From John C. Gage to Dear Friends
Your Thanksgiving day letter arrived tonight. I am glad to know the day found you together and so well and happy. I went up to [Bale’s?] to dinner. We had a little party, ate turkey and mince pie and drank champagne and had a very good time of it. Still it was not much like the old home festival. Your youngsters must now make quite a part of the programme. It is now a long while since I have sat at your Thanksgiving table and it is hard to tell when I can be there again. I remember when Jonathan’s coming home and the Stickereys coming up and Uncle Hobbs coming down at night used to make it a great and happy occasion. I think if Jonathan should come home to be there on Thanksgiving day I would come too just to be there on that day. Perhaps he will next year.
I have met with a calamity. Somebody shot my fine pointer today. I don’t think he will die but the poor brute is very seriously injured. If I knew who did it I would give him a dose of his own kind of pills. He is a beautiful dog and the most harmless creature in the world. I have to take the big old fellow in my arms and lay him down, he can’t lie down himself and then he lies on his side and moans. I don’t think it would cause half so much indignation if I had got shot myself. People come by dozens to look at him. He crawled home to the foot of my stairs and couldn’t get up. I found him there and brought him upstairs. I have still two fine dogs, so I am not utterly bereft. This however is the most valuable. He was only mine conditionally. The others are young; one is very much like Watch only glossy black; the other a little rat terrier. The one I had last winter got killed by a big dog.
I have done very well this court, have been successful in my cases and had a good many of them. If the Legislation lets us alone this winter I shall make a pretty good thing next May Term. The guerrillas are all gone; we are out of active service; as soon as court is over and there is only a day or two more I shall have little to do. I think I will then go out to Aunt Charlotte’s.
I am in fine health—live in a room back of my office—do my own sweeping and make my bed—Since I lost my nigger I haven’t dared to try another. I shall always believe he stole something from me before he left.
You are beginning to realize a very little of what we have seen for months of the war. Still what you see are but drops of the ocean. We think nothing of it when a man from our very side almost is killed in battle. It is in the common course of things for anybody to get killed. Their own families hardly seem to mourn for them. The Dutch used to make a great noise when one of them got hurt but they too seem to have got used to it. The cripples can be seen continually about the streets with their crutches.
I can’t manufacture anything worth writing tonight.
Truly yours John C. Gage
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