Rikers Island Dec. 7^th 1863.

 

Dear Cousin.

                        I am going to write to you just this once more and if you don't answer this I declare I wont write to you again.

 

            You are a great one to tease the life out of one to make him promise to write you and then when he does write you will not even drop him a line or two to let him know you ever received or took any notice of the letter you he wrote you. Well! Well! this is a perverse generation surely!

 

Now I want you to bear well in mind what I said when I commenced my letter for I intend to stick to my word like a hungry dog would hang to a piece of meat.

 

            I suppose you have seen / mother as she is up in Connecticut and she has told you how I am situated. Well I will tell you again so to be sure you know and also to have something to write about. I was detailed last week as clerk in the Paymasters Department at these Head Quarters and as yet have not done anything so bad that they could send me back to my company, nor do I think I shall when I am so well situated I can get down home about once a week or 3 times in two weeks which you must know is quite often compared with the passes that the others get.

 

            I understand that we are about to move to an Island about 8 miles father up the sound but not until after January 1^st as they have not got the barracks completed yet.

 

            Well I have not got any news to write so I am going to stop. Remember me to Edwin, Oscar, Del, and the rest of the folks. /

and deign to answer this hasty scrawl

                                   

from Your Coz.

John L Stilson

 

Direct

John L. Stilson

Harlem

New York

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