Letter from Luther Bruen, Nokesville, VA to Augusta Bruen, 1864-03-20
Nokesville Va March 20 64 My Dear Wife: I mailed you a letter this morning, notwithstanding, I will make a few more remarks, reserving to myself the right to stop whenever I please. -- Some time since I wrote to you about paying the quarterly insrs on the War policy on my life. You have never alluded to the subject and I am growing anxious to know whether it has been paid. It is due sometime this month but the exact date I do not remember. If you have not attended to it please do so immediately and let me know the date it became due. I shall try not to forget it hereafter. -- I have been writing to Wil. Connor, Craighead, Connie and your Uncle John trying to get them interested in my application for an appointment in the Bureau of Military Justice. I do not know whether I can make the thing go; if not, it shall not be for want of trying. As I said in my last my inherent modesty has been laid aside pro tem. -- I rather expected to get a letter from you this evening but none came. I shall be more sanguine to-morrow evening. -- Enclosed you will find a quarter for Robbie's birthday. It is not always easy to get clean ones here and I wish it to be ready for the young gentleman when his birthday comes, so that he can have a full benefit. You must cherish these little family holidays. They are distributed through the year at about right intervals, to keep up the excitement. I have forgotten the precise day on which you consented to favor the world with your presence, with an ultimate and doubtless foreordained view to my happiness, and it gives me extreme pleasure to say that so far as you have gone you have nobly fulfilled your mission! -- I am growing to be an unconscionable scribbler, having written about a dozen letters in the past three days. One was a long one to Senator Sherman on the pay of soldiers and officers. I think it doubtful whether he will read it on account of its length, -- nearly four pages of letter paper, -- but if he does he will know more about the subject which he is called to regulate than he did before he commenced. This is the fourth letter I shall send away in the morning and I have another still to write. All but one of the others, however are short, as I could not have the patience to write them. -- I am especially anxious to hear from you on Bessie Price's account. I hope the poor child's disease has taken a more favorable turn than I was led to expect by your last letter. -- The Rebs have not gobbled us yet and I am pretty certain they do not propose to trouble us this time, if they have had a *rest* in contemplation at all. If they had, they would have made their movements so secretly that we should not have been able to discover them so soon. -- The newspapers say, several Ohio regiments are to be sent to this Army from the West. If this is the case Howard and I may perhaps find ourselves close together. I can't say that I wish he would come as there will be sharp fighting when the campaign is fairly opened and it would be better to have but one of us in it. -- Here I am at the bottom of my sheet, my "remarks" having degenerated into a letter of about the accustomed length. However having reserved to myself the right of stopping whenever I chose, I shall make bold to exercise it very soon. #If you don't like to have your letters "thrown on your hands" say so and I'll keep them so the Rebs may have a chance of reading them someday.# #Dr. Thomas is nearly right in his views of woman -- they had better stick to their babies and husbands. I wonder how many buttons are off of old Gage's shirts! I have to sew mine on now myself and I tell you I have learned to appreciate a wife!! Love and Kisses to all my dear little flock. Thine L.B.B.#
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March 20, 1864
Bruen, Luther Barnett
Nokesville, VA
4 pages
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Bruen, Luther Barnett -- Correspondence
Catharine Mitchill '31 Collection of Family Letters, Wellesley College Library, Special Collections
MSS.6.291
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http://repository.wellesley.edu/mitchill/291
