Camp Walton, Annapolis, Oct. 18th, ‘61.
Pardon a wretched notelet, written on camp stationery with the very dregs of the day’s ration of nervous energy. Everybody is both tired and busy to-night with this embarkation business. . . .
You will readily believe they are sober enough, these long, undulating files of honest brown faces, as they pour down upon the wharves, but there are good, rousing cheers, too, as the tenders swing out into the stream and go scuttling away to the great motionless ships in the roads.
I notice with surprise, and with some apprehension as well, that the 6th and 7th Connecticut, green as I have thought them, are farther advanced in the military art than any other troops I have seen here. This is not brag, you will please consider, it is very reluctant conviction. But still, as for me, turning more sadly than ever before from the loyal North, I feel an exultation in helping to strike, as we are hoping, the heaviest blow at the great crime that it has yet felt.
Your basket is such a miracle of packing that I have hesitated to thoroughly ransack it, fearing that the attempt to restore its contents to their normal condition might reduce me to a state of hopeless idiocy, like a Chinese puzzle, or a book on political economy.
Moritz delicately hinted at French rolls as being the only things that could not defy the ravages of time, and so, one terribly stormy evening, being the second after the arrival of the basket, Chaplain Wayland, my brother the Captain and I, having our rival teapots all in a row, each singing over her own spirit-lamp, I removed the stratum of rolls and disposed of them to the immense satisfaction of the tea-party. This gave me a glimpse of the blue and gold Tennyson lying lapped among the balmy bolognas. Ever since, I have been longing for the golden moment to come when I could sit, or, more properly, lie down to my own individual, personal, particular, blue and gold Tennyson. This may probably be when every soul in the regiment except myself is helplessly, hopelessly seasick, and nobody can “come a botherin’ me.”