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abandoned everything but honor at their country's call to be toyed with for a few weeks & sent home for incompetency, arising from the fact of their willfully criminal persistency in being respectively more than 22 & 30 years of age. Now my dear General, not withstanding you are a very young man yourself, you cannot fail to perceive the hobble we are in & ought we not attempt to procure a modification of this rule?

I want to write you about various topics fresh in my mind when I commenced, but gone now. [?] has instructed me to have the 3 Maj Genls staffs paid & discharged next week. This idea is that they must have their monthly pay & voting, but not their allowances. What do you think of that? Will Genl. Government allow it? Will they not require us to limit those expenses to Maj. Genl. & pay the others as Brigadiers? They did so in the Aroostook War. Maj Genl Foster of Calais had 6 companies under his charge 6 weeks & was paid only as Brig Genl. But above all this, is the [?] and the seniors of them Maj. Genls. of the character in command & in line that they can demand & receive pay as such Maj. Genls. I should prefer to have them paid in full, upon the army basis, if it can be reimbursed us, can it?

But I must not stop to write more

I remain very truly yrs in haste, John L. Hodsdon - Adjutant General