| Description | Disturbed by the news of bad weather at home - "from all parts of England the accounts are the same of hay out still and corn laid with the rain. We here seem to be the most lucky. Uninterrupted fine weather with perhaps once a month a rainy day to fill the water tanks and keep the springs going is the thing here so that no one ever thinks of the weather it is so beautiful. It certainly is the most splendid climate one could be in and, considering the large army concentrated on one spot, is very healthy. Sebastopol is doomed this summer and I think the expiring effort will be a ground attack on their part front and rear, after which if it fails they will retire across their new bridge and blow up the place. We all know they cannot winter here and feed their men. My principal object in writing to you is to tell you that poor Mills is lying at the Fountain Hotel Portsmouth in a most wretched state and to my knowledge he has not one single relation in England and but few friends now. He left us part recovering from wounds and a most severe attack of cholera which all but finished him and it appears has managed to reach Portsmouth probably not knowing where to go after. It would be a true charity and I do wish you would ask him to come and spend some time at Birtles until he is better. He is very quiet and gentlemanlike and I do not think would be in the way at all. Give him a gun and leave to shoot the partridges and he would be perfectly happy. Poor old fellow he braved it out here last winter and only left because he was in a dying state." |