
I am disconsolate at your long stay. What has become of you? On returning the 7th of July I found you had gone home sick. You have no business to be sick, so I expect you are well. I was so unlucky as to be sick myself all the time I was home—and most of the time since I came back. I am quite well now, however, and feel like myself. Benton and I looked for you at Leedsvill Leedsville
, as I wrote to you to come. If you have leisure now, you would enjoy hugely a visit up there. I hope you are printing Drum Taps, and that this universal drought does not reach your "grass." But make haste and come back. The heat is delicious I have a constant bath in my own perspiration. I was out at the front during the siege of Washington and lay in the rifle pits with the
soldiers. I got quite a taste of war and learned the song of those modern minstrels—the minnie bullets—by heart. A line from you would be prized.