baptized with the blood of heroes - fields whose crimson hue the tears of millions can never wash away. he hears no more the roar of Columbiads & the shrill-fierce crash of the terrible Parrot - 100 pounder has died away in the distance - The sharp rattle of musketry is hushed. & he looks away toward the Polar star & sees a careworn & weary soldier wending his way across his own prairie to his own N W. home or to his own dear New England hills. Already he is seated by a blazing fire surrounded by the "loved ones at home" telling his "hair-breadth 'scapes on many a hard won field"  Yes now after the storm comes the deep - still sea of diplomacy.  Politicians will take the sword from the strong hand of the soldier & with a goose quil may undo all that has been done, but if we are allowed to have the "Old Patriarch" at the helm the ship is safe.  I cannot give you much news from here as we are yet in camp & the army has not moved forward yet & the news we get from other parts is stale to you long before we receive it here. for we are away out from the rest of the buissy world.  We have some interesting times here - I might give you a brief history of the past few days.  Last Sabbath I attended church with the 18th Ind.  Chaplain McDonnald of the 18th Ind. preached to us - a practical & verry appropriate sermon.  I could'nt tell you all I thought of while he was preaching, but my mind turned away to the churches of the north - how you were situated.  You have warm houses to meet in & seats to sit on - shut in from the storm - & I could not help thinking as we sat on the sand with a thin coat of grass, some of it the - "sand grass" with sharp burs so that we could not put a hand to the ground without having them stick to us - & the wind was blowing cold from the north driving sand all over us, so that we could hardly see the venerable gray-haired man as he endeavored to proclaim the word of God.  The thought would keep coming in my mind. how many of our church at home would sit here among these sand burs with the sand drifting in our eyes & hear a sermon throug & still wait to sing the closing hymn & hear the benediction - was I wrong in thinking that Bro Nash "or any other man" would have finished his sermon & pronounced a benediction to heaps of
