Centreville, Oct. 1, '63.
My Dear Boy, —
I was very glad to receive your note; not the less that it was in a new
handwriting, — in a better handwriting,
I think. . . .
You must not be impatient to return, and, above all, must
not, when you begin to feel fairly well, be bullied by any Boston
hypersensitiveness into returning too soon because you are having too good a
time at home. If you are away six months, you will be back before the war is
over, my sanguine prophet, — yes, three years before. Your regiment is now
guarding a portion of the railroad near Catlett's Station, — about two hundred
and twenty men for duty and all the officers they require. If “all New England”
gets too many for you, can you not be detailed as Superintendent of Regimental
Recruiting Service? . . . I consider
that a very important duty.
“How could I be married without ‘daily bread’?” A pertinent
question, Henry. There are still ravens, but it does not appear that Elijah
ever taxed the powers of his by marrying. A year ago, I should have told you
condescendingly that each party having had its own ravens in the single state,
we might reckon confidently upon their pulling together in the married state: now,
I sometimes think that confidence too hasty. . . . Though I mean to make this change
my habits, I do not mean to allow it to change my old trustfulness. I
have nothing, as you know; I am going to marry upon nothing; I am going to make
my wife as happy upon nothing as if I could give her a fortune — in that I
still have faith; in that one respect this war is perhaps a personal Godsend. “Daily
bread” sinks into insignificance by the side of the other more important things
which the war has made uncertain, and I know now that it would be unwise to
allow a possible want of “daily bread” in the future to prevent the certainty
of even a month's happiness in the present. In peace times this would not be so
clear. ... I remember dining with last winter, and feeling that I would rather
commence in a garret than in a house too big and too thoroughly furnished. . . . Fresh air, light and heat are
indispensable; these the Government furnishes liberally. One dollar per diem
for food and one for clothing ought to provide for each party's wants, and
I am glad that our pay allows for this twice over. “After the war,” if that
time ever comes, I do not think that there will be more men than there are
places for them to fill.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 308-10
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