_Washington, Feb. 2, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I am writing this by the side
of the young man you asked about, Lewis Brown in Armory-square hospital.
He is getting along very well indeed--the amputation is healing up good,
and he does not suffer anything like as much as he did. I see him every
day. We have had real hot weather here, and for the last three days wet
and rainy; it is more like June than February. Mother, I wrote to Han last
Saturday--she must have got it yesterday. I have not heard anything from
home since a week ago (your last letter). I suppose you got a letter from
me Saturday last. I am well as usual. There has been several hundred sick
soldiers brought in here yesterday. I have been around among them to-day
all day--it is enough to make me heart-sick, the old times over again;
they are many of them mere wrecks, though young men (sickness is worse in
some respects than wounds). One boy about 16, from Portland, Maine, only
came from home a month ago, a recruit; he is here now very sick and
down-hearted, poor child. He is a real country boy; I think has
consumption. He was only a week with his reg't. I sat with him a long
time; I saw [it] did him great good. I have been feeding some their
dinners. It makes me feel quite proud, I find so frequently I can do with
the men what no one else at all can, getting them to eat (some that will
not touch their food otherwise, nor for anybody else)--it is sometimes
quite affecting, I can tell you. I found such a case to-day, a soldier
with throat disease, very bad. I fed him quite a dinner; the men, his
comrades around, just stared in wonder, and one of them told me afterwards
that he (the sick man) had not eat so much at a meal in three months.
Mother, I shall have my hands pretty full now for a while--write all about
things home.