p.

the best, and just where you can feel the most
at home. If I were to consult my own heart
felt wishes, I should try and get home, my heart
says fly to you - I long to see you, - to receive one
pure, holy kiss, from the lips of my dearly loved
wife, to press her one more to my heart, but my
duty to my country forbids this pleasure for the
present, - I say duty, for horrible as my position
is or may be, I consider it my duty in common
with every other recipient of the blessings we
have enjoyed as a nation, to be engaged in
in its full, firm, and earnest defense

There are other motives to keep me here, I
have an honest pride in the 75^th,, I have been
well used by her officers, and men, and there
has seemed to be a confidence felt in my
abilities, and also in view of the honorable
prospects before me, I feel like staying with
them and sharing this fate, so long as my
as my health will permit, while at the same
time I realize that I have dutires to perform to
my wife, which I shall not neglect, of my own
free will, and paramount to all others I realize
it to be my duty to so conduct myself as not
to disgrace the good and true woman I have
left alone, - for my disgrace is yours, -- but rather
to live up to the manhood within me, and
take back to you a name and a character unsullied