8 Brevoort Place, Tuesday Eve.
My Dear Girls: The question of my going on to Washington has been agitated for some time past, yet I do not seem to come to any decision about it; not but that I would dearly love to look upon your faces again, and enjoy ever so much being with you, and seeing for myself all your goings and doings. Independent of all this, however, I confess I have no desire to visit Washington, and unless I could make myself useful there, and in every way a comfort to you, I think I am more in my place at home. Your uncle Edward was here this morning, and threw cold water on the movement, said it would be madness to run any such risk, as Washington was full of small-pox and typhoid fever. Now I write this evening to ask you what you think of our going on at present; whether there is really so much sickness as to cause any alarm. Do you want us? will it be a comfort to you to have a little visit from me? I do not ask these questions because I have any fears myself, but I am not willing, after your uncle’s remarks this morning, to run any risk in Charley’s or Hatty’s going. I feel now that it will all rest upon what you say about it. . . . The report here this morning said twenty-five hundred cases of small-pox in Washington! This evening it has come down to eighty. . . . My eyes failing last night, I left my scrawl to finish to you this morning. We have had our breakfast, cold turkey (not boned), hot biscuits, and fish-balls, and the girls are gathered round the front parlor fire with the newspapers, reading items, and discussing the times; Charley is directing Elizabeth about his cushions for the chair he has carved and made, and I am scribbling this in the dining-room, feeling an occasional pang when I look up and see a horrid stranger, John by name, in the pantry, instead of the old faithful servant, William. You don’t know how much I miss him in a thousand little things. This fellow is a perfect snail, never gets through with anything, and of course half is not done at all;–an Irish drone and tobacco chewer.
Poor William’s occasional spree was really preferable. . . . I have nothing to say to begin another sheet with, but to send you my love and a Mother’s blessing. Give Joe his share in both.
Yours lovingly.
Small pox was more or less prevalent about Washington at this time, and one of the sad cases, entirely characteristic of war, was that of G. R., a private in the 19th Indiana, cared for earlier by G. and E. in the Patent Office Hospital. He went safely through camp fever, measles and rheumatism, to die at last of small-pox in a lonely camp hospital in the outskirts of Washington, among strangers.