Helena Ark. June 4 1865 Dear Elizabeth I received yours of May 28 to day it found me well as also I hope this may find you. We are looking for Marching Orders every hour and if we get them to night it will not surprise me and if we did not get them for two weeks it would not surprise me eather. We are to keep our arms to take home with us. (I will discharge any revolver when I get nearly home so you may know I am coming) but we will probly stay at St Louis and Springfield 3 or 4 days you may look for me home in this month I think with some certanty you must have another acre of tabaco planted by all means you say you have given it out of planting more than 1 acre if you are don breking up if you will after geting yours planted run off & set out an acre for me you will oblige much for you are shure of my helth to hoe it if I live & so I must not plant a crop on that grounds if I was at home for the dangers of that is over Plant two acres any how if you can get the plants for I never was so tired of going nothing in all my life let me tell you what I do I get up of a morning eat brekfast walk about til tierd come in lay down & doz there and read till tierd get up go to some shanty get a paper that I have not read come back read it till I am tierd get up and do something else till tierd and I am glade when night comes to sleep off my now seaming long hours My work is don I am sick of Military afares sick of sholder straps & sick of any thing pertaining to the army give me work is my cry I must work or die with absence of mind you never seen a set of felows so home sick in all your life the boys speak of the 16 dollars a month as being insignificant. I am not going to bring home many clothes of the army blue socks is very hie now and I am out and I will not draw them at the price they are worthless you may make a pare for a present when I get home I am not spending money now only for some cordial to keep off the yelow fevor & small pox I am eating light diet to help I have no news times is dull all the armys have surenderd Smiths all together the town is alive with rebel soldiers who all express a strong desier of going home as soon as they can get there to go to work this is my last scrap of paper so I close hoping to here the same good news in your next letter Tel George I got his poetry yours M.A.H. Patrick J. Anderson http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=patanderson 9654 Baltimore Avenue, Laurel, Maryland 20723