Helena Arkansas August 25^the 1862

Mrs M E Keller

 

                                                                                    Dear wife yours of the 16 of this

month came duly to hand to day yesterday I wrote to you but as yours came to hand I thought I woulde write to day I ame glad to heare you are all well my health is good but I ame sorry to say the health of our Regiment is very poor nearly halfe of my Company is sick with the Ague and chill and fever as I write at this time several of them are vomiting there best licks poor fellows how I pity them the water we get here is very poor the River water is the most healthyest but some of us can hardly use it as frequently through the day we can see dead bodys floating down stream some of them are white and others are the Bodys of Negroes and there is all maner of filth in the River. Oh little does some of thoes stay at homes know or care how poor soldiers have got to suffer. I think the reason my Company is so very sickly at this time was ocasioned by that tripe over the River in Missisipi whitch I informed you about in one of my former letters as we was out seven days and nights without Blankets and slept on the ground in the open aire of nights our clothes would get all wet with dew after the next month the sickly season will be over West Aspinall is in the hospital sick with the Ague but I think will be well in a few days. there was a steamboat run on a snag a few nights ago twenty miles above Helena and the Boat went to peices a Number of persons wer / drownded I have superintended the burying of several of them. Oh how very sorry I felt for some poor little children who wer drowned we Buried on the bank of the River there bodys wer unknown but sutch is the uncertaintys of life in this precarious world but I thought to my selfe they are gone to a better worlde wher they will be in the presence of all that is good and hapy wher they will never meet with any more sutch disasters I coulde not helpe but to think of the words of him who spoke as man never spoke suffer little children to come unto me for sutch is the kingdom of heaven, or God.

 

I ame sorry to think our mails are so unregular you say you got four of my letters in one week. you say them clothes have not come to hand it is time they had arived at home you say you have some big war meetings I hope Brod ax will send them out. you apear to think I had not better bought that land untill I come home probaly by that time it woulde be gone and woulde not be for sale the land is very cheap and if I get it I purpose on buying more adjoining it and try to make a good farm it is close to town and has got thirty or forty acres cleared whitch is quite a start towards a farm I want a peice of land so that I can set the Boys to work when they get a little older for town is a poore place to raise up Boys. you say you donte like to pay the five hundred dollars down for fear you / get out of money our pay is due us next week and I think we will be paide off shortly and then I will send you about two hundred dollars let me know how mutch you have over the five hundred on hands and if you are about out I will send you some amediately by mail as I always keepe a little money by me let me know if Bill Covert has saide any thing to you about that crop on that land if he says it is not worth thirty dollars I will not buy it

 

olde Billy is well. Dick has got the Ague and swears he will not take any quinine. he says he wishes we was back Making Brick he often talkes about the Boys and you. there is two of us about of the same opinion, but as the Boys frequently say sutch is war.

 

it is very dry here at this time the dust is horrible

write amediately if you please yours most

truly

                                                                                                            S J Keller

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