and a bit of buttered toast, are discussed till ten; and so to bed. . . . he rising at six. He is just now neck-and-neck with the last of the boys that had reached him by doing "voluntary" during the holidays. . . .
Our hearts were made glad, yesterday, by letters from home. The "petition" (from England to America), praying for the restoration of peace, had been received with great delight and satisfaction. My love to the ladies.
M. F. Maury.
Maury wrote to his brother-in-law, lamenting the evils that the war was bringing on his country and friends:—
| Dear Brodie, | Bowden, England, April 22nd, 1863. |
War is a great scourge, and this has touched you and me and many a good fellow with a heavy hand. As I look out upon the landscape that lies before my window, and see the men and women working in the fields, and the fields smiling to man's husbandry, when I see no marks of the spoiler, and recognise that each one is safe in his person and secure in his possessions, then it is I see peace, and think of my poor country with a sigh, and, oh, with what reflections!
"Thoughts on thoughts a countless throng," bless your hearts—you and John—for comforting, with so much solicitude and affection, my poor dear wife in her affliction! Good brothers are you both. How lovely and beautiful are the memories of my Johnny! I wonder if all parents think of their dead as I do of mine. Bless that sleeping boy! Never did he, in his whole life, do one single act that either displeased or grieved me or his mother. "He never offended." What an epitaph; and how proudly I write it! But where is the end of this war to find us—where you and yours, me and mine, and where so many that are dear and near to us? Our charming circle of relations and friends is, I fear, broken up, never, never to be restored on this side of the grave.
Where are you? You have a hospital, I know; but where do you live? Where, John? Where, Charles? Both brothers-in-law! When we are done fighting the Yankees,
