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passion purified from dross: solemn, reverent, tender - almost awful in white intensity - as all love is, or should be. About the furlough: I cannot come. Only a certain percentage of officers and men are permitted to apply for these indulgences; and I have given way to our Assist. Surgeon, and a young Captain, both of whom have families needing their presence. They are now on leave. I should so much have liked to come; but then, if I had obtained a furlough thro' excess of selfishness I shouldn't have enjoyed it very well. And so the personal pains and sorrows of the war come into your house also. Poor Nephew: misguided - following, like so many others, the beat of his hot blood. At the battle of Peach Tree Creek I could but admire the reckless courage and daring of a young Confederate Lieutenant who, when the color bearer of his Regt. was shot down seized the flag and with an abandon of magnificent fury waved it above his head, trying to rally the disordered line as it melted away beneath and cowered away backward from the incessant fatal toll of our steady musketry. And again, when their lines were reformed, & they charged a second time, the same glorious young stripling bore, advanced, the tattered flag. - What desperate efforts he made to reach our slight works, behind which our thin ranks stood. I would have saved him, if it had been possible to do so without almost inevitably sacrificing my own life. Poor boy; one of our bullets

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