Letter to a friend from Alexander Thain. #93.45.416

              Huntsville, Ala., Feb. 15, 1865.

Dear Friend,
As I sit at my little rough table penning these lines, the sun light falls with a subdued glory through the white roof above me, and without all is warmth and gladness. Winters visage proverbialy stern, loses much of its sternness under the warm glances of a Southern sun and even at times deigns to smile, if not warmly at least with a condescending pleasantness. Jack Frost with a commendable zeal for the customs of his Northern home sometimes drives Dame Nature in garments of winter white, but the coquettish Dame, under the warm glances of the Sun soon forgets her cold admirer and cast of her ghostly toilett for her natural color. So it seems then that you, Dick & Co. have imposed on me the task of describing Huntsville and vicinity and I have a great mind to disappoint you. (That is if it would be a disappointment) by declining to do it in retaliation for your refusal to answer a certain charge made sometime ago. but I guess I will bury the past and as their is nothing of much importance transpiring here I will depict trifles. It has been said that the love of home is not transferable but that it will cling with unwavering fidelity to the one spot above all others, where the hearts desires are enshrined. But the human affections have more adapabillaties than some whoes life has not been a changefull one, suppose for although their is a home of homes, ever kept green in the heart by tender memories., still there are lesser homes to which the affections cling with a love less tender less lasting, yet it springs from the same cause, and a severance causes pain. One would be apt to think that a soldier in his wandering life would have no time to fix his affection on any particular spot, but that his home would be wherever  he spread his canvass roof between him and heaven, and that he would leave it without regret -- all places being the same to him. Such however is not the case. Looking back over the time since my footprint pressed southern soil in the service of Uncle Sam, many pleasant memories center around spots which for the time being were home. to me. I can hardly think of encampment which I did not leave with a sense of regret. Of course this does not refer to encampments of a night or a day or two, but to pause where we remained long enough to become familiar with the surroundings. Beauty of scenery and convenience of location is not indifensable for I have often regreted to leave our inconvenient camp even when I knew that the next would be much better. This propensity to surround a temporary