“I had a dream of home again”

Camp at Fredericksburg Va

Sunday, November 30^th 1862

Dear Clarinda,

I have received another letter from you dated Nov. 17 and glad I was to get it and hear some more news from home only I am sorry to think that you are at work so hard on them Military Clothes. I am a great deal better than I was when I last wrote to you and I think I shall get entirely over this complaint very soon if nothing happens. There is a great many men gone to the hospital today and I think there will be a great many more to go in a few days.

Oh, today has been another long lonesome Sunday and I hardly know how to pass the time. I have finished a letter for Tom and now I am at work writing this for you.

Last night I had a dream of home again and oh, how disappointed I was when I awoke and found I was lying on the ground in my tent. I thought I was in the garden picking something to make soup of and then I thought I went to do something for you and I hurt my knee and the pain of it woke me up to the sad reality that I was a soldier and away from you so far that I can’t get it out of my mind in all day.

You spoke in your letter that you might think your letters cold. I don’t think any such thing. I think they are good such as I like to hear. I wished I had never said what sometimes what I have said to you, Dear Clara, but then the best of folks says things sometimes that they are sorry for after. I love you better than anything else on earth, Dear Clara, and I have often told you so, but I did not know whether you thought so or not. God only knows how well I love you and I only regret one thing and that is that my position in life has not been better so that I could of done better by you. Dear Clara, it seems hard to be parted from one other so long and oh, my little ones, when I think of them and what they used to say so cunning sometimes it makes tears come in my eyes. Poor little Ida, how she used to run for her bonnet when I went for my cap. Bless her little [pimpim] face. I don’t see how I could refuse her the way I did. Sometimes yes, Dear Clara, I think of you all if I am so far away it serves to bind the tie still stronger between us.

There is not any more news here at present worth telling, only some of them say the reason why we are lying still so long is that there is so many Peace rumors around and they think they will settle this war. I hope to God it is so and then we will all come home again and live happy and contented. Dear Clara, I don’t know of anything else to write so I will close. Give my love to father and mother and all the folks and remember me.

Yours in love and truth forever until death,

P.L. Dumont

P.S. I am glad to think that Pa did not come down here. P.D.