I was thinking to day whether I had answered your last letter or not but I am going to write you
anyhow[no handwritten text supplied here]The most news at present is
about the high water of which we have plenty & to spare even to the big folks at
Washington if they need any[no handwritten text supplied here] The weather
is warm and spring is fairly advanced people are plowing & wheat looks first
although I am not interested in agriculture I am glad to see things loc.01892.002_large.jpg thriving. I have
been engaged in the oil business the past year but I find it a losing game and now I am out of
employment and floating around & its hard to tell when I shall turn up &
whether it will be up side down or right side up If I had known in time I might
possibly have got the nomination for Governor of this
state but ex Gov. Helm2
has beat me. That you know would have been better than lying around idle now I must
look for something else for a living. I might steal if I knew enough but I have not
even the first
loc.01892.003_large.jpg
rudiments of the profession and then it leads to unpleasant things when one gets
caught at it I think of going to Nashville this week and can see if I can get work
there something from blacking boots down to sweeping crossings I think if Gov
Brownlow3 knew me he would not hesitate to give me a good
berth in Tennessee but being of a modest disposition of course I cannot call his
attention to my many merits
Now you must not think I am egotistical at all for I am not I am only telling you
what most every one knows as true anything about me
loc.01892.004_large.jpg It's Sunday
evening I'm sitting alone sad & lonely, no dog to love no one to talk with Time
hangs heavily and yet they say time flies fleetly, Ah it may be I have seen the time when minutes
were hours & hours days but that is gone yes its near two years since those scenes were past And May God in his mercy
deliver us from the curse of war where so many meet their death or are thrown back
upon the world a poor miserable cripple a invalid to themselves and of no benefit to country or
friends
If4 you direct to this place I shall get your answer even if I am not here
AnsonCorrespondent:
Anson Ryder, Jr., a soldier, had apparently left
Armory Square Hospital in 1865 and returned to his family at Cedar Lake, New
York, accompanied by another injured soldier named Wood (probably Calvin B.
Wood; see Notes and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed.
Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1961–1984], 6:673).
For other correspondence between Ryder and Walt Whitman, see Ryder's August 9, 1865, letter to Whitman. Excerpts from
five of Whitman's letters to an unidentified ex-soldier (later identified as
Anson Ryder, Jr.) were printed by Florence Hardiman Miller in the Overland Monthly under the title "Some Unpublished
Letters of Walt Whitman's. Written to a Soldier Boy" in 1904. She was not able
to date most of the letters or to offer any initial conjectures about the identity of the recipient.
However, Edwin Haviland Miller later identified the soldier as Ryder. Florence
Miller seems to imply that the correspondence continued into the early
1870s.