through them. You have escaped so many dangers that I feel you must
escape all the rest. The news reaches us that the fighting in Virginia
has been of the most dreadful character, but when it arrives in
Pendleton it has two meanings. Those of our little town who are for the
Confederacy say General Grant's losses have been so enormous that he can
go no farther, and that the last and greatest effort of the North has
failed.

Those who sympathize with the Union say General Lee has been reduced
so greatly that he must be crushed soon and with him the Confederacy.
As you know, I wish the latter to be true, but I suspect that the truth
is somewhere between the two statements.

But the truth either way brings me great grief. I cannot hate the
Southern people. We are Southern ourselves in all save this war, and,
although our dear little town is divided in feeling, I have received
nothing but kindness from those on the other side. Dr. Russell often
asks about you. He says you were the best Latin scholar in the Academy,
and he expects you to have a great future, as a learned man, after the
war. He speaks oftenest of you and Harry Kenton, and I believe that
you two were his favorite pupils. He says that Harry's is the best
mathematical mind he has ever found in his long years of teaching.

Your room remains just as it was when you left. Juliana brushes and airs
it every day, and expects at any time to see her young Master Dick come
riding home. She keeps in her mind two pictures of you, absolutely
unlike. In one of these pictures you are a great officer, carrying much
of the war's weight on your shoulders, consulted continually by General
Grant, who goes wrong only when he fails to take your advice. In the
other you are a little boy whom she alternately scolds and pets. And it