Dere Julie:--

Well, ol' girl, you can see by the heading of this that we have gone
south. The plentifullest things down here is "dinges", mules and mud,
and you very seldom see one without the other. You know Julie "Birds
of a fether gathers no moss"; sumpin like that anyhow; you know Julie
I was never much on problems. I see a big lazy dinge yesterday asleep
against a corner of the barracks when the bugle blowed the mess call;
he woke up in time to hear the last notes; stretching himself and
scratching his bed, he said: "Dar she blows, dinner time for white
folks, but just 12 o'clock for niggers."

Well Julie, you can bet your Wrigleys and every hair on your bureau,
that what Sherman said about war is right; its easy to get in an' hard
to get out. Reminds me of the story my ol' man tells about when he
lived on a farm (You know Julie dere, I told you my old man was raised
on a farm in Brooklin, N.Y.U.S.A.). He stuck his bean into a yoke, to
teach a yearling calf to work double, and the way that calf started
to hot foot it to the other end of Long Island was some exhibition of
speed. He could have give the Empire State express a ten mile start
at Peekskill and beat it into Powkeepsy. He yanked my ol' man along
so fast that his feet only struck the ground every other mile. If the
calf had run around in a circle, my ol' man could have spit in his own
face. His coat tail stuck out so straight behind you could have played
a game of peaknuckle on it. Finally the o' man got hep that he wasn't
gonna be able to break the calf before the calf broke my ol' man's
neck so he yelled out, "here we come, dum our fool souls, somebody hed
us off." So Julie, see if somebody bobs up who is able and willin to
stop this little unpleasentness, let him go to it like a sick kitten