All right, my boy, I’ve engaged a room with a fire in it, at the Palmer h House, & shall arrive there at 8 or 9 o’clock next Monday morning (th my idea being to get in ahead of the big crowd on the railways if I can.) You drop in & see me.

Of course I shall come with my (impromptu) speech all tucked away in my memory, but you must be generous & not put me late.

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I’m an old hand at this trade, & I know that when people have been listening to responses any over an hour & a half & still another fellow gets up on his hind legs & offers to open his mouth, he is likely to have to begin to dodge champagne bottles about that time. IⒶemendation don’t reckon military folks differ from other banqueteers—they all want to kill the late speaker. In my stupidity I forgot, the other day, that “Woman” is always put politely at the tail-end of of the regular toasts—but now is a good time to advance her to an honorable place in the centre of the list, & make have the Chairman brag about this prin appreciative, this noble, this magnanimous conduct on the part of the Army of the Tennessee, first in war, first in peace, & first in the hearts of their countrywomen. You pour out some eloquence onⒶemendation Col. Tuthill about that, my boy. Of course the programme is already printed & can’t be re-printed; but you just get the Chairman to say it was a mistake of the printer—let him rise above the paltry requirements of truth on an occasion so stately—let him proceed to curse that printer—let us all join in & help curse him—then let the Chairman state that the Committee decreed that Woman & the Babies should come Nos. 6 & 7 in the list, & they shall come there n in spite of all the printers & other sons of sin & heirs of perdition in the world. That’ll set the fashion—the American fashion—& effete Europe will gnash her teeth th to think she overlooked that chivalrous idea & lost the chance of inventing it.

Darn it, I wants to have a good time; & how can I have a good time if I have to sit there two or three hours in the family way with my Babies & not knowing whether I’m going to miscarry or not? Now see if it can’t be fixed so I shan’t have to go over my time & be delivered with instruments.

I should have taken you at your word & asked you to secure me a rattling good room at the Palmer House, (for I’m as fond of a good room as any old maid you ever saw,) but I thought maybe you might have your hands pretty full, so I telegraphed the hotel myself. If it should come convenient, I wish you would just inquire if it is a pretty fair sort of a room. At the same time a body will be lucky to get any kind of a room, I judge.

Well, I hope the General is going to be President again; & if signs go for anything he is going to be.