Sunday Jan 3^rd '64

 

Dear sister,

                        The new year of '64 has began and I will now write my the first letter to you, thanking God that he has spared my life, and health and has given me the privalege to write to you again. I have been thinking over the year of '63 and I can think of but very few instances where I have done anything to please our saviour. It appears to me as if my whole time has been again him, and now I have determined to try and and spend this year more in the service of him than the last year and I want each one of you to remember me in your prayers. We have two prayer meetings a week wensday and sunday evening. /

 

the new year has come rather cold and disagreeable. in the morning of the day before new years it began to rain and continued to rain untill about 8 oclock when the wind began to blow and it soon turned to sleet, but soon it got too cold for sleet and by eight oclock the mud was froze so that one would walk all about in the dry. the next morning the wind blew very hard and the ground was froze to bear wagons. the thermometer stood at 10 degrees below zero but by evening the wind had stopped and it was more pleasant. to day it is snowing in the summer we would talk about the sunny south, but now we have changed the tune for we / have become so accustomed to the weather here that it affects us as much as the cold weather in the north used to. I have been at work on our mule shed two weeks and I find it is much nicer than standing guard this cold weather. the shed is fifty feet wide and one hundred feet long. We got the roof and weather boarding all on before newyears and although it was so cold our Colonel got up an exibition and we had a nice little time in mule hall as the boys call it. the officers spoke and acted pieces, and we had some good singing and playing by company F. you wanted to know about the small pox. there has been fifteen cases of it / in our company and about forty in the Regiment but there has been but very few of the boys bed fast. when it first came about the doctors said they did not know what it was, and the boys kept runing about untill a few days ago the doctors concluded that it was the small pox. it appears to be dying away now there is but two or three sick. we were all vaccinated. I have been vaccinated three times since I left home but it has never taken. there has none of the boys been as sick as I was when I had the measles. My sheet is almost full so i will close. I received two papers last week. W H Bone

 

to E J Bone.

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