope I may live to see the time when a man will be offered as much as if not more than he can earn at home, to go a soldiering. I have not got the idea out of my head, of going to the war, but I do not know as I shall enlist. You said in one of your letters that "you were as well satisfied where you are as you would be anywhere while the war lasts". I think you must have felt somewhat as I do now. Just as if there was something going on which you want to take a part in, and felt as if you were doing some thing. I feel as if I wanted to go, and I dont think I would wait long if my folks would give their consent. I have a good place and a fair prospect of doing well when I am of age, but if I went to the war and came home again at the end of three years unharmed I dont think I should have much difficulty in getting a place again. Please answer as soon as you have time, and let me know what you think about enlisting. Hoping this will find you in good health and comfortable quarters Good Bye from your Cousin

                                                                                                           

Elisha Emerson 2^nd.

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