My Dear Wife,

With pleasure I take this opportunity to inform you that I am well and hope you enjoy the same blessings.

I received a beautiful letter from your hand by last evening’s mail for the same please accept my thanks.

You wanted me to write when I thought we should come home. It is a hard question I think to answer correctly but I will give my opinion on the subject as you have solisted it and I cannot avoid anything you request.

I think by the 25th if nothing happens to prevent we shall be moving towards home. The most of the boys think we shall go by the 20th and I do not know but what we shall. I wish we might and in fact I wish we could start today. I understand the Colonel said that he should expect orders to go any time after this week but I do not know as he or anybody else knows.

Isaac thinks we shall start in one week from Monday but at the longest if we are both well and nothing happens, I hope the time will soon pass off. Perhaps by the time the moon fulls again I shall be with you to admire the beauties of nature which you pictures so lovely in your last. I hope I shall so we can sit down by our windows and talk the hours away or walk out and see the lovely fields clothed with their verdure of green. But we do not know what is best. Perhaps it is for the best that we are not at home today for perhaps if we were at home today something it might not be so well for us but I think it would be more agreeable to me and I think it would be to you but it is best for anyone to reconsile themselves to their fate if they can and hope for the best for it is useless to borrow trouble about anything and I want you to make yourself just as easy as you can. I do not want you to cease to think of me and I do not think you would under any consideration but I do not want you to feel too uneasy about me for you cannot help me any and it is worse for you.

I wish I had some good news to write to you but I have not and I think I had better close for I do not think yoou will like this letter very well but I hope you will not think that I have not done the best I could.

I have wrote what I thought on the subject and if it turns out better, I shall be as glad as anybody but I do not want to please myself with fancies that I do not think I shall realize so please excuse all mistakes and keep up your courage and I will come home as soon as I can.

So hopeing soon to see you, I close.

From your affectionate and loving husband. C.

God bless my dearest wife is the wish of her loving husband.

(Charles W Gooch)

Camp at Chantilly (Virginia)