Scope and Contents Stilson responds to comments in West's letters of November and December (now lost); mentions acquaintances now in the army (including the artist and photographer Andrew J. Russell, Co. F, 141st New York Infantry); speaks of reading Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s novel Elsie Venner and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (some of whose poems she apparently enclosed); expresses dismay over the recent defeat at Fredericksburg: "I am afraid it is one of two things, either that we must give up...