"MY DEAR CORYDON: Yours of April 1 was received by the hand of Lieut. Beeber, and I assure you it was read with great pleasure. When I was in Washington last winter I saw Mr. Colfax, who spoke very kindly and highly of you. I have now fully recovered my health, and for the last three months have been very hardy and robust. My duties are very full of work here, and I have never been more pressingly crowded with labor than now. I have not retired on an average before two o'clock for the last two months and a half. Gen. Rosecrans shares all his counsels with me, and places a large share of the responsibility of the management of this wing upon me; even more than I sometimes wish he did. This army is now in admirable condition. The poor and weak material has been worked out, and what we now have is hard brawn and solid muscle. It is in an admirable state of discipline, and when its engineries are fully set in motion, it will make itself felt. From all the present indications it cannot be long before we meet the rebel army now in our front, and try its strength again. When that day arrives, it bids fair to be the bloodiest fighting of the war. One thing is settled in my mind. Direct blows at the rebel army, bloody fighting is all that can end the rebellion. In European wars, if you capture the chief city of a nation, you have substantially captured the nation. The army that holds London, Paris, Vienna or Berlin, holds England, France, Austria or Prussia. Not so in this war. The rebels have no city the capture of which will overthrow their power. If we take Richmond, the rebel Government can be put on wheels and trundled away into the interior with all its archives in two days. Hence our real objective point is not any place or district, but the rebel army, wherever we find it. We must crush and pulverize them, and then all places and territories fall into our hands as a consequence. These views lead me to a hope and belief that before many days we shall join in a death-grapple with Bragg and Johnson. God grant that we may be successful. The armies are nearly equal in number, and both are filled with veteran soldiers well drilled and disciplined. The little circumstance you related to me of the soldier in the Fifty-first Indiana touches my heart." [A soldier who was killed had written home to his wife to name their child, born during the former's absence, after Gen. Garfield.] "I wish you would write a letter for me to Joseph Lay, the young man's father, and express my sympathy with him for the loss of his brave son, who was many times with me under the fire of the enemy. I want to know of the health of his family, and especially of that little one to whom the affection of the father gave my name.