7. Regiment Illinois Vointeers

Fort Holt, K.Y. Oct 25^th

 

Mariaetta Randolph

                        Dear Friend I thought perhaps you would like to hear something about the life of a soldier so I made up my mind to write you a few lines trusting that it would not be unwelcome you must know we live very diferently here from what we did at home we live in tents and sleep on the ground and we do not have women to cook for us we have to do it our selves we have plenty to eat such as it is we have plenty of coffee and sugar to sweeten it but no milk sometimes we draw bread allready baked and some times we draw flower and bake it our selves but we have no butter I have learned to eat fat meet since I have /

 

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Health has been better than I could have expecded I have not been sick since I have been in camp but that is more than the most of them can say for there has been a great deal of sickness in our regiment but it is not so sickly now as it has been we are camped in a very pleasent place now. the longer I stay here the more I like it it is on the banks of the Missippy river on the old Kentucky shore I believe it is about the healthiest place we have been in there was a man died in the Company below us yesterday and the funeral procesion has passed since I comenced this letter and I can hear the dead roll of the muffled drums mingled with the soft shrill notes of the fifes as they march on last resting place of the dead it reminds me of the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death / and how it becomes us to be allways prepared to meet our god for we know not the day nor the hour when the night of death shall o'er take us this man died with an assurance that he would soon be with Jesus he died with a concience void of offence toward god and toward man and what a relief it will be to his friends when they come to hear that he died happy and I can truly say that he died happy though he was many miles from home and friends for he felt that he only passing from this world of sin and sorrow into a world of eternal joy and hapiness a place not made with hands eternal in the heavens was not that a happy death. I must now close my letter please remember me in your prayers give my best respects to your Farther and Mother and John tell John he must write me a letter and I will answer it and write to me your self   Your Friend

                                                                                   

H. V Hoagland

 

P.S. Direct your letter to the 7. Regiment Ill Vol.

                                                Fort Holt K.Y.

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