Ebbitt House, December 1, ‘61
We saw yesterday a nice dodge for enlarging your tent and making the back one more private. It is pitching the two tents three or four feet apart and spreading the fly over the intermediate vestibule. Chaplain Edward Walker of the 4th Connecticut, whom we went to see yesterday, had his two tents arranged so, and the effect was very pretty. In the front one he had the regimental library (a very nice one) and the back one was his own, and between them was the little vestibule floored like the others and boarded at the sides to keep out the cold, and in it he had his stove and washing apparatus, and from its ceiling hung a pretty wire basket filled with moss and wild flowers! a charming little bit of New England country life in the midst of civil war. He is a nice fellow, one of Dr. Leonard Bacon’s Congregational boys and just the one for an army Chaplain–so cheerful and strong, and honest and kind-hearted. . . . He went with us through the camp and to the hospital, where we left them some supplies, including a lot of hair pillows which we had made from Abby’s material.
G. lately drove Chaplain Wrage’s wife out to her husband’s camp, carrying socks, pillows, comforters, farina, etc. to the hospital. The camp was very German and dirty; no New England faculty shown in keeping it warm and clean, and the little German bowers looked dreary in the freezing weather. The Colonel, who addresses us as “my ladies” in a polite note, is under arrest for stealing; the Lieutenant-Colonel and Quartermaster are fools, and the men suffer in consequence.