# HB1 - Price $195


Transcript of letter:

Chattanooga Dec 31^st 1863

Mr Benj. King

                Dear Friend

                                I suppose you think it strange, that I have not written to you sooner, for my part I think I ought to apologize to you, which I do and hope that you we accept.  This being the last night in this year, I thought that the best way that I could employ my time would be in writing to an old friend and I hope you will answer as soon as you can conveniently.

                I wrote to Mary, while I was in Stephenson, Alabama but she has never answered me.  Why?  I cannot imagine.  I would take it as a favor, if you would ask, Mary why she did not answer.  Tell her that I would be very happy to have her correspondence.

                Ben, since I left home I have changed my residence at least once a month; staying just long enough to get acquainted with a place, then leaving it.  I have lived in Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Stephenson, Alabama, and even back to Tennessee, where I shall remain until March, perhaps longer.  I expect to come home next fall if everything goes well.

                What are you doing now, do you still circulate in the vicinity of the Long Dock.  How is things up there?  I expect to see great changes up there when I come back. – does Billy Van Wart still keep his machine going yet I can’t help smiling when I think of those three days that I stayed there.  When I think of Jersey, it seems like years instead of months.  Since I left there, I often wonder how everything goes on there.  I hear from home occasionally, but the sum and substance of the letters from there is generally that the “rolling stone gathers no moss,” but I can’t see it in that light.

                I never indulge in a game of Billiards or do a little in Euchre, without thinking of you.  How do they flourish; they charge thirty cents per game single handed in Nashville, but there are no tables now in fact anything else out here.  I am living in camp on the battle ground of Missionary Ridge.  I saw the whole of that mess.  One of the shells exploded on the road just in front of our tent, but did very little damage beyond killing a couple of mules and tearing up the dirt.

                But I started to drop you a few lines just to let you know that I was still alive and it is stretching out into a letter.  Remember me kindly to your mother and to Mary and write soon to:

                                Yours as usual

                                Alex M. Lean

                                Care of B. Bishop

                                Photographer Chattanooga

P.S.   How is Will Douglas getting along?  I have never heard from him.  Please give him my address and request him to let me hear from him and oblige.

                                                                                                Alex