My Dear Wife,

In accordance with my usual custom, I devote a part of this day to communicate a few of my thoughts to my dear wife hopeing these few lines will find you as well as they leave me.

I received a letter from you by last Friday’s evening mail saying you were all well for which I felt very glad. There is one man in this company, Gordon by name, that lost four children about the time we lost ours with the same disease. All died within 20 days and about three weeks ago his wife had twins and he seemed like a new man after he got the news and least his wife was getting along well but last mail brought the the sad intelligence to him that his wife had gone to that Bourne from which no travler ever returns and the poor man has got all he can survive I think. I pitty him very much now. He has two little ones that he never saw and one little one that is about two years old with no one to take care of them and he out here. It is very bad indeed.

You wanted me to write all I know about all I know about our coming home. I do not kknow as I can write anything different from what I wrote in my last whilst was I thought we should be at home by the 30th if nothing happend. I hope we shall nay way, don’t you? You said you had no paper to send me in your last. It does not make any difference if you do not send me any more. There is paper enough on the ground now so it will not be any trouble for me to procure stationary anytime and perhaps in one week or so we shall be on a move towards home where we shall not want much paper as we do now.

There is no news here at present that will interest you I do not think. I was glad you had a rain there for if it is as dry there as it is here, I fear the husbandman would not realise much in harvest.

I understand that Mr. Seldon Wells went home drunk the other night and beat his wife and threatened to kill her and she has took the road for it. If this is so, he had ought to serve a term of five years at the ripraps.

That old negro woman that I wrote you about is dead. She died last week sometime and the soldiers buried her. I am glad she has got through with her suffering for I think it would have been impossible for her to have lived there another winter. She would have frozen to death I think.

Isaac and I went cherrying this forenoon.There is any quantity of them here but they are not quite ripe yet. I did not eat many of them. I did not know but what they might hurt me and I do not want to get hurt out here.

I forgot to tell you in my last that I have sent you $20. I suppose you have got it before this reaches you. If you have not, please make mention of it in your next and in closing I would say that I hope to see my dear wife from her loving husband, C E Gooch.

If we start as the most of the folks think we shall. I do not know as I should get a letter if you wrote one after you receive this but you can write or not just as you think best.

Camp at Chantilly, Virginia