Sept 17..61      St Louis Mo

 

Dear wife and children I write to you again i am not verry well but i am able to drill yet we have to drill dayly 1 hour before breakfast 2 hours in the forenoon 2 hours in the afternoon and go on dress perade just before sundown i do not fancy our manner of sleeping we sleep on the ground one thickness of blanket under us and one over us well i have got used to it so that i can do tolerable well i often dream of home and gon by days of haveing little toty in my arms O it is so hard for me to be seperated fr so far from my once happy family but it is so and i must bear it with pacients O i wanto spend the remainder of my life near write as i know how i daily see the great importance of rligion and more espsheley a soldier all tho it is a hard place to live a cristian life it is amusing to look about the incampment Sundays hear are some writeing there some playing cards there some reading some dancing some drinking some swearing some reading letters some laying sick others cooking others playing checkers and so on well for my part i expect by the asisting grace of god to live a cristian life / O may it all my hours ingage to do my masters will what a chearing hope the hope when days and years are ore we all will meet in heaven O may we live so as to inshure that inheritance that fadeth not a way we will be far happyer while on earth and after death will be forever blest in that happy land whare sorrow never comes whare we will range throug the blissful regons of glory while endless ages role I have a mother there yes and brothers and sisters there i wanto go and see them the last word my mother spoke was for her children to meet her in heaven i know i have not lived rite i have taken a innocent happy woman from her farthers roof and caused her so much trouble greaf and sorrow and pain but i trus and pray that i may be for given and be happy yet

                                                            will write more another day

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well we received orders this eavening to march tomorrow at half past twelve but we do not know whare our destany is therefore I will finish this letter this eavening lol you and Phi must write to me be good children and what ever you do be kind and affectionate to your dear Mother and to each other. your affectionat John G Scoville

Company F 6 regt camp Jesse Iowa vol lafayett Park

                                                St Louis Mo

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