Monday, December 24, 1861.
My dear Girls: Col. D. is a godsend! I was in despair at the thought of not getting some little Christmas box off so as to reach you to-morrow, when lo! he appeared, like an angel of mercy and offered to take anything we might have to send. So of course we gathered together our duds, which we had set aside as an impossibility as Christmas gifts, to take their chance in reaching you for New Year, and have just sent off the bonnet box filled with love and best wishes in all the chinks, mixed in with the sugar-plums and covering over everything, to make all acceptable to our noble-hearted girls, who are “extending their benevolence to all within their reach.” . . . I have sent Joe a cake, which you must dress with its wreath and flag, for him to take down to camp. . . . We are going to give little May a Christmas tree and have a beauty now standing in the middle parlor ready to be decorated. It is a very large one, and will take the whole of a box of one hundred colored candles which I have been arranging in little colored tin candlesticks with sharp points which fasten on to the branches. We have also a number of small colored lanterns and a great variety of beautiful and cunning toys. This is to be my Christmas gift to the children. . . .