Corinth, Miss. March 8.

 

Dear Sister:

                        Your last letter reached me two or three evenings since, just after my return from a short foraging trip into Tennessee. I was just tired enough to give me a good appetite for my supper, after dispatching which I was also in good mood to read a letter. I have not taken more pleasure in reading a letter for a long time than I did in perusing yours. It was emphatically a good letter; one answering to my model of what a letter to a soldier should be. What we soldiers need in a letter is not entirely moral homilies or advice, or literary essays, but a record of the little matters at home, unimportant in themselves, but of interest to us as bringing us in a closer connection with home scenes. Withal, there should pervade it as far as possible a cheerful spirit / Such a letter arriving at an opportune moment goes far to cheer us in those occasionally blue periods that are the lot of every one.

 

            Spring with its caroling birds and upspringing grass is upon us here. The weather is mild, some days being so warm that we find it comfortable to dispense with coats. I noticed in my foraging expedition the other day one or two gardens planted for the season. We have a good deal of rain, but during most of last week we had beautiful sunny days and bright moonlight evenings. We have some very hard thunder showers here however. The rain will pour down in perfect torrents, and the roar of the thunder is generally much harder than at the North.—I mention as one sign of spring the singing of the birds. It can hardly be called such here, for I have heard them make the woods ring with their music in mid-winter.

 

            I am very scarce of writing subjects, and so I will send you a little fragment that I wrote the other day.

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