_Washington, June 3, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--Your letter came yesterday. I
have not heard the least thing from the 51st since--no doubt they are down
there with the army near Richmond. I have not written to George lately. I
think the news from the Army is very good. Mother, you know of course that
it is now very near Richmond indeed, from five to ten miles. Mother, if
this campaign was not in progress I should not stop here, as it is now
beginning to tell a little upon me, so many bad wounds, many putrefied,
and all kinds of dreadful ones, I have been rather too much with--but as
it is, I certainly remain here while the thing remains undecided. It is
impossible for me to abstain from going to see and minister to certain
cases, and that draws me into others, and so on. I have just left Oscar
Cunningham, the Ohio boy--he is in a dying condition--there is no hope for
him--it would draw tears from the hardest heart to look at him--he is all
wasted away to a skeleton, and looks like some one fifty years old. You
remember I told you a year ago, when he was first brought in, I thought
him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I had seen, a real giant
in size, and always with a smile on his face. O what a change. He has long
been very irritable to every one but me, and his frame is all wasted away.
The young Massachusetts 1st artillery boy, Cutter, I wrote about is dead.
He is the one that was brought in a week ago last Sunday badly wounded in
breast. The deaths in the principal hospital I visit, Armory-square,
average one an hour.
I saw Capt. Baldwin of the 14th this morning; he has lost his left arm--is
going home soon. Mr. Kalbfleisch and Anson Herrick, (M. C. from New York),
came in one of the wards where I was sitting writing a letter this
morning, in the midst of the wounded. Kalbfleisch was so much affected by
the sight that he burst into tears. O, I must tell you, I [gave] in Carver
hospital a great treat of ice cream, a couple of days ago--went round
myself through about 15 large wards--(I bought some ten gallons, very
nice). You would have cried and been amused too. Many of the men had to be
fed; several of them I saw cannot probably live, yet they quite enjoyed
it. I gave everybody some--quite a number [of] Western country boys had
never tasted ice cream before. They relish such things [as] oranges,
lemons, etc. Mother, I feel a little blue this morning, as two young men I
knew very well have just died. One died last night, and the other about
half an hour before I went to the hospital. I did not anticipate the death
of either of them. Each was a very, very sad case, so young. Well mother,
I see I have written you another gloomy sort of letter. I do not feel as
first rate as usual.