New Haven, April.
I spent one delightful day in New York with Jane at the New England rooms, where everything is nicely prepared for 300 men. The superintendent has time during intervals to rush down stairs and compose puffs on Jane, which he publishes in the newspapers next morning! The day we went down, we had the luck to fall upon the first wounded soldier of the season, and, though he was not very sick, Jane went to work in the most approved way, and you should have seen her with her bonnet off, her camel’s-hair shawl swung gracefully from her shoulders and a great pocketed white apron on, making tea over a spirit-lamp and enjoying it all so thoroughly. The Newbern hero was fed with sardines and oysters and all sorts of good things, and face and hands washed by Jane’s little paws so nicely. . . . Don’t say anything when you write home, for Jane is rather huffy when we talk too much about it, since her appearance in the public prints. Did you see the letter from a soldier in the hospital, describing Jane, and using the celebrated sentence which, as she says, leaves no doubt as to the identity: “I dare not mention her name, but she is beautiful.”