University of Virginia Library

Letter, January 19, 1861, from Adelaide E. Case to Charles Tenney

Here comes another
of my sunday letters will it be a welcome d
guist. Maybe that you imagine I think the
better the day the better the deed.
I read your very very letter
dear Charlie and was grieved by the
feelings which were espressed in it.

Will you think me presumptious. dear
brotherIf if I ask you why your sister
does not correspond with you? You must
not answer me unless you deem it
prudent so to do. but I should so

love to win your confidence as a sister
should or brothers confidence.

I have wondered often wondered why
your sister did not write to you. It must
indeed be a lonely lifefor a brother to have a
sister that could not write to him
Although I now sympathize with you.
yet I can not offer my sympathy in the
same form that I could if I knew the
direct cause of your grief. Perhaps you
will think me selfish in asking. it
is not at all to be wondered at if
I am, for I will own that I have
a selfish disposition. I am not so blind
to my faults but that I can see my
selfishness.

You still seem to have an idea
that we have sleighing. why dear Charlie
we do not. I guess sleighing either
has gone to war or else gone where
Mecca Oil has. Oh! such a winter
as this is. One day very cold
and the next warm. Yesterday

morning there fell about three inches
of snow and now there is not enough
to snow-ball with while the streams
look like (small) rivers. I wrote you
of the illness ofSadie Hezlep. She
is better. Dora came down to see me the
afternoon of the day of which I wrote you
last. She is such a good little girl.

Dear Charlie. how willingly would I
take your position in this war if I could
do so. how thankful I ought to be
for having brothers and friends to go
and protect our homes as I have
but when I think of what may come
it causes a trembling fear to take
possession of my frame and I
sometimes wish that my friends could
stay with me. There is another
instance of my selfishness. but
some way it seems as if my
friends were a great deal nearer
and dearer to me then other
people's friends were to them.

But I must
close or the dark
will catch my words
and carry them to
you sooner than the
mail. I am well
with the exception of
a slight cold, which I think
is contagious this winter.

How is your health dear brother.
Please write soon.