Weather more pleasant. Slept badly last nite. My cold still troubles me, cough much. Jeremy Wilson the artist called, we walked up to Jude's establishment as he was anxious to see it. I hadn't noticed before how precarious his chimney was built. Without mortar, and the stove pipe just stuck in. The movements of his loom made it all tremble. Wilson thought it quite a curiousity. Came home feeling the worse for my outing. The war news tells Fredericksburg has been taken. The Rebels taking up positions behind it. A fearful battle is shaping up. Reflection on the war and governments that control them, and that all lose in the end. The poor victims killed, giving the most.