Remember me to your

Mother and Grandmother

and all enquireing friends

write me soon and often from your old

friend Elbridge

 

                                                                                                Seabrook Island SC

                                                                                                Monday June 15^th 1863

 

Friend Harriet

                        It is not my turn to write but as I am at leisure today and you complain that I do not write as often as I ought thought I would take the pen and scribble a few lines to you to let you know how we are getting along down here in the sultry clime of South Carolina. The Brookfield Boys are all as well as usual except Carpenter. He is at Hilton Head Hospital. we hear from him occasionaly the last time we heard from him he was better and expected to come / back to his company soon. It is very warm here but our camp is near the beach so we get a good bree sea breeze and General Hunter is takeing every all the panes he can to make us comfortable and healthy through the hot part of the season. The sick that we left at Newbern have come here with every thing that belongs to the Regt so it is decided that we have been transferred to this department. we like here and like Hunter much better than we did at first. I dont think there will bee any more in this department before cold weather. I am in hopes that we shall not have to spend another summer in this hot climate. It is understood that our time of servise will expire the 8^th of June 1864 so we are on the last year. if it is as short a year as the past one has been / to me it will soon pass and we shall again enjoy the comforts of home and associate with our friends—that is if we all live. If this horrible war is brought to a close in one years time and we can go home with our Country in peace we shall know how to appreciate it as we never did before but enough of this you may think I am homesick but it is not so although I often think of home and would bee glad to happen round some rainy afternoon and stay an hour or two—

 

Sylvester is well. He sits in front of my tent washing a handkerchief and cracking jokes with some of the fellows.

 

            How is Hiram Forbes this summer. does he write as much as ever. I would like to go to warren with him to a Fare.

 

            You wanted I should send you / some flower seeds. I was once to a very nice Plantation on [?]iste Island a fiew days ago. there was a great many different kinds of flowers there but could not find but one that had gone to seed. I gathered some of thoas and will send you some in this. the kind I send you is a white flower and very handsome think they will grow at the north. You ought to have seen the boguet that I brought back with me. I tried to press some of them but could not press them very well. will send you two or three. you can tell something how they looked growing.

 

            I am getting near the end of this sheet and therefore must be drawing this dry letter to a close hopeing you will excuse all mistakes for I have written it in a hurry

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