IT was the day after Christmas in the year 1846.

Near sundown, two young officers of the army of the United States sat upon one of the benches on the promenade of the great reservoir which supplies the city of Rio de Janeiro with water.

Both were lieutenants, - one of engineers, the other of artillery. Any one half acquainted with the United States would have recognized them as West Pointers; and their presence in this far-away spot was easily accounted for by a glance downward from the coign of vantage where they sat, at a fleet of United States men-of-war and troop ships riding at anchor in the bay.

Nowhere in all the world is there a scene more beautiful than that spread out before them. Below, falling away down the mountain side to the silver sands of the bay, were the palms and gardens, and orange and olive groves, surrounding the residence of the Cateti suburb. To seaward, the southern boundary of the mile-wide entrance to the bay, loomed the bald, brown peak of the Sugar Loaf Mountain, with the beautiful suburb of Botafogo nestling near its base. Huge mountains, their dense foliage lit by the sinking sun, ran down to the water's edge upon the opposite or northern shore. Far beneath them was the Gloria landing for naval vessels. To westward, sweeping out into the bay with bold and graceful curves, and spread beneath them like a map, was the peninsula upon which the city of Rio is built, and beyond this, gleaming in the evening sunlight, and studded with islands of intense verdure, extended the upper bay until it was lost in the distance, where, on the horizon, the blue peaks of the Organ range closed in the lovely picture.

The ships bearing the commands to which the young gentlemen were attached were bound to California around Cape Horn. The troops were to take part in the war then flagrant between the United States and Mexico. A short stop had been made at Rio for water and provisions and these two youngsters were among the first to apply for and obtain shore leave.

The dusty appearance of their dress, and other evidence of fatigue, showed that they had not failed to sustain the reputation of their countrymen as investigators of everything new and strange. In fact, they had, in the morning exhausted the sights to be seen in the city. After amusing themselves in the shops of the Rua Direita, and replenishing their stock of Spanish books in the Rua do Ovidor and wandering through several churches and residence streets, they had become very much interested in the remarkable aqueduct which supplies the city of Rio with water.

Our young soldiers, in their engineering zeal, had followed the aqueduct back to its source of supply; and now, bound for the Gloria landing, were resting, deeply impressed by the great work, and by the genius and skill of its builders. But both the youths, recalling the fact that it was the Christmas season, felt, in spite of all the tropical novelty and strange beauty surrounding them as evening closed in, a yearning for an American home and voice and face; and their conversation naturally enough fell into conjecturing how the Christmas was being spent by their own loved ones in the United States, or in bemoaning the good things they were missing.

While thus engaged, they saw two men approaching. One was in civilian dress; the other wore the uniform of assistant surgeon in the United States navy. The newcomers were engaged in animated conversation; and, although the civilian was a man of forty, while his companion was a youngster of twenty-five, there was little if any difference in the alertness of their steps.

The faces of the young officers lit up with pleasure as, upon the near approach of the two pedestrians, they caught the sound of genuine United States English. They had observed the American flag floating from a residence in the Cateti, and had no doubt that the persons who were now passing were in some way connected with the legation. Accordingly, with that freedom which fellow countrymen feel in addressing each other in foreign lands, the West Pointers arose at the approach of the two gentlemen, and, catching the eye of the elder of the two, advanced, announced their rank and service, and made some inquiry as a groundwork of further conversation. They were not mistaken in their surmises. The gentleman addressed was the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Brazil from the Republic of the United States. A title like that was well calculated to paralyze the familiarity of two young military men; and when they realized that, unannounced and covered with dust, they had of their own motion ventured into conversation with the bearer of such an august title, their first impulse was to apologize for their temerity and to withdraw. Even from an officer of no higher grade than captain in their own service, they were accustomed to a greeting strictly formal, usually accompanied by the inquiry, “Well, sir? state your business;” and, having done so, they were generally glad enough to salute and withdraw. Here they were, without any business, standing in the presence of a high official, with nothing more to say, and with no excuse to give for what they had said. But before their embarrassment could grow more annoying, the minister put them completely at their ease. “Well met!” he exclaimed; “we are just returning homeward from the city. Come! The more the merrier: you shall dine with me. I still have some Christmas turkey and plum pudding, and we will drink the health of the good angel who sent my countrymen to me at this blessed season.”

During the course of their walk to the American legation, the young fellows had opportunity to observe their newly found host more carefully. To them he was a revelation. His name and position in politics were not unknown to them; for although still young, he had for many years been a conspicuous figure in national politics in the United States. The echoes of his eloquence, as well as accounts of his game-cook courage, had penetrated even into the isolated world of the Academy at West Point. In fact, he had been absent from the United States but two or three years upon this mission, which had been accepted partly on account of failing health, and partly from a desire to strike a blow at the infamous African slave-trade. He had accomplished much towards breaking up the slave-trade, and derived great benefit to his health.

Brilliant at all times in conversation, he was, on this occasion, unusually interesting. The sight of his country's ships in the harbor, and the news of the struggle with Mexico, so excited and elated him that he was seen at his best by his visitors. The two boys studied him as if he had been some great actor. Tall and thin, he was nevertheless exceedingly active and muscular. His dress consisted of simple black, with spotless linen. He wore the open standing collar and white scarf affected by the gentlemen of that period. The only ornament upon his person was a large opal pin confining the neckerchief. His head gear, suited to the climate, was one of those exquisitely wrought white Panama hats which is the envy of men living beyond the tropics. Beneath this was a head exquisitely moulded, with a noble brow, and large hazel eyes, the ever-changing expression of which, coupled with a full, rich voice, charmed and fascinated his guests. His silken blond hair was thrown back and worn long, as was the custom of the day. A nose too handsome to be called Roman, yet too strong to be designated as Grecian; a mouth wide and mobile, filled with even, white teeth; and a strong chin with a decided dimple, - completed the remarkable face which turned in ever-changing expression, from time to time, towards its companions, as they strode homeward in the twilight.

Such was the American minister; and, according to the mood in which one found him, he impressed the stranger as the gentlest, the tenderest, the most loving, the most eloquent, the most earnest, the most fearless, the most impassioned, or the fiercest man he had ever met. Nobody who saw him ever forgot him.

They reached the legation just as it was growing dark, and as the full-orbed moon was rising from the distant sea. Seeking the veranda, and seating his guests in the wicker easy-chairs with which it was well supplied, the minister excused himself, and left them for a few minutes to their own observations and reflections.

As the soft sea-breeze came up to them, laden with garden perfumes; as they watched the golden highway the moon's reflection on the sea; as they saw the twinkling lights of the ships in the deep shadows of the bay below them, - they felt as if they had indeed discovered an earthly paradise; and when a fair blond girl in filmy apparel glided through the drawing-room and joined them speaking pure English, it seemed as if their paradise was being peopled by angels. Everybody here spoke in English. Everything spoke of home. The pictures on the walls, the books on the tables, yes, the dishes at table were all American.

The visitors were conducted to their apartments to make necessary preparations for dinner. Soon after their return to the drawing-room, the minister reappeared with a look somewhat troubled, as he apologized for his long absence and the non-appearance of the lady of the house.

A moment later the folding-doors rolled back, and the English butler announced that dinner was served. Oh what a contrast with the ward-room of the man-of-war in which our two lieutenants had been dining for a month or more!

Dinner over, the company once more sought the cool veranda, where coffee and cigars were served. There they were joined by Baron Lomonizoff, the Russian minister who had called to be informed of all the recent developments in the controversy with Mexico, and who spoke English perfectly. Later, just as the baron was bidding adieu, in fact, at what seemed to our young friends to be a very late hour for visiting, the oddest imaginable specimen of Brazilian humanity was introduced as Dr. Ildefonso.

His efforts at English were startling. They nearly convulsed our two young friends, and reconciled them to their own failures at Portuguese.

As the little doctor showed no signs of leaving, and as, by one or two indications, the young visitors began to suspect it was time for them to go, they reluctantly took their departure, thanking their host a thousand times for the pleasure he had given them, and chatting joyously, on the route to the ship, about the good fortune which had given them such a Merry Christmas.

The little Brazilian doctor and the surgeon in the navy had remained because there was work on hand for them. I entered my name on the docket of humanity that night; and as the lawyers say, my cause was continued until the further order of the court.

How do I know it? I will tell you.

Forty-five years later, at a great banquet in New York, I was sitting beside an aged, grizzled general of the armies of the Union.

Said the old general cheerily, “Did I ever tell you of my visit to your father in Rio?” Receiving a negative response, he proceeded in his inimitable way to recount every incident above set forth, omitting the hour of his own departure from the legation. The memory of the struggles of the little Brazilian doctor with the English language still amused him immensely. He was recalling some absurd mistake of Dr. Ildefonso, when I looked up, and, with a merry twinkle in my eye, said, “General, at what hour did you leave the Cateti that night?” “Oh, I should say about eleven or twelve o'clock,” said the general. “Well, now, do you know, my dear general, I deeply regret you left so early. I arrived myself that night about two hours after your departure, and would have been so delighted to meet you under my father's roof.” This sally was met by a hearty laugh from the listening company, and was followed by a glass of wine to the memory of those olden days, since when so many things have happened.

OUR voyage terminated in the kingdom of Accawmacke, the abiding-place of my ancestors for two and half centuries. Although within eight hours of New York and six hours from Philadelphia by rail, the region and its people are as unlike those of these crowded centres of humanity as if they were a thousand miles away.

John Smith tells us, in his memorable narrative of earliest American explorations, that when Captain Nelson sailed in June, 1607, for England, in the good ship Phoenix, he, John, in his own barge, accompanied him to the Virginia capes; and there, after delivering his writings for the company, he parted with him near the southernmost cape, which he named Cape Henry. Sailing northward, Captain Smith first visited the seaward island, which he named Smith's Island, after himself. It is still called Smith's Island, and is owned by the Lee family. Then he returned to the northernmost cape, at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, and named it Cape Charles, in honor of the unfortunate prince afterwards known as Charles I. Upon the point of this cape Smith encountered an Indian chief, whom he describes as “the most comely, proper, civil salvage” he had yet met. The name of this chief was Kictopeke. He was called “The Laughing King of Accomack,” and Accomack means, in the Indian tongue, “The Land Beyond the Water.” He bore in his hand a long spear or harpoon, with a sharpened fish-bone or shell upon its point; and he it was who taught John Smith and his companions to spear the sheepshead and other fish in the shallow waters hard by. John Smith and The Laughing King have been buried for well-nigh three centuries, but the people about Cape Charles still spear sheepshead on the shoals in the same old way.

Smith and his companions cruised along the western shore of this Peninsula of Accawmacke, which is the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, until they reached what is now called Pocomoke River, the present boundary between Virginia and Maryland. The distance is probably eighty miles. The reason assigned for the long cruise was that they were searching for fresh water. To those who know the abundant springs of the Peninsula, this statement is surprising. Overtaken in the neighborhood of Pocomoke by one of those summer thunderstorms which are so prevalent in that region, they were driven across the bay to the western shore, and thence they cruised down the Chesapeake until they turned into what is now called Hampton Roads. Passing the low sandspit where the ramparts of Fortress Monroe now frown and the gay summer resorts are built, they stopped at the Indian village Kickotan, located upon the present site of Hampton. Obtaining there a good supply of food from the Indians, they returned to the Jamestown settlement, about forty miles up the river, then called Powhatan, now known as the James. In this as in all things, the Englishman appropriated what belonged to the Indian, and King James supplanted King Powhatan.

It was on this return voyage that Smith, while practicing the art acquired from the King of Accawmacke, impaled a fish upon his sword, in the shallow waters about the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Unaware of the dangerous character of his captive, he received in his wrist a very painful wound from the spike-like fin upon the tail of the fish. This wound caused such soreness and such swelling that he thought he was like to die, and his whole party went ashore and laid Smith under a tree, where he made his will. “But,” says he, “by night time the swelling and soreness had so abated that I had the pleasure of eating that fish for supper.” The next morning the journey was resumed, and the place, in remembrance of the incident, was named Stingaree Point. To this day, that point at the mouth of the Rappahannock is called Stingaree Point; and that fish is still called Stingaree by the people along the Chesapeake Bay.

After this famous cruise, John Smith, who was as active and restless as a box of monkeys, made his map of Virginia, which is still extant, - and a pretty good map it is, showing his capes and his islands, and his points and his rivers, and what not, - in which map the Kingdom of Accawmacke bears a most conspicuous part.

On that historic document, old John at certain point printed little pictures of deer, to show where they most abounded; and at other points he designated where the wild turkeys were most plentiful. The author of this humble narrative has, in his day, hunted every variety of game which abounds at the present time in Old Virginia; and just where the deer and turkeys were most abundant in 1608, according to John Smith's map, there are the most abundant now. In the counties of Surry and Sussex, upon the south side of the James, run, doubtless, the descendants of those very deer whose pictures adorn the map of John Smith, published three centuries ago; and within the past twelve months the writer has followed the great-great-great- grandchildren of the identical turkeys, no doubt, from whose flocks were captured, in 1616, the twenty birds sent by King Powhatan to his brother the King of England.

But to return to our Kingdom of Accawmacke.

After the Jamestown colonists had tired of poor old John Smith, after he had blown himself up with his own powder while smoking in his boat, upon one of his return trips to Jamestown from the present site of Richmond; after he had returned to England, broken in health and spirits, - the colonists who remained found, among their other miseries and tribulations, that they were sadly in need of salt.

Bearing in mind stories brought back from the coast by Smith, Sir Thomas Dale, governor, in the year 1612 detailed a party from the Jamestown settlement to go to the Kingdom of Accawmacke and boil salt for the settlers at Jamestown.

We may well imagine that such a task was far from grateful to those to whom it was allotted. It was looked forward to by them, no doubt, as the equivalent of solitary confinement in a dangerous locality. At Jamestown the settlers were located upon an island. This fact and their numbers gave them comparative security from the savages. In Accawmacke the party assigned to saltboiling was placed upon the same land as the Indians; and its numbers were so small, and the position so isolated from the chief settlement by the Chesapeake Bay between them, that their situation would have been most perilous in case of attack. It was therefore, doubtless, in the spirit of satire that the party named the place at which they first located upon the eastern shore, Dale's Gift.

Thus came about the first settlement of the white man upon the eastern shore peninsula of Virginia; and, recognizing its separation from the other settlements, the kings of England for many years addressed all their decrees to the Virginia colonists to their “faithful subjects in ye Colonie of Virginia and ye Kingdom of Accawmacke”

Like many another venture undertaken reluctantly in ignorance, this settlement upon the eastern shore proved to be anything but an irksome and dangers transfer. The party at Dale's Gift found the Accawmacke Indians totally unlike the warlike and treacherous tribes across the bay; and from that time forth there never was, not even at the time of the general outbreak of the savages in 1629, any serious trouble between the whites and the Indians of the eastern shore. The climate also was much more salubrious than that of the swamp region where the brackish waters at Jamestown bred malaria. As for sustenance, they found the place an earthly paradise. In the light and sandy soil corn, vegetables, and many varieties of fruit grew with little care of cultivation and in great abundance. Fish and shell-fish of every kind abounded in the ocean, bay, and inlets. Wild fowls of many sorts, from the lordly wild goose to the tiny teal, swarmed in the marshes and along the coast. Game in great abundance, furred and feathered, could be had for the shooting of it upon the land; the fig and the pomegranate grew in the open air. And the influence the Gulf Stream, which in passing these capes approaches to within thirty miles of the coast and then turns abruptly eastward, made, as it still makes, residence upon the eastern shore of Virginia most charming and delightful. The eastern shore men were the epicures of the colony. A hundred years before New York knew the terrapin, it was the daily food in Accawmacke.

We may be sure that the less fortunate settlers at Jamestown, Smithfield, Henricopolis, Flower de Hundred and the Falls of the James were not long in finding out the delights of this, at first, despised settlement in Accawmacke. History tells us that when, twenty years later, the colony of Virginia was divided into eight colonies, “to be governed as are the shires in England,” the Accawmacke settlement was of sufficient importance to constitute of itself one of these eight counties; and in 1643, when the whole colony had a population of but fifteen thousand, one thousand of these were upon the eastern shore. When Captain Edmund Scarburgh, presiding justice, opened the first County Court of Accawmacke at Eastville, the county seat, in the autumn of 1634, The Laughing King of Accawmacke had no doubt ceased to laugh; for he, like many another savage chief before and after him, had by this time felt the fangs of the British bull-dog sink deep into the vitals of his kingdom, and became sensible of the fact that it was a grip which, once fastened upon its prey, never relaxed its hold.

Rare old records are those of Captain Edmund Scarburgh and his successors, and very curious reading do they furnish. You may see them, reader, if, instead of flashing and dashing over every other country in search of novelty, you will seek the things which are interesting in your native land, within a stone's throw of your door. There they are, preserved to this day, in the little brick court house, and are continuous from then until now, without a break, preserving the history of their section intact through a period of nearly three centuries.

The Peninsula is no longer a single county. About 1643, ambitious Colonel Obedience Robins, from Northamptonshire, England, succeeded in changing the name of the Peninsula to Northampton. It was not until 1662, when the eastern shore of Virginia was divided into two counties, that the upper portion resumed the old title of Accawmacke, which it retains to this day. The lower part of the original Accawmacke is still called Northampton.

OUR folks have been in Old England since the days of Alfred, and in America since Thomas West, Lord de la War, was governor of the Virginia colony in 1608, when numerous brothers, cousins, and relatives followed him hither in search of the treasures of the still undiscovered South Sea.

There and here, for centuries, in peace and in war, they have never failed to be mixed up in the thick of whatever game the English stock has played.

They have lived and died in Devonshire and Somersetshire for nearly ten centuries. Until its recent destruction to make way for the government buildings, the old; family nest at Plymouth was almost as well known to Englishmen as the banks of the Tamar itself. Burke tells us the name is among the oldest in England.

The first American ancestor of our name was a younger son of these old Devonshire people, and came to the Virginia colony in the reign of Charles the First. The ancient shippinglists show that he sailed from Gravesend, July 4, 1636, after first taking the oath of allegiance to king and church. He was a lad of eighteen, who, yielding to the spirit of adventure which then prevailed in England, joined his friends, the Scarburghs of Norfolk, in the Kingdom of Accawmacke.

Two hundred and sixty years of separation ordinarily works considerable estrangement, and difference in characteristics, between the separated branches of a family. Not so with our people. If they possess one predominant trait, it is their faith in and attachment to anybody and everybody bearing the name, or springing from the old stock. But for the evidence it gives of stanchness in love and loyalty, the way in which the old ties are kept up, to this day, between the English and American branches would seem absurd. Descendants in the eighth degree since the separation recognize the kinship; and the English cousins welcome the Americans to hearth and home, taking no note of the two and a half centuries which have elapsed since the American immigrant wandered off from his English home, and placed the Atlantic Ocean between himself and his family.

And let me tell you, you boys of America, that there is no higher inspiration to any man to be a good man, a good citizen, and a good son, brother, or father, than the knowledge that you come from honest blood. Few who have it scorn it, and many of those who are loudest in belittling it would give all they have to possess it. And, boys, let me tell you another thing. When you are hunting for that honest blood, when you are looking back into the wellsprings of your existence for the source of the virtue the courage, the manhood, the truth, the honesty, the reverence, the family love, the simplicity of life, which will make you what true men ought to be, believe me, you are more apt to find it in the progenitors who came from “the right little, tight little island” than anywhere else on this rolling planet.

Don't deceive yourselves with the notion that England did not furnish the best of us. We have had our troubles with her in the past, it is true. But it is hard for the mother to realize that her boy is grown, and accord him his rights as a man. She sometimes makes it very uncomfortable for him by failing to recognize that he is no longer in his swaddling-clothes. But there is not a true-hearted boy in the world who, in spite of his mother's shortcomings, does not feel in his heart that there is no other like her.

Don't take my word for it, if you think I am an old fogy. Wait until you grow up and see the world for yourselves. Travel through Russia, or Turkey, or Austria and you will never see a thing to stir your heart with a desire to be one of them. Stand in the shadow of the Pyramids, and you will be untouched by one wish that your blood were Egyptian. Go through Germany, and, while you will find there much to admire, there will still be something lacking. In the home of the fickle Gaul, even at Napoleon's tomb, the American boy is not in touch with his surroundings. Spain and Italy, while possessed of a wealth of antique beauty, are to us only echoes of a decayed and different civilization.

But, some sunny day in London, wander through Westminster Abbey and read the names. Some misty morning in Trafalgar Square, cast your eye upward to the form of Nelson, as he stands there in the fog, with the lions sleeping at the base of his column. In some leisure hour, visit the crypt of St. Paul's, where the car that bore Wellington to his rest still stands. Then, perhaps, you will appreciate the meaning of an old fogy when he tells you “There's nothing outside America which tugs at an American's heart-strings like the names and deeds and monuments of Old England.”

Don't let us deceive ourselves about it, either. Don't think or say that it is a better country than our own Don't let us be Anglomaniacs. That is not at all necessary. America is good enough for us. In many things: these blessed United States already equal any nation on the globe. In almost everything, time considered, they are a marvel. Within the past seventy years, American inventive genius has contributed more to make life easy, and to advance civilization, than all the world beside in many hundred years, if we except the inventions of printing and gunpowder. In future we may, and probably shall, become in all things the greatest nation that ever existed. But it is not disloyalty to your own country, and no disparagement of its greatness, to thank God that the people from whom we sprang were Englishmen, and that we have part and lot in England's glory.

In all America, there is no spot more emphatically English than the Kingdom of Accawmacke. Nay, more: there is many a spot in England to-day where the manners and customs of the population have changed more from what they were in the seventeenth century, than those of that little peninsula in America. Of the twenty-five thousand white people in the two counties of the eastern shore of Virginia, it is safe to say that four fifths of them are descendants of the earliest English settlers, and that there has been less infusion of foreign element there within the last three centuries than in many parts of England itself. But a few years ago, this writer sat in the old church at Bishops Lydeard Somersetshire, and looked over the congregation. The resemblance in appearance between the people assembled there and the congregations he had often seen in the Episcopal Church at Eastville, the first county seat of Accawmacke and in the Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg, was striking.

The first John Wise married Hannah, eldest daughter of Captain Edmund Scarburgh. In 1655, we find him locating his grant from Governor Diggs on Nandua Creek, and in 1662, he was one of the first presiding justices of the newly formed county of Accawmacke In this year, also, the Indian chief Ekeekes, for “seven Dutch blankets” sold him the two thousand acre tract in Chesconesseck, named “Clifton” by its new purchaser - a tract of which the greater part descended without deed from father to son for six generations, until sold to pay the debts of the seventh heir, who was killed in 1864 in the American war between the States.

John, eldest son of the emigrant, married a Matilda, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel John West and died in 1717. Their son John married a Scarbugh, daughter of Colonel Tully Robinson, and died in 1761. Their son John married Margaret, daughter of Colonel George Douglas, and died in 1770. Their son John married first a Mary, daughter of Judge James Henry and then a Sarah, daughter of General John Cropper, and died in 1813; and their son Henry, a younger son, was my father. Related to a great number of the people of his county; known to all; honored and respected for his high character and beloved for his widely known talents and eloquence, which had reflected honor upon the community, - father's return from Brazil to his home in Accomack was the occasion of great rejoicing and festivities upon the eastern shore.

No more beautiful spot for a dwelling-place can be found anywhere than his home named “Only.” It is located upon a bold estuary of the Chesapeake, called Onancock Creek, which comes down westwardly from its source, and, upon reaching Only, makes a graceful turn, first southward, then westward, then northward, and, curving like a horseshoe, incloses within its bend five acres of ground, with banks high above the stream and level as a table, on which stands a grove of noble oaks of the original growth.

In the neck of the horseshoe, with the grove behind it and a fan-shaped lawn of greensward before it, stood the mansion house. It was not a stately structure There are few such among the simple folk of this Peninsula. But it was a model of scrupulous neatness, every way fit for the residence of an unpretentious country gentleman, and, outside and inside, gave evidence of taste and refinement. On the eastern side of the lawn, a terraced garden ran down to the water's edge; and about the porches, roses, cape jessamines, and honeysuckles climbed in great luxuriance. Adjoining the house were the kitchen and quarters of the household slaves, and outside the lawn, beyond the terraced garden, were the barns, carriage-houses, stables, and cattle-pens. Still further away were the quarters occupied by the plantation slaves. Looking upstream, other pretty points were visible, on which, in groves, the picturesque dwellings of the neighbors were seen, and in the further distance was the village of Onancock, with its steeples, and sandy streets, and red-topped houses, and wharves swarming with boats of all sizes from the schooner to the skiff. Westward from Only, the stream courses broad and shining between sloping banks, on which, here and there, their greensward often coming down to the water's edge, stood other homes, which looked smaller and smaller in the distance. Far away, beyond a dim point of pines marking the mouth of Onancock Creek, the sparkling whitecaps of the bay are visible, with the sails of commerce passing up and down or turning in and out of the entrance to the creek.

On the beautiful November morning determined upon for welcoming my father on his return to the United States, relatives, neighbors, friends, clients, and political adherents began to assemble at Only.

Bright and early, activity was visible on the plantation. Under the wide-spreading oaks, long tables were improvised, covered with snowy linen, and groaning with everything good to eat. At several points under the bluffs, pits were dug where beeves and sheep and pigs were barbecued, and oysters and clams and crabs and fish were cooked by the bushel. Great hampers of food, sent from the village, or from the homes of neighbors, stood about the tables, ready for distribution when the feast should begin. The house itself, decorated with flowers and evergreens, was thrown wide open to the guests, and in the rooms of the first floor was spread a collation for the more distinguished visitors.

By eight o'clock in the morning, the earliest of the guests hove in sight. By ten o'clock, the grandees of the county began to arrive.

There were Colonel Joynes, the county clerk, Lorenzo Bell, the county attorney; the Arbuckles, the Custises the Finneys, the Waples; the Corbins from near the Maryland line; the Savages from Upshur's Neck; the Croppers from Bowman's Folly on the seaside; the Kneads from Mount Prospect; the Upshurs from Brownsville the Baylys from Mount Custis; and the Yerbys, the Nottinghams the Goffigons the Kennards, and Smiths from Northampton. But why enumerate? Their name was legion.

By midday the stables and stable-yards were filled; and the horses, fastened to the front-yard fence, formed a continuous line; while the creek about the grove was literally filled with small craft ranging from canoe to “pungy,” and a steamboat had arrived from Norfolk with a great company and a band of music. This band, playing in the grove, was an endless source of wonder and delight to many of the primitive people, who heard a brass band that day for the first, and no doubt, in some instances last time in their lives.

THE autumn of 1850 brought an event freighted with deep significance to me. My mother died. Although I was but four years old, it made a profound impression, and it exercised an incalculable influence upon my after life. My mother was a Northern woman, daughter of Hon. John Sergeant, a distinguished lawyer, and for many years representative in Congress from Philadelphia. Her people were of New England blood, identified with the earliest and most important events of the Plymouth Colony.

She had been taught to practice economy, simplicity, and scrupulous neatness and order. She was deeply religious, charitable, sympathetic, highly sentimental, and withal ambitions. She was one of those beautiful, refined creatures for which the City of Brotherly Love is famous. Hers was one of those extraordinary natures whose physical comeliness seems to make no injurious impression upon loveliness of character. Indeed, both in herself and with those about her, consideration of her appearance was subordinated to appreciation of her moral and intellectual beauty.

It was seven years after her marriage before she fully realized the vast difference between the life in which she had been reared and that into which her marriage had brought her. For, prior to their departure for Brazil, father, being in Congress, had resided for the most part in Washington, and had no fixed establishment in Virginia. In Brazil, social conditions had been strange to herself and husband alike. It was only on my father's return from Brazil - when the Virginia establishment was resumed - that she realized the vastly altered terms of her existence. It is fortunate it was so. It gave time for her wifely love to become fixed and deepened beyond disturbance; and residence in Brazil undoubtedly took away the shock of slavery as it existed at home. Coming now to a knowledge of Virginia slavery, it was much less repulsive than it would have been if she had been transplanted direct from Philadelphia. Notwithstanding this gradual change, the contrast was strong enough to make her fully realize the difference between the duties and the pleasures of her new home and those to which she had been accustomed in girlhood. Of the society about her she had nothing to complain. The good old people were of excellent social position, and Philadelphia was their social rendezvous. Many of them were acquaintances of her family. They were neighborly and congenial enough, and the means of intercommunication were excellent. One of lighter tastes, and less serious purpose and sense of duty, could easily have found, in her new surroundings, all the social enjoyment she desired, and might have been, quite happy and free from care.

But it was not so with the mistress of Only. She had too much of the old Puritan blood in her to ignore the word “duty.” She adored her husband, and was as ambitious as himself, which is saying a great deal. She knew that, if he was to maintain his professional and political prominence, she must assume her share of the duties of their domestic life; and when she fully realized what the meant for her, she doubted her ability to bear the burden it imposed; but, asking God to sustain her, resolved to try.

DURING the next three years, we had things pretty much our own way at home, as far as female control was concerned. The dear old aunt who presided over father's household, although we loved her very much, was too indulgent to be a successful manager of children; and while Eliza, the Irish nurse, was firm and strong enough, we were rapidly growing beyond her control.

Then there was my aunt's son, a most attractive fellow, just entering upon manhood, - a thorough-paced childspoiler. It was no uncommon thing for him to take me to the county seat, or the neighboring villages, where, while he pursued his amusements, I found companions and playmates that were improving neither to manners nor ideals of life. The association was delightful, nevertheless. On these excursions, there was no whim of fancy which that partial young relative was not more than ready to gratify. Our attachment was lifelong, and in after years the deep and abiding interest of my old-bachelor cousin in all that concerned me never abated until he died. At home, I had a thousand things to make boyhood happy. With the grown-up slaves I was a great favorite; and, as was often the case in plantation life, the little darkeys near my own age were my playmates and companions, and accepted me as their natural leader and chief. By the time I was eight years old, I could shoot, and ride, and fish, and swim, and sail a boat; I had a yoke of yearling oxen broken by myself; my own punt in which to go fishing; fishing-lines and crab-nets; a dog and a colt; and had become a breeder of most prolific chickens. Nothing pleased me more than dropping corn in planting-time, or hauling wood and straw with my own team. For months at a time I would go barefoot, during the summer season, dressed in brown linen and a straw hat. All this laid in a store of health and strength that was of great value in after years. In truth, I was a most bustling, energetic lad with no end of vitality, but lacked the parental government and care of a mother; and it was a blessed day for me when my father married again.

My father's third wife was a refined and cultivated woman, of suitable age, and possessed a most lovable disposition. It was not long before she established her dominion in our household, - a dominion of love.

I was taught to observe meal-times; to appear with hair brushed and face and hands washed; to attend family prayers; to spend less time at the negro quarters; to account more precisely for my nomadic wanderings; to devote regular hours to studies; and in many ways to adopt much more orderly methods than I had been accustomed to pursue of late. All which came in good time, for I was soon to become a city boy.

In 1855, a great political contest occurred in Virginia. A faction known as the Know-Nothing party, or the American party, had sprung up suddenly, and had triumphed in a number of the Northern States. It was a secret organization, with oaths and grips and passwords. Its rallying cry was that Americans should rule America. Incidental to this watchword was a real or fancied hostility to foreigners, particularly the Irish, and to the Catholic Church. Until it reached Virginia, it had been successful everywhere. Father believed in the teachings of George Washington that secret political organizations were dangerous to republican liberty, and in the teachings of Thomas Jefferson that no man should be proscribed on account of his religion. He maintained that neither Irish men nor other foreigners should be oppressed or ostracized by reason of their religious faith or their nationality.

The result of the approaching conflict seemed exceedingly doubtful when he was chosen as the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia. The circumstances of his selection were not altogether flattering or hopeful. Many of his political associates preferred him as the man in their opinion best fit to make the desperate fight, but there were others who preferred him because they believed the struggle was hopeless and secretly desired his defeat. He accepted the nomination; and although, at the outset, the Know- Nothing party had an enrolled majority of ten thousand of the entire voters of the State, he entered upon one of the most remarkable campaigns in Virginia politics, and after a brilliant canvass was elected by ten thousand majority.

It is seldom a boy nine years old is deeply interested in politics, but this campaign was one that enlisted the intense enthusiasm of young and old.

In American politics, we have recurring periods of political “crazes.” Of late years we have witnessed several such. The Greenback craze, the Granger craze, the Silver craze, have each in its turn arisen, and, for the time being, made whole communities drunk with excitement. Friends of many years are estranged by these ephemeral issues. They are carried into business, into church, into the household, everywhere, until entire commonwealths are so wrought up that even women and children take part until election day, and after that we hear no more about them. Such commotions are like brushfires, which, igniting instantly, burn and crackle and fill the whole heavens with smoke, as if the world was on fire, and then die out as suddenly as they sprung up.

The Know-Nothing craze of 1855 was just such an excitement. Our community was divided into factions. Everybody took sides. Men who had never been known to show an active interest in politics became intense partisans, and political discussion went on everywhere. One of the first results experienced by me was a black eye and a bloody nose, received in a hard fight with the son of the village blacksmith. Exactly how the row began, neither of us could clearly explain; but we were on opposite sides, and that was sufficient. It was a drawn battle, for the blacksmith interfered, having no intention of losing a valuable trade by reason of political differences. In the little village of Onancock, the rival organizations found vent for their enthusiasm by building and flying two immense kites, with the names of their respective party candidates emblazoned on them conspicuously. Many an evening, after school was dismissed, I saw half of the villagers of the place out on the green flying their Know-Nothing and Democratic kites, as if the result depended upon which flew the highest.

In due course came election day. Father being absent, the young cousin above referred to represented him at the polling-place, and took me with him. In those days, voting was done openly, or viva voce, as it was called, and not by ballot. The election judges, who were magistrates, sat upon a bench with their clerks before them. Where practicable, it was customary for the candidate to be present in person, and to occupy a seat at the side of the judges. As the voter appeared, his name was called out in a loud voice. The judges inquired, “John Jones (or Bill Smith), for whom do you vote?” - for governor, or for whatever was the office to be filled. He replied by proclaiming the name of his favorite. Then the clerks enrolled the vote, and the judges announced it as enrolled. The representative of the candidate for whom he voted arose, bowed, and thanked him aloud; and his partisans often applauded.

All day long I sat upon my cousin's knee, or played about the platform. Nobody smiled more broadly, or applauded more vigorously, at votes cast for father; and nobody was more silent or haughty when votes were cast against him. At sundown, the polls were closed, and, to my infinite mortification, the majority at the precinct was announced as in favor of the Know-Nothings. The craze had simply taken possession of the place and run away with it. The ignorant and the vain had all been captured by the signs and grips and secret passwords of Know-Nothingism. For the first time in his life, father was defeated at his home. I thought we were done for. When we were safely bundled in the vehicle, and headed for home, I felt like crying, and the Know-Nothing cheers still rung in my ears most depressingly. What mortified me most of all was the fact that I knew of a bantering compact between the owners of the rival kites that the victorious party should own the kite of the vanquished, with the privilege of flying it tailless and upside down. The thought of seeing our beloved kite in such ignominious plight nearly prostrated me. As a matter of fact, the result at this precinct had been fully anticipated by the grown folks, and gave them no serious concern as to the general result. The Know-Nothing majority was really less than they had claimed. Seeing how I was cast down, my cousin, holding me between his legs in the one-seated buggy, endeavored to explain that there was no cause for alarm. Long before he finished, he discovered that, worn out by the fatigue and disappointment of the day, I was fast asleep, and in that condition he bore me into the house in his arms, laid me on the broad settee in the hall, and covered me with the lap-robe.

More cheering news from other places came thick and fast in the next few days, and it was not long before I was delightedly watching the Know-Nothing kite sailed tailless and upside down by father's friends.

Then came the preparations for removal of our residence to Richmond for four years.

No life could have been more in contrast with that at Only than the one to which I was now introduced. January 1, 1856, father took the oath of office as governor, and we proceeded to establish ourselves in the Government House, as it was called.

It is a fine old structure, simple in exterior, very capacious, surrounded by pleasant grounds, fronting the Capitol Square at Richmond. The house at Only seemed like a wren-box contrasted with this great residence. With play-grounds, and stables, and conservatory, and outhouses, it was indeed a most attractive place. Young gentlemen nine years of age are not apt to underestimate their own importance in such a situation, and I was no exception to this rule. The legislature was in session in the Capitol, and as a large majority of the members were in political sympathy with father, I received a great deal more attention and petting from them than was good for me. My bump of reverence never was over-developed, and under the influence of this sort of thing, I rapidly became very pert. But there were other directions in which I did not find life “all beer and skittles.”

A school was selected where, beside a decided lack of enthusiasm for any school, I found this particular one not altogether a bed of roses. Being the best school obtainable, it was attended by the sons of the most prominent people of the place. And therein lay the trouble. If their fathers' views had controlled the election of governor, our residence at Only would have been undisturbed. The city was the stronghold of Know-Nothingism in Virginia. In a vote of nearly four thousand, father had not received exceeding nine hundred votes, and they were for the most part from the humbler classes. The Richmond Democrats were so few in numbers that they were called the “Spartan Band.” The rural votes gave father his majority, especially in the splendid yeomanry of the Shenandoah Valley, among whom very few slaves were owned. They were the men who afterwards, drawn into the war to fight the slave-owners' battles, won with their valor the immortal fame of Stonewall Jackson.

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond. It was the abode of that class who proclaimed that they were Whigs, and that “Whigs knew each other by the instincts of gentlemen.” The slave market was a flourishing institution in Richmond, fully countenanced if not approved and defended. The majority of Richmond people hated the name of Democracy, and, almost always defeated by it, were willing to unite with the Know-Nothings or any other party to defeat their enemy the Democracy.

At school, I very soon discovered that the Richmond city boys were disposed to turn up their noses at me, not only as a country boy, but because I was my father's son. I had several fistic encounters with them, and after that things went on more smoothly, but not very pleasantly.

There never was such a place as Richmond for fighting among small boys. The city is built over a number of hills and valleys, and in those days the boys of particular localities associated in fighting bands, and called themselves Cats. Thus there were the Shockoe Hill Cats, the Church Hill Cats, the Basin Cats, the Oregon Hill Cats, the Navy Hill Cats, etc.

About this time we were seized with the military fever. In those days, the State of Virginia had a large armory at Richmond, and a standing army of a hundred men! The command was known as the “Public Guard,” but the Richmond boys called them the “Blind Pigs.” The syllogism by which this name was reached was unanswerable. They wore on their hats the letters P. G., which certainly is P I G without the I. And a pig without an eye is a blind pig. Q E D.

The public guard was as well drilled and oared for as any body of regulars in the United States army. It guarded the penitentiary and public grounds, and was a most valuable organization in many ways.

Captain Dimmock, commanding officer, was a West Pointer, I think, and the beau ideal of a soldier. His son Marion and my brother, three years my senior, conceived the idea of forming a boy's soldier company. Father encouraged the idea, and caused a hundred old muskets in the armory to be cut down to the proper size for boys. Captain Dimmock entered heartily into the scheme. The boys were drilled assiduously. Their uniform was neat cadet gray; and for several years the “Guard of the Metropolis” was one of the most striking institutions of Richmond. It always paraded with the Public Guard, and the precision of its drill astonished and delighted all beholders. Seven years later, William Johnson Pegram, the first lieutenant of that company, attained the rank of brigadier-general in Lee's army before he was twenty-one years old, and although killed in battle, is still remembered as one of the bravest and most brilliant artillery commanders of the civil war. Many other members were utilized as drill-masters at the outbreak of the war, and subsequently became excellent officers.

Too young to carry a musket, I was made marker of this famous company, and was as proud of my uniform and little marker's flag as a Frenchman of the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

THE present generation finds it difficult to realize the position in the Union occupied by Virginia, even as late as 1856-60, to which period our narrative now brings us. People recall, in a general way, that Virginia was once the theatre of many historic events; that she gave birth to many great men in the early days of the Republic; and that she was the chief battle-ground in the civil war.

A romantic interest attaches to her in consequence, and there is a certain tenderness for Virginia felt towards no other State, even in sections which were once arrayed against her.

But from many causes, a decline in her social and political importance has occurred within the last forty years, which, in its rapidity and in its extent, presents one of the most remarkable instances in history. Let us not stamp it as degeneracy. The day when she produced men of the type of Lee and Jackson is too recent to justify despair.

It is made doubly difficult to judge her by the character of the writings concerning her. On the one hand, we have extravagant eulogiums and fond laments of those who laud her old-time history and people, and admit no defects in them; on the other, the always unfair and often ignorant denunciations of the anti-slavery folk, who are unwilling to admit, even at this late day, that any good could come out of the Nazareth of slavery. Both are wide of the mark. The social and economic conditions of Virginia were neither utopian, as the one loves to depict, nor bad and vicious, as the other would represent them.

It is undeniably true that, between the two extremes of society, as it existed there prior to 1865, was an awful gulf, upon one side of which were green pastures and still waters, and on the other noisome bogs filled with creeping reptiles. It was a condition incompatible with every theory of republican equality among men, and beyond question repugnant to the ideas and sensibilities of free communities.

Whether what has followed will ultimately result in a better civilization is as yet far from settled; but whether for better or for worse, it is certain that a social, economic, and political earthquake, never surpassed in suddenness and destructive force, burst upon that people, working changes that have left little trace of what was there before.

If the Virginian who died forty years ago could revisit his native commonwealth, he would find it difficult to recognize the place where he lived. If he located it by the streams which still flow to the sea, and the mountains still standing as sentinels through the centuries, he would soon learn, even concerning these, that many are no longer landmarks of Virginia, but, snatched from her in the hour of her weakness against her will, are now possessions of an alien State. For the less enduring things, - for men such as he knew, for their very habitations, their mode of life, the fashion of thought of his day, for its wealth, its refinement, its culture, for its lofty incorruptibility and high-mindedness, - he would search sadly and in vain.

In the day of which I write, Virginia, among the States of the Union, was, in territorial area, second only to Texas. Her western boundary was the Ohio River; northward, her Panhandle projected high up between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Her wealth made her credit at home and abroad above question. Her bonds sold higher in New York and London than those of the federal government. Her political importance placed her sons in commanding positions in the cabinet, on the bench, and as representatives to many important foreign governments. In every national assemblage her voice was hearkened to as that of a potent and conservative and reliable guide.

Richmond was admittedly the centre of a society unsurpassed in all America for wealth, refinement, and culture. Nearly every distinguished foreigner felt that his view of America was incomplete unless he spent some time in the capitol of the Mother of States and Statesmen. Soldiers, authors, sculptors, artists, actors, and statesmen sought Richmond then as surely as to-day they visit New York and Boston.

The actual population of the city was small. It is difficult to realize that in 1860 Richmond had but thirty-eight thousand inhabitants. But the truth is, that its real constituency was much greater; for it was the assembling-point of a large class of wealthy persons who resided on their plantations upon the upper and lower James, and in Piedmont, Tidewater, and the South Side.

It is not uncommon nowadays to see references to Southern society of that period as uncultured, and rather sensual than intellectual in its tastes. This historic falsehood, like many others assiduously told for a long time, may find permanent lodgment in the belief of the future. No statement was ever more unjust. With inherited wealth, with abundant leisure, with desire to excel in directing thought, and to attain that command of men which knowledge affords, with an innate passion for oratory, a thorough education was the natural ambition of a Virginia gentleman. True, his efforts were not directed towards acquiring practical or scientific knowledge; for these were in those days possessed, for the most part, by men who expected to apply them to earning a livelihood. But in education in the classics, in the study of ancient and modern languages, in history, in philosophy moral and political, in the study of the science of government, in the learned professions, no men in America were better equipped than the wealthy Southerners of that period.

It is true, there was no public-school system, and the reason for it was very plain. The wealth of the upper classes enabled them to have private tutors. The paucity in numbers of the lower classes of the whites, and the distances at which they lived apart, rendered public schools impracticable for them. Education of the blacks was, of course, contrary to all ideas of slavery. Suppose we depended upon the wealthy to inaugurate public schools, - how many should we have? Yet nobody suspects that they are indifferent to education. The best proof of the care of the slaveholding Southerner for education may be found in the lives of distinguished Northern men who grew up fifty years ago. In many instances, they record the fact that their first employments were as tutors in wealthy Southern families. The private libraries of Virginia destroyed in the war, or burned in the old Virginia homesteads, would have filled every public library in the North to overflowing. Every current periodical and publication of that day, American and foreign, was upon the library table of the Virginian not later than it was in the Northern reading-room.

Conversation at social gatherings did not run to games and sports, and dress and dissipations, and gossip and amusements, but to the great events of the day, to the latest productions in literature and art, and to things worthy of man's noblest thought and discussion. It is an insult to the memory of those most intellectual people to describe the men as a breed of swearing, drinking, and gambling fox-hunters, and the women as pampered, candy-eating dolls. The per cent. of youth educated at foreign universities was greater in proportion to white population, at the outbreak of the war, in Virginia than in Massachusetts. This was natural, in view of the greater individual wealth.

It is true that every enterprise dependent upon what is known as public spirit, or originating in the demand or desire of common use, was sadly lacking. Wealthy people seldom coöperate. Each buys, for private use, things which all might well use in common if the price was an important consideration; and none, perhaps, have as much, or as good, as all might more cheaply obtain if they acted conjointly.

In times of slavery, there never was a decent hotel or public livery in the South. The private establishments were so large that their hospitality was deadly to the success of public houses, or other provision for the public comfort. Of a thousand or two thousand visitors to the city of Richmond, not one hundred would seek public accommodation. They either had town residences of their own, or were taken in charge by friends and relatives as soon as they reached the city. Everybody was kin to everybody. Visitors were ushered into vacant chambers that were already yearning for them, attended by the servants that were idle in their absence, furnished with equipages and horses that needed use and work, and fed of an abundance that had been wasted before they came. All this was repaid by their mere presence, which banished ennui, in those days when public amusements were rare and inferior.

IN the last chapter I spoke of the return of my brother Jennings from France. After graduating at Bloomington, Ind., and studying law at William and Mary College, and before he attained his majority, he had received from President Pierce an appointment in the diplomatic service, and was sent to Berlin as attaché of the American Legation He spent three years in Berlin and Heidelberg, and was thence transferred to Paris as Secretary of Legation, where he further improved himself by study, and by contact with the most polished society in Europe. When he returned to Virginia in 1857, at the age of twenty-five, he was well equipped for a brilliant career. His homecoming after a long absence was the occasion of great rejoicing in our family. It was as if a new light had sprung up in the household. My brother was so modest and unaffected that his acute intellect and varied information were not always revealed to strangers. His disposition was so amiable that in all his life he never had a boyish quarrel with any one. Of singularly mature and sedate nature, he had been his father's loved and trusted companion before his departure for foreign parts; and now that he had returned and was about to assume life's serious responsibilities, they became inseparable companions. He at first entered upon the practice of law; but although he scoured reasonable employment, and was thoroughly trained in common, civil, and international law, he found the practice irksome, and lacking in excitement. His ambition was for political distinction, and very soon he quit the law, and became editor of the “Richmond Enquirer,” the Democratic organ of Virginia. The touch of a master hand was quickly revealed in that journal. His familiarity with foreign politics, and the new lights shed upon them by his knowledge and criticisms, attracted widespread interest on the part of his fellow journalists, as well as the public. In domestic politics, his ardent nature was soon made manifest upon every page. Since the death of Father Ritchie, its once famous editor, the “Enquirer” had lost ground, and descended to the level of a staid and humdrum commonplace newspaper.

Within a short time the paper again stood foremost among Southern journals, and my brother's name became as well known as that of his father. His social successes were not less marked than his professional triumphs. Women and children idolized him. And well they might, for he preferred their society to that of men. Passionately fond of music and of dancing, it was his delight to steal away from the sombre circle of his own sex, or leave the after-dinner cigar and wine, to join the ladies in the drawing-room. There he would linger with unsatisfied delight, listening to the music, or dancing until all others were exhausted. An accomplished linguist, with all sorts of interesting knowledge of the world, delightful in conversation, he possessed an indescribable charm for women. Yet, although he was brought into daily contact with exquisite creatures, whom it was almost impossible not to love, his fondness for the other sex seemed altogether platonic.

If a child saw him once, it never forgot him. Children flocked about him as if he had been the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He rejoiced in this sovereignty, and ever went prepared with trifles to surprise and delight them.

IN all her history, from the formation of the federal government until the hour of secession, no year stands out more prominently than the year 1858 as evidencing the national patriotism of Virginia. To one participating in the scenes enacted in Richmond, and listening to the speeches of her leaders, the statement that within three years the old commonwealth would renounce allegiance to the federal Union would have seemed preposterous.

The State, at great expense, had reared a noble monument to the memory of George Washington. It consists of a central shaft surmounted by an equestrian statue of Washington, with six smaller plinths, on which are placed heroic figures of Virginians, representing different periods of her greatness.

Not one of these men, was famous for deeds done on behalf of Virginia alone. The fame of each and every one of them rests upon public services, or sacrifices for the nation.

Among such, Virginia finds her greatest names. There was Washington, her son, father of his country; there, too, Andrew Lewis; who penetrated the unexplored wilderness of the Northwest and made it hers. Yet she joyously ceded all claims upon it to the nation, as her contribution to perpetual union and fraternity, imposing only the conditions that slavery should never exist there, and that alternate sections of land should be dedicated to public education. There was also Patrick Henry, who roused thirteen colonies to revolution with his immortal eloquence; and George Mason, who drafted a bill of rights epitomizing the aspirations and safeguards of republican institutions in language which, from then until now, has furnished the substance of the written charts of government of all the newly admitted States; and Thomas Jefferson, sage, philosopher, and seer, author of the Declaration of Independence, the Statutes of Religious Liberty, and founder of Virginia's university; and General Thomas Nelson, who devoted his fortune to the Continental struggle, and trained an American cannon upon his own house when it was the headquarters of Cornwallis at Yorktown; and John Marshall, who began his public career as captain in a Virginia regiment, served at Valley Forge and Monmouth, and afterwards, as Chief Justice of the United States, was the peerless expounder of that Constitution which he had fought to establish.

Oh, what a galaxy of men, encompassing the very heavens of our national life! What other commonwealth could produce its like then? What other can produce it now?

Is it surprising that the Virginians, whose State was mother of the nation's father, whose great Chief Justice, the youngest of the immortal group, was the lodestar of constitutional construction, loved that Union and rejoiced in it, and honored it from their hearts' inmost depths?

In other States, jealousies and animosities against the Union may have existed, but, up to that time at least, such sentiments found little lodgment in the breasts of the Virginians.

With beating hearts and honest pride, they assembled from every section, February 22, 1858, to unveil the equestrian statue of Washington. The figures of Henry and Jefferson had preceded that of Washington, and were on their appropriate plinths. Poor Crawford, the sculptor in charge of the work, had died from over-exertion in Rome after the Washington figure was cast and shipped to America. The presence of his widow lent an additional and pathetic interest to the scene about to be enacted.

The vessel bearing the statue arrived at Richmond from Italy some weeks before the unveiling. The male population of the city, men and boys, dragged the statue through the streets from the wharves to the Capitol grounds, a distance of over a mile. Enthusiasm was unbounded on every hand.

Of all these new sights I there beheld, that which captivated me most was the corps of cadets of the Virginia Military Institute. The State owned an arsenal at Lexington, in the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Prior to 1839, she kept a guard at this arsenal. In that year, she established there a military school, in charge of Captain Francis H. Smith, a distinguished graduate of West Point. It was organized strictly on the lines of the United States Military Academy, as to drill, discipline, tuition, and all else. At first the number of cadets was limited to a few, who received board and tuition free, and in return guarded the property of the State, and agreed to teach school for a certain period after graduation. By degrees, a large number of cadets were admitted upon condition that they pay for board and tuition. The school grew; extensive buildings were erected; and in 1858 the Virginia Military Institute had over three hundred cadets, and was the best establishment of the kind in the United States, except the United States Military Academy. It resembled the latter in everything but in the liberality of appropriations, and the assurance of an appointment to the army. Its original superintendent remained in charge, and he continued to hold the office for fifty years. To this uniformity of administration much of the high reputation of the school was no doubt attributable.

The appearance of the corps on the above occasion, the first on which I ever saw it, was sufficient to excite the wildest enthusiasm of a small boy. Never before had I seen such trim, alert figures; such clean, saucy-looking uniforms; such machine-like precision and quickness of drill; such silence and obedience. From the first day my eye rested on the cadet corps, the height of boyish ambition was to be a cadet. Four companies of infantry and a section of artillery drawn by “rats” constituted the cadet outfit.

The “rats” referred to were not genuine rats like those attached to Cinderella's coach, but “plebes” or new cadets, who, until they remain a year and hear “Auld Lang Syne” played at the graduation exercises, are called “rats.” The only thing about this fine body that struck me as in any way lacking in soldierly appearance was the commandant of the infantry battalion. He was not my ideal of a soldier, either in military bearing, or in the manner in which he gave his commands. His uniform was not new; his old blue forage-cap sat on the back of his head; and he stood like a horse “sprung” in the knees. His commands were given in a piping, whining tone, and he appeared to be deeply intent upon his business, without paying much regard to the onlookers. On the other hand, the officer commanding the section of artillery was the model of a martinet. He was petite, quick as a lizard, straight as a ramrod, and his commands were delivered like the crack of a whiplash. I thought him a perfect commanding officer.

THE declamation against disunion and the mutual pledges of fraternal love between North and South, which attended the banquet to the Seventh New York Regiment in Richmond, arose in great part from a knowledge of sectional feeling, threats of disunion, and of partisan recriminations between politicians, but too familiar to all who spoke. At the same time, an intense antagonism to slavery existed in sections of the North and West, accompanied by the determination to abolish it by any means in their power, lawful or unlawful.

Little effort has been made to record the fact, yet it is nevertheless true, that many Southern men were working earnestly and loyally towards the adoption of some plan of gradual emancipation which, while it would free the slave, would not destroy the labor system of the South or leave the slave-owner impoverished. The abolitionist did not believe this. He was uncharitable in his judgment of the humanity of the slave-owner; and his demand that a difficult problem, requiring time for its solution, should be disposed of at once and in his way - per fas aut nefas - was strongly provoking. The attitude of the people of the North generally concerning escaped slaves seemed to the Southerners inconsistent, and tended to increase the friction between the sections. The people of the North professed great reverence for their constitutional obligations, and constantly disclaimed a purpose to interfere with slavery where it existed. They insisted that they were only opposed to the spread of slavery into the free States or Territories, and would respect the rights of the slave-owner where slavery already existed. Yet, whenever a slave escaped, the Northern community in which he sought asylum was practically unanimous in thinking it a great outrage and hardship if he was pursued into their territory and taken back to his owner. It is often said that, before the war, only a small portion of the Northern people belonged to the abolition party. Whether that was true or not, it is certain that a vast majority of every Northern community was in sympathy with obstacles thrown in the way of recapturing escaped slaves. Everybody, North and South, was well aware that in many instances the slave was enticed from his home by abolition emissaries. Yet when he reached the North, thousands who would not have gone South to incite him to escape did all they could to make the work of the emissaries effectual.

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous. From certain descriptions of these times, one would think that all the threats and taunts were made, and all the provocations were given, by the Southerners. At this late day, such a contention is nonsense. No more defiant, vindictive, or aggressive speech was ever made than that of Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, in the United States Senate in 1859, on the “Barbarism of Slavery.” He had a personal grievance, it is true; he had been brutally assaulted in that chamber years before, and his speech bore every mark of being the result of

OUR life during the year 1860 was in strange contrast with the busy and exciting scenes of 1858 and 1859. Father's term of office expired January 1, 1860. He sold his plantation in Accomac, and bought another in the county of Princess Anne, near Norfolk. This change was due partly to domestic and partly to political considerations.

During a period of rebuilding at “Rolleston,” our new home, I was sent, January 1, 1860, to live with a favorite sister, and attend a private school presided over by the parish minister, a Master of Arts of the University of Virginia. The location was in the county of Goochland, about twenty miles west of Richmond, in the beautiful valley of the upper James.

From Lynchburg, which is near the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, the James River courses eastward to Richmond, a distance of about two hundred miles, through a valley of great fertility and beauty. The width of this valley seldom exceeds a mile, and at many points it is much narrower than that. The flat lands along the course of the stream are known as the “James River low grounds,” an expression which conveys to the mind of the Virginian an idea of fatness and fecundity such as others conceive in reading of the valley of the Nile. About Lynchburg, high bluffs hang over the stream, and the flat lands are narrow and small in extent; but from Howardsville, in Albemarle, to Richmond, a hundred miles below the valley broadens, and the bluffs grow less beetling as the gently rolling lands of lower Piedmont are reached. In general characteristics, the section resembles the valleys of the Genesee and the Mohawk in New York, with a greater luxuriance of woodland and more extended vistas.

Upon the swelling hills overlooking the James were built, at the time of which I write, for a distance of a hundred miles or more, the homes of many of the wealthiest and most representative people of our State.

No railroad penetrated the valley. The only means provided for transporting products to market was the James River and Kanawha Canal, an enterprise projected by General Washington. It had been completed as far as Lexington, passing through the Blue Ridge Mountains at the point known as Balcony Falls, a spot suggestive of the Trosachs pass in Scotland.

For their own transportation up and down the valley, these prosperous folk had private equipages and servants. When the distance was greater than a day's journey, the home of some friend, generally a kinsman, stood wide open for their entertainment. The canal was available upon emergency as a means of travel, but as its speed was only about four miles an hour, few of the grandees resorted to it. A fine road ran along the foot-hills, parallel with the canal and river, from Richmond to Charlottesville, often keeping companionship for a mile or two with the route of the canal. The hills were of that stiff red clay celebrated afar for its adaptability to corn and tobacco; and the soil of the low grounds, often refreshed and rejuvenated by the overflow of the James, was a deep alluvial deposit of chocolate loam, inexhaustible in richness and fertility, and producing all the cereals in marvelous abundance.

THE proverb that a calm precedes a storm was never better illustrated than in the peaceful days of the summer and autumn of 1860, and the winter of 1860-61.

Our new home opened up a phase of existence entirely different from any I had theretofore known. Although it was within five miles of the city of Norfolk, which was easily reached either by land or by water, Rolleston, my father's new plantation, was as secluded a spot as if no city had been within a hundred miles. It was the ancient seat of the Moseley family, one of the oldest in the State. Located upon the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River, it embraced, besides a broad area of cultivation, a handsome body of timber of original growth, running from the water's edge back for a mile or more. The dwelling and cartilage were near the river, and the cultivated land, which was on its easternmost side, was bounded by a large millpond. Across the mouth of the pond a dam was erected, with floodgates admitting the tide and confining it at high water for the use of a gristmill.

Beside the gristmill, the new purchaser erected a saw mill on the woodland tract for his own use in erecting new buildings, and for the sale of lumber in the adjacent city. When I reached the place, a number of mechanics were remodeling the dwelling, and building new farm houses and barns. Every boy who has lived on a farm knows the joys of the youthful heart at having access to a carpenter's bench, and to all the lumber and tools and nails he wants.

Besides myself, I had as companions and playmates my brother, a nephew near my own age, a white boy, - the son of the miller, - and my own slave, black John. From rosy morn till dewy eve, during all the vacation of 1860, this precious company was busy with new enterprises. The adjacent waters swarmed with fish and terrapin and crabs and oysters and clams, and every variety of sea food. The fields and forests and marshes abounded with game. The Elizabeth River was a beautiful sheet of water for sailing, and father had provided himself with the stanchest and fastest boats to be obtained.

The milldam and pond were our favorite rallying-point. There we anchored our craft, and fished and swam and sailed our miniature boats, and engaged in the many pastimes which make boyhood so happy a period. To-day, we were occupied, busy as bees, building hen-houses. To morrow, the all-engrossing subject was a new boat, devised and constructed by ourselves. Another time, we might be seen, all hands, riding the high side of our fastest boat in a clipping sail to Norfolk, and, again, bending to the oars like tried seamen, rowing homeward in a calm. To-day would be devoted to fishing in deep water, to-morrow to crabbing on the shoals; another time, to setting weir mats across the mouths of the little estuaries to catch “fatbacks” or jumping mullets when the tide went out; and another time, the whole company would be busy baiting and sinking terrapin traps. Sometimes we would drive away in the farm-carts to Lambert's or Garrison's Fishing Shores, ten miles away upon the Chesapeake Bay, to seine-hauling, from which we would return at evening, our carts loaded down with fish for salting and use during the winter season. On other days, we made up fishing excursions in our sloop, the Know-Nothing, down to the deep waters of Hampton Roads, for sea trout and sheepshead. Every day had its new and busy occupation and delight, and for several months we never put shoes upon our feet, save when we were called upon to visit the city. With great straw hats and brown-linen shirts, and trousers rolled up above our knees, we were almost amphibians, and were sunburnt as brown as Indians.

It may not have been a period of great intellectual growth, but it certainly was a time in which our physical health was highly developed, and the qualities of enterprise and self-reliance were highly stimulated.

In the month of August, the Great Eastern, the largest ship then afloat, came to Hampton Roads, which was the signal for a general holiday, and everybody who was anybody, far and near, went to visit her. We went down the harbor with Captain Oliver upon our sloop, the Know-Nothing, to inspect the English monster. From the city to the Roads where the Great Eastern lay, ten miles below, the waters of Norfolk harbor were alive with river-craft, crowding all sails and decked in their best bunting, firing small cannon and waving salutes. We had bent the racing-sails of the Know-Nothing for the occasion, and she showed her heels not only to the vessels of her own class, but to many far larger than herself. I was very proud of being one of the company of the smartest craft in Norfolk waters.

The Great Eastern, it will be remembered, was an immense ship, of a length and size never since equaled, unless it be by the new steamer Oceanic, now under construction. She was 680 feet in length, with a width of beam of over 80 feet, and a draft of 27 feet of water. Her contrast with other ships of that time was, however, much greater than it would be with the ships of to-day. In general outline, she was, of course, very much like other vessels of her kind. When she first came in view, I felt disappointed; for there were no other objects near her with which to contrast her. But after a large steamer of the Old Dominion line passed the Know-Nothing on the way down the harbor, looming high above us, and rocking us in her wake until our washboards were almost submerged, and then passed on towards the Great Eastern, where, by the side of the latter, she appeared to be no larger than a tug, I began to realize the size of the magnificent newcomer. When the Know-Nothing sailed up and around the visitor, her topmast not five feet above the rail of the Great Eastern, the matter grew plainer; and when our party boarded the Great Eastern and traversed the great spaces within, I found it difficult to realize that she was the work of men, or that the colossal whole moved and was directed in every motion by the control of one human mind.

While the ship proved a failure, the ideas first advanced in her were developed and applied to other ventures, in such a manner that she produced a revolution in the construction of ships for merchant marine service, little less marked than that in naval warfare resulting from the convict in Hampton Roads two years later.

The visit of the Prince of Wales to America occurred about the same time as the arrival of the Great Eastern.

I was to remain at home during the next school year. One of our neighbors, with a large family, had secured the services of a young university graduate as private tutor, and I was to attend his school, about two miles distant. Consequently, early in September, I went to Goochand to bring back some schoolbooks and other belongings. It was on this visit that I happened to be in Richmond at the time of the visit of the Prince of Wales, and was in St. Paul's Church upon the Sunday when the prince attended divine worship there.

During our residence in Richmond, many eminent Englishmen had visited the city from time to time, and a mere English lord was no very great sight; but my interest was most decided in a British heir-apparent not much older than myself.

The young fellow was a typical Anglo-Saxon. His tawny hair, fair complexion, and blue eyes were exactly what one familiar with the type would have expected to see. At that time, he was rather slight in build, and did not display the best of physical development. His shoulders were drooping, and his hips rather broad; his movements were awkward, and his manner altogether boyish. I had no opportunity to converse with him, for, being a small boy, I secured no introduction; but I saw him several times, and wondered at the deference shown to him by the distinguished-looking old gentlemen who were his traveling companions, as well as by several of the leading citizens, friends of my father, by whom the prince was entertained.

One who saw him in 1860 would find it difficult to discover in the stout, bald, elderly, well-fed man of the world, still known as the Prince of Wales, whom I saw in London several years ago, any trace of the awkward boy who visited Richmond in 1860.

Never had boy more glorious liberty or greater variety of sport, and never did reckless youth pursue its bent more indifferent to the graver affairs going on about it. One day in October, I drove into Norfolk, and, seeing a great crowd assembled, paused and heard part of a speech by Stephen A. Douglas. I was greatly impressed by his tremendous voice, every tone of which reached me more than a block away, and I loudly applauded his Union sentiments. But having obtained the supply of powder and shot I needed, I soon forgot Douglas. Not long afterwards, I heard, without its making a great impression upon me, that on one of those gorgeous November days Douglas had been defeated for President, and Abraham Lincoln had been elected President of the United States. More than once I heard, without believing it, that there was serious and imminent danger of civil war as a result. “Let it come,” was my only reflection; “who's afraid?”

Before the close of the year 1860, many men from Southern States rode out to Rolleston from Norfolk to visit and confer with father about the course Virginia would pursue in view of that of South Carolina and other States. Some of them remained to meals, and some stayed overnight, and so I heard their conversations. Some of them had new and strange flags pinned upon their lapels, or little palmetto rosettes, which they gave me. When I visited the city, I heard new tunes like “Dixie” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag;” and men said that Virginia would secede with other Southern States. But father still declared that he was opposed to secession, and believed that, if any fight was necessary, the South should “fight in the Union.” I did not know what it all meant, and did not believe it could result in actual war, and in fact had become so engrossed in the pleasures of life at Rolleston that I gave little attention to aught else but the pursuit of my boyish diversions.

I was a little over fourteen years of age when the civil war began. No pair of eyes and ears in all America were more alert than mine. Every event, as it wound off the reel of time, excited my most intense interest, and made its indelible impression.

As State after State passed ordinances of secession, the disunion sentiment gained ground in Virginia. Father was hotly opposed to secession, but he always coupled that declaration with the further one that he was equally opposed to Northern coercion.

The Virginia legislature called a convention to consider what course the State should take in the impending crisis. The election for delegate from our county, Princess Anne, was exciting, and the result was in great doubt. Father was a candidate, opposed by Edgar Burroughs, Esq., a popular and outspoken Union man. Mr. Burroughs was a native of the county, had a large family connection, and was supported by a strong following, who wanted neither secession nor fighting. It required all the prestige of my father's name, and a careful declaration of his modified views upon secession, to elect him, and he was returned by a small majority.

Poor Burroughs, like many another who resisted secession to the last, went into the Confederate service, and sacrificed his life for his State.

The convention remained in session a long time before it took decisive action. When it assembled, it was composed of a safe majority of Union men, and a minority of secessionists. My father held unique views, and had a very small following. Opposing secession, he at the same time advocated preparations by the State for defense against what he considered the threatened aggression of the federal government. In his own book, “Seven Decades of the Union,” he has fully set forth what he meant when he advocated “fighting in the Union.” It is sufficient to say that, at the time, his views were regarded as impracticable, and that he failed to impress them upon the body, or to gain any considerable following.

The issue seemed likely to be decided in favor of the Union men, until the occurrence of two events which precipitated secession. The first of these was the firing upon Fort Sumter. The second was the call issued by President Lincoln upon the States, Virginia included, for troops to suppress the rebellion.

It has been said that the Southern leaders fired upon Fort Sumter in order to force these issues, well knowing that Virginia could not be relied upon to withdraw from the Union in any other way. Whether this be so or not, this result was accomplished.

The Virginians realized that they had come to the parting of the roads. The question presented was no longer, Shall we fight? War was flagrant. The only question to be decided was, On which side shall we fight?

Virginia was reduced to the alternative of furnishing her quota of troops to the Union, or of refusing to do so, which was the equivalent of secession. It was a hard situations made doubly hard by the fact that, even at the moment when these things happened, a peace conference, presided over by her venerable ex-President John Tyler, was in session at Washington, vainly endeavoring to bring about a bloodless solution of the trouble.

Now, however, no time was to be lost in further negotiations. Indecision in such a crisis would have been little less than cowardice.

One by one, men who had steadily voted with the Union men transferred their support to the secessionists. Knowing that war was inevitable, they decided to fight for and with their friends. The ordinance of secession was passed three days after Mr. Lincoln's call for troops; and while the schedule provided for its indorsement by the people, the march of events was so rapid that popular indorsement was not obtained until long after the State had taken an unmistakable attitude in the conflict.

While these things were progressing, I visited Norfolk daily to ascertain, and keep the family informed concerning the progress of public affairs.

From the time Sumter was fired upon, and Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was made public, business was almost entirely suspended. The people assembled upon the streets, discussing the situation, breathlessly awaiting the decision of the convention at Richmond, and listening to popular harangues. The local military, anticipating the result, assembled, and paraded the streets with bands and Southern flags. When the telegraph flashed the announcement that the secession ordinance had been passed, it was greeted with great cheering, the firing of guns, and every demonstration of excited enthusiasm.

It is impossible to describe the feelings with which I saw the stars and stripes hauled down from the custom house, and the Virginia state flag run up in their place I had become rampant for war, but never until then had I fully realized that this step involved making the old flag under which I was born in Brazil, and which, until now, had typified to me everything of national patriotism and national glory on land and sea, henceforth the flag of an enemy.

It was a beautiful spring morning. Across the harbor at the Gosport Navy Yard, the United States flag still floated from the garrison flagstaff, and from the ships, - the Pennsylvania, the Cumberland, the Merrimac, the Germantown, the Raritan, and others whose names were famous in our naval annals. Father had been chairman of the Naval Committee of the House of Representatives for many years, and had become, while minister to Brazil personally acquainted with nearly all the prominent naval officers. Upon those ships, lying there, were many men who, but a short time before, were welcome visitors at our home. It was almost incredible that they were now, and were to be henceforth, enemies, or that they might at any time open fire upon the town which they had originally come to protect. A certain Confederate general was ridiculed for saying, after the war ended, that he had never seen the old flag, even in the battle-front, without tears in his eyes. That was doubtless a figure of speech. It was rather hyperbolical and beyond any feeling I had; but I can understand the emotion of every man who, having loved and honored the stars and stripes, could not bring himself, even while the war was going on, to hate them, or shut out from his remembrance what they had been to him.

The day after the State seceded. General Taliaferro, a militia general, arrived at Norfolk and assumed command. Troops from the South began to arrive. Among them I recall particularly the Third Alabama Regiment, one of the finest bodies of military I ever saw. It numbered full one thousand men, the best representatives of Montgomery, Selma, Mobile, and other places in Alabama. It was uniformed like the New York Seventh Regiment, and commanded by Colonel Lomax, a superb soldier. Those wealthy young fellows of the Third Alabama brought with them not less than one hundred servants, and their impediments were more than was carried by a division in Lee's army three years later.

All attention was concentrated now upon the navy yards and ships in possession of the United States. The advantage of securing the latter was fully understood. No less than six or seven vessels were sunk in the channel below the city, to prevent the ships from passing out. A demand for the evacuation of the navy yard and the surrender of the ships was, it was understood, made by General Taliaferro upon Commodore Paulding. Friday the 19th and Saturday the 20th were consumed in negotiations. Saturday, a party of Union officers landed at the Roanoke dock with a flag of truce, and proceeded under escort to General Taliaferro's headquarters at the Atlantic Hotel. A long conference ensued, and then they returned to their ships. The fevered populace could gain no information concerning the interview or its probable results.

Meanwhile, several companies of local military proceeded to old Fort Norfolk, which was on our side of the river just below the town, and removed a large quantity of ammunition stored there, unprotected by the Union troops. That ammunition was largely used in the first battle of Manassas, which occurred three months later.

It was nearly dark, Saturday, April 20, when, despairing of getting further information, I secured my horse and vehicle, bought all the thrilling newspaper bulletins I could lay hands upon, and, tearing myself away from the excitement of the town, started for home. The erstwhile silent woods skirting the homeward road were now transformed into camps. Places whose deep silence at night, in time of peace, had been broken only by the uncanny call of the whippoorwill, or the hooting of owls, were lighted up with camp-fires, and resounded with the joyous laughter of the soldiers, the calls of sentinels, the stroke of the axe, or the singing of the cooks and servants. Verily, this thing called war was a fascinating sport. My heart sickened at the thought that it would probably all be over before I was old enough to be a participant in its glorious exhilaration.

At home, the family, impatient at my tardy return, devoured every item of news in the papers, and hung breathless upon every report of what was going forward in the city. Thoroughly fagged out by excitement, I went early to bed, wondering “What next?” Things happened so fast in those days that, as soon as one thing occurred, we began to expect something else, and in this case we were not disappointed. Some time after midnight, the household was aroused by a series of explosions in the direction of Norfolk, and on going out, we beheld a dense canopy of smoke hanging over the city, illuminated by fires, and flashing almost momentarily with the light of new explosions. It was easy to conjecture the meaning of this. The United States forces had abandoned and blown up the Gosport Navy Yard. I was keen to return at once to the city, but concluded to remain until daylight.

The next morning was Sunday, and bright and early I accompanied a party of our workmen in our sloop to the city. What a sight of devastation greeted us. The Pennsylvania and the Merrimac and other ships had been burned to the water's edge. Some of their guns had been loaded, and exploded as the heat of the fire reached them, but fortunately the ships had listed heavily before the discharge, and the shots had gone into the water high over the town. The ship sheds were all destroyed. A futile effort had been made to blow up the dry dock. The barracks and officers' quarters and the machine shops had all been fired. Some of these fires had been extinguished, while others were still burning. The long rows of guns in the navy yard, fifteen hundred in all, had in many instances been spiked, or disabled by breaking their bunions with sledge-hammers. Old sails and clothing and masses of papers strewed the parade, and, altogether, it was marvelous to behold what destruction and disorder had been wrought within the space of a few hours where all had been construction and perfect order for many years.

As for the late occupants, the following were the facts: About nine o'clock Saturday night, the Pawnee had come up from Fortress Monroe, easily passing the obstructions. She doubtless brought the orders what to do. After knocking the navy yard into smithereens, and transferring all the valuable papers and the sailors to the Pawnee and Cumberland, and burning the Pennsylvania. Merrimac, and other ships, the Pawnee and Cumberland steamed down the harbor to Fortress Monroe. On their downward passage, the sailors manned the yardarms, and cheered the Union flag, as it was lit up by the blaze of the burning ships. The ease with which these vessels had passed the obstructions and escaped was a sore disappointment to the Confederates.1

We spent the greater portion of the day wandering about through the abandoned navy yard, and inspecting the first real devastation of war which we had yet beheld. Little did we realize that it was possible to rebuild the dry dock, or that in it, out of the charred remains of the Merrimac, would be constructed a ship which was destined to revolutionize naval warfare. Still less did we realize that this scene of destruction was, as contrasted with what we were yet to witness, as insignificant as the burning of a country smoke house beside the conflagration of Moscow.

Immediately after the evacuation of Norfolk by the Union forces, the fortification of the harbor began. Batteries were erected at Craney Island, Lambert's point, Sewell's Point, and elsewhere. Obstructions were placed in the harbor to prevent the return of Union vessels. Long lines of intrenchments were erected in rear of the city, extending from the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River to Tanner's Creek. The military forces were distributed along what was known as the intrenched camp 1. For full and graphic description of this, see Rebellion Records, vol. i. Doc. p. 119. and the fashionable amusement of the time was to visit the various encampments, and witness the drills and parades.

Our house, but a mile or two beyond the lines, was constantly filled with visitors, and was gay beyond all precedent.

Almost immediately after the passage of the secession ordinance, father received a commission as brigadier-general in the Confederate service, with directions to repair to West Virginia, recruit and organize a brigade, and protect that section of the State against any hostile advance. His preparations for departure were immediately begun; and I was desolate at learning that my brother Richard, now seventeen, was recalled from William and Mary College to accompany him as aid-de-camp.

Just before their departure, the family was roused late one night by a loud knocking upon the door, and the appearance of my brother Henry and two cousins who lived upon the eastern shore peninsula. My brother was an Episcopal minister, and had been up to this time in charge of a church in West Philadelphia. He was exceedingly popular with his congregation, and no man owed parishioners more for love and kindness than he did. Hoping against hope, he had clung to his charge, thinking that possibly something might happen to avert hostilities. Meanwhile, the feeling there had become intense.

One day, having occasion to visit the barber-shop of the Girard House, the barber by some means discovered who he was, and, seeking from him some assurances of loyalty to the Union which he could not conscientiously give, the barber threw down his razor, and refused to finish shaving a rebel. Leaving the place, as a crowd was assembling, he hurried homeward, to find that his residence had been protected from a mob through the prudent exhibition of a Union flag by a small boy whom he employed; and under advice of friends, he left the city forthwith, and journeyed homeward via Wilmington, Del., down the eastern shore peninsula, to the home of two young cousins in Accomac. They joined him, and the three crossed the Chesapeake Bay in a small boat from Cape Charles, and reached our home as described.

My brother brought us the first tidings we had for a long time from our relatives in Philadelphia, and from his description they had become as intense partisans of the Union side as were we of the South. Poor fellow! He took the situation very much to heart. While loyal to kith and kin, he, even at that early day, declared that we did not know the power, the resources, or the numbers of our adversaries, and that the struggle of the South for independence was hopeless folly. We were all elated, and felt no doubts whatever. We were disposed to regard him as controlled in his feelings by his deep aversion to parting with a noble and devoted congregation.

A few days later, my eldest sister, wife of Dr. A.Y.P. Garnett, of Washington, D. C., arrived at our home with her family of children. They had abandoned their home and reached Richmond on one of the last trains which came through. When they joined us at Rolleston, our family was a very large one. The teacher of my school volunteered, and the school closed. My father and young brother Richard departed for the war in West Virginia.

My oldest brother Jennings was about this time elected captain of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, a volunteer organization founded in 1793. His company joined my father's forces, and became A Company, Forty-six Virginia Regiment, of Wise's brigade.

Bravely and gayly they all sallied forth to rendez-vous at the famous White Sulphur Springs. Thence, after organizing, they proceeded to Charleston Kanawha. Every report from our own was watched for with intense eagerness, of course, but the things occurring near at hand were of the most exciting character.

After the evacuation of Norfolk by the Union forces, the sound of cannon was almost hourly in our ears. In a few days, Craney Island, Sewell's Point, Lambert's Point Pig Point, and other places commanding the entrance of the Elizabeth and Nausemond rivers, were fully fortified by the Confederates.

At these points, our own troops were constantly exercised in target practice; and the Union forces at Fortress Monroe and the Rip-Raps (then called Fort Calhoun now Fort Wool), and the Union ships in Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay, were engaged in similar drills. At times, the reports, all of which we could hear, were so loud and so frequent that we believed an engagement was in progress.

Confederate cavalry patrolled the beach of the Chesapeake to guard against the landing of the enemy for an attack upon Norfolk in rear. Major Edgar Burroughs, my father's competitor for delegate to the Secession Convention, was in command of a squadron of this cavalry, encamped near Lynnhaven Bay, to protect the seine-haulers there who supplied Norfolk and the troops with fish.

The camp was in a grove of live-oaks, behind the sand dunes on the beach, but must have been visible with glasses to those on the ships, and was easily in reach of guns of the Union cruisers constantly moving back and forth along the coast between Fortress Monroe and Cape Henry. Later in the war, that camp would have been instantly bombarded; but at this early stage, the combatants were not altogether prepared to kill each other on sight.

The possibility of such an attack was, nevertheless, sufficient to make the place very attractive; and many day, going down to the shore under pretext of securing fish from the seines, I remained in the cavalry camp all day, often watching the passing Union vessels through field-glasses, which made everything and everybody upon them plainly visible.

Then came the insignificant affair at Big Bethel. Exaggerated accounts of it frenzied us with joy. “The Happy Land of Canaan” was once more utilized for versification, and every little chap of my acquaintance went about singing: -

My poor little mare Pocahontas paid heavily for all this war fervor. Not content with banging away half the day with the rifles at targets erected on land and water, I was ambitious also to become a cavalryman and a lancer. We had tournament every day; that is, riding at a run, trying to carry off suspended rings with a long pole. Then we would caparison ourselves with sabres and dash at dummy heads. In these exercises the riders changed; but the horse was the same, and no doubt Pocahontas felt deep regret at the condition of affairs which gave her such constant and violent exercise.

Then came the battle of Manassas. Until then, I had never conceived the intensity of feeling, the exaltation of exultation, to which men are aroused by the first deep draught of blood and victory. Fierceness, as we know it in peace times, is, contrasted with human war-passion, as the sweet south wind beside the desert simoom. Around the telegraph offices in Norfolk, great throngs of citizens and soldiers stood, roused to the highest pitch of excitement, as bulletin after bulletin was read aloud announcing a great Confederate triumph.

Men whose names had never been heard before leaped at one bound into the front rank of the world's heroes, in the minds of that delirious audience. Beauregard, Joe Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, Bee, and Bartow were the names on every tongue. The magnitude of the engagement was represented as equal to the greatest of ancient or modern battles. The throngs gloated in the stories of unprecedented carnage. One telegram announced a field so covered with the dead bodies of gayly dressed Union Zouaves that it resembled a French poppy farm. The conduct of the Southern troops was represented as surpassingly brave and chivalric, while that of “the Yankees” was referred to as correspondingly base and cowardly. The boast that one Southerner could whip ten Yankees seemed fully verified. The prediction followed that within a month the Southern army would be encamped about New York, and that it would dictate terms of peace within sixty days.

It was many a year before I learned the historical fact that the little battle of Manassas was one of the oddest episodes in military history, in that it was fought at right angles to the line of battle selected by both commanders, and was virtually won by the Union forces when they became panic-stricken and fled. It is almost incredible now, remembering how it was represented at the time, that only 750 men were killed in both armies, and less than 2500 were wounded.1

THERE are certain names whose mere mention produces feelings of horror, or pain, or sadness from association. To me, that of Roanoke Island is one of these.

The island commanded the passage by water through Hatteras Inlet and Pimlico Sound to Albemarle and Currituck sounds. It was a most important strategic point, for a force of Union troops passing it had at their mercy several towns upon the North Carolina coast, could cut off the supplies and railroad and canal communications of Norfolk, and were in position to attack that city in rear. About January 1,1862, my father was assigned to the command and defense of Roanoke Island. Major-General Huger was the commander of the department embracing that position.

General Huger was one of those old West Point incompetents with whom the Confederacy was burdened. He was both by birth and personally a gentleman, and no doubt a brave man; but the only reason on earth for his being a major-general in command of an important department was that he was a graduate of West Point. The Confederacy felt this influence much more than the United States. Mr. Davis, our President, was a West Point graduate as was everybody else connected with our military organization General Bragg, his favorite military counselor, was the martinet of the old army; and Generals Hardee and Cooper, the leading advisers at headquarters; and Generals Lee and Johnston, the commanders in the field, were all West Point graduates.

I am not belittling the great advantages secured to the Confederacy by service of a number of very superior West Point officers, who joined their fortunes with hers; but with them came also a very inefficient and inferior lot, unfit for the high commands to which they were assigned, - men who stood in the way of better officers, and who were appointed and retained merely through favoritism. To this latter class belonged Major-General Benjamin Huger, the officer in command of Norfolk.

The Secretary of War at the time was Judah P. Benjamin, in many respects the most remarkable person in the Confederate States. The Confederate leaders were as a rule, men of deep feelings and convictions, or men of intense or passionate natures. Not so with Benjamin: he had more brains and less heart than any other civil leader in the South. He was an English Jew, and a lawyer of the first rank. He entered upon employment as attorney for a client. For that client he worked with surprising acumen, with great learning, with boundless capacity for endurance, with unquestioned loyalty, and absolute fidelity. If his client was in any case hanged, it was only after Benjamin had done all in his power for him; but after Benjamin had exhausted the resources of defense and come to the end of the business for which he was retained, he possessed the power of completely dismissing his client's affairs from his mind. Likely as not, he would be having a bottle of Madeira and a cigar at his club at the moment the hanging was taking place. His nature was such that he had no sentimental attachments, and seldom troubled himself about the troubles of others. His convictions were clear, vigorous, and strongly urged; they were never passionate, or clouded by affection or hate; he was never harassed by reminiscences. When a case was lost, he did not bemoan it; he found another. He played his part in the Confederacy as if he held a hand in a game of whist; a skilled professional, he lost no trick that could be saved, and did everything possible to win for himself and his partner. When he lost, he indulged in no repinings; he tore up the old pack, lighted a fresh cigar, moved to another table, called for a fresh pack, took a new partner, and played another game. His last game proved to be much more successful than his Confederate venture, for he moved to England, and became justly eminent at the English bar. The Confederacy and its collapse were no more to Judah P. Benjamin than a last year's bird's-nest.

When my father was assigned to the command of Roanoke Island, it was well known at the war department that General McClellan was fitting out an expedition to attack and capture the position.

The disastrous termination of the operations of 1861 in the mountains of West Virginia had not enhanced my father's military reputation, or that of any other general who was in the mountains. On the Union side, McClellan had suffered, and even the prestige of Lee had been damaged, in those impossible campaigns, so that he had been assigned to the fortifications of Charleston followed by the jeering taunts of John M. Daniel, the satirical editor of the “Richmond Examiner.”

But while my father lacked the advantages of a military education he had a remarkably correct apprehension of topography and was quick to see the strategic value of positions. As soon as he visited Roanoke Island, he grasped its importance, and saw that it was not only practically defenseless, but unsupplied with any adequate is of erecting fortifications. He hurried back to the headquarters of General Huger at Norfolk, and doubtless harassed that easy-going and high-living soldier with his importunities. Failing to obtain any assistance from General Huger, he repaired to Richmond, and endeavored to impress upon the Secretary of War the necessity for prompt action. Mr. Benjamin was an attorney, and not a soldier. He looked for instruction to his client, who in this case was General Huger. He doubtless thought that the West Pointer knew much more of such matters than the civilian, and regarded it as little less than insubordination for a brigadier-general to seek the department direct. Then, too, Mr. Benjamin was an easy-spoken, cool, suave Jew, quiet and diplomatic in speech, never excited. It disturbed his nerves to have General Wise in his department, - ardent, urgent, pressing, declaring that past neglect had been criminal and present delay was suicidal, and even guilty occasionally of some indignant swearing at the galling indifference shown to the urgent peril of the situation. The upshot of all this was a peremptory order from the war department to General Wise to return forthwith to Roanoke Island, and to do the best he could with what he had in hand.

After the inevitable disaster, the Confederate Congress declared that General Wise had done everything in his power, and that the blame for defeat lay entirely at the door of General Huger and the Secretary of War; but that never repaired the wreck, or gave us back our dead. 1

THE building of the iron-clad afterwards famous all over the world as the Virginia, or the Merrimac, was a subject of daily conversation in our household from the time the Gosport Navy Yard was burned and abandoned by the Union troops in April, 1861.

My father, during his service in Congress, was for some years upon the Committee on Naval Affairs; his acquaintance with naval officers resulting from that fact, and from his long residence at Rio de Janeiro, was unusually widespread. Commodore James Barron was one of his constituents and warm friends. Commodore Barron was the gallant but unfortunate officer who killed Decatur in a duel, and was himself severely wounded. Besides other contributions of value to the navy, he conceived the idea of an impregnable steam propeller, armed with a pyramidal beak, and a terrapin-shaped back at an acute angle to the line of projectiles fired from its own level. He called it a marine catapulta, and had complete models, plans, and descriptions, which he exhibited to the naval committee, in the effort to have a ship constructed on these lines. He made little impression, however; for in those days steam navigation had attained no very great success, - much less the utilization of iron upon ships. He subsequently presented the model to my father, who had also a large number of models of other vessels.

In our rummaging about the place, we boys found these models in some old boxes, and took them down to our millpond, where we anchored them as part of our miniature fleet. The Barron model, and one constructed by Lieutenant Williamson of the navy, were the most conspicuous, making quite a proud addition to our naval display. This was in 1860.

We also possessed a brass cannon about eighteen inches long, which had been cast for us by a convict in the Virginia Penitentiary. That cannon was stamped with the words “Union and Constitution,” but its use by its possessors was most lawless. Modeling slugs for it by pouring melted lead into holes made by sticking our rammer in the sand, we were constantly firing these slugs, to the great peril of everybody in the vicinity.

One of our neighbors, a Captain Johnson, an old sea man, living about a mile down the creek, had a flock of geese; and from one of his voyages in Indian seas he had brought back six coolie boys, who were probably apprenticed to him. These coolies were passionately fond of the water, and were almost constantly in sight, bathing, or rowing, or sailing a felucca-rigged boat. After trying the range of our gun upon Captain Johnson's geese, we began to practice upon the coolies. On a certain evening, Captain Johnson appeared in full marine rig at our landing, rowed by his six coolies, and, announcing to our father the sport in which we had been engaged, gave notice that he had a gun of his own, with which, if we did not promptly cease our diversion, he would open a return fire.

My father, who was a friend of Captain Johnson, and indignant at our reckless misconduct, gave us all a bad half hour in consequence of this visit. We were summoned before him, and, after considerable discussion concerning the punishment we should receive, were marched in a body to the landing and made to apologize to the coolies, who grinned and showed their teeth. After that we were good friends of the coolies, and our future operations with the gun were confined to the millpond on the opposite side of the farm. In our new field, it promptly occurred to us, as it would to most boys, that the best targets for our cannon were the models of the iron-clads anchored out in the pond. Unfortunately, they had no iron upon them; and, such was the precision we had acquired in our practice upon Johnson's geese and coolies, that in a few days the models of Commodore Barron and Lieutenant Williamson were riddled, and ignominiously disappeared. They were resting in the mud at the bottom of our millpond when the war broke out.

The following spring, after visiting the navy yard and seeing the partially burned Merrimac, my father became enthusiastic upon the subject of raising her and building upon her frame an iron-clad ship on the lines of Commodore Barron's model. Imbued with this idea, he instituted rigorous inquiries for the model; but, for reasons which may well be understood, none of us boys aided him much in the search. Failing to find his model, he wrote to General Lee, who was then commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, an elaborate description of Commodore Barron's invention, and made rough drawings, urging the use of the Merrimac for carrying out the design. He always believed and declared that this was the first suggestion which led to the building of the Virginia.

We all knew that an iron-clad ship was being built, and from time to time informed ourselves of the progress made; and great things were expected from her. So deep was my father's interest in her, that he several times visited the navy yard to inspect her. He repeatedly expressed the opinion that she was being built to draw too much water, and that her beak or ramming prow was improperly constructed in this, that it was horizontal at the top and sloped upward from the bottom, whereas it should have been horizontal on the bottom and made to slope downward to a point. When the ship was launched he was indignant because the lower edge or eaves of her armor-clad covering stood several feet out of the water, and it was necessary to ballast her heavily to bring her sheathing below the water line. This increased her draught to eighteen feet, which was, as he declared, entirely unnecessary. He insisted that this condition was due to the failure of the naval architects (in calculating the water which she would draw when sheathed with iron) to deduct from the weight of her sheathing the weight of masts, spars, rigging, and sails, which were dispensed with.

Admiral Buchanan, Commodore Forrest, Captain Brooke, and all the prominent naval men connected with the Norfolk Navy Yard were personal and warm friends of my father. He did not hesitate to express his views concerning these things, but they, as professional men generally do, made light of the criticisms of a layman. Nevertheless, I think that many naval authorities are now disposed to admit that the chief reason why the Virginia did not triumph completely over the Monitor was her great draught of water, the loss of her prow, and the twisting of her stem in ramming the Cumberland.

After the disaster of Roanoke Island, my father returned to his home on sick leave, where for some time his life was in danger from pneumonia, aggravated by exposure on the retreat from Roanoke Island. Our house was visited almost daily during this period by distinguished military and naval officers from the city, who came to express their interest and sympathy.

It was before the day of steam launches, and the appearance of the distinguished officers and of the naval boats which came up, manned by a dozen oarsmen, whose stroke fell as that of one man, was very striking. During these visits, they diverted my father with full descriptions of the progress made in arming and equipping the Virginia, and we were advised that the time of her completion, and the attack upon the vessels in Hampton Roads, was rapidly approaching.

There was dear old Commodore Forrest, tall, dignified, and with a face as sweet as that of a woman, surmounted by a great shock of white hair like the mane of some royal beast; and Captain Buchanan, far less striking in appearance, quiet, kindly, and as unpretentious as a country farmer, but with an eye which age had not dimmed, and which even then was filled with the light of battle. They were both old men. Commodore Forrest was sixty-five and Captain Buchanan sixty-two. There was also Captain Brooke, taciturn and dreamy; and Lieutenant Catesby Jones, a quiet man of forty; and Lieutenant Minor, young, quick, and fidgety as a wren; and all the rest of them, mingling with us simply and unostentatiously, as if unconscious that the issues of one of the greatest struggles the world ever witnessed were committed to their keeping, and that they were to emerge from it with names which will be remembered as long as the records of naval warfare are preserved.

Almost daily we boys went to Norfolk for the mail, or on some domestic mission. We preferred our boat, and seldom failed, before we left Norfolk harbor, to stand over toward the Gosport Navy Yard and sail around and take a look at the Merrimac. Such we called her; for we had never become accustomed to the new name, Virginia. My father was now convalescent, and secured the promise that he would be advised when the ship was ready to sail for the attack. On March 7, he received a note from Commodore Forrest, or one of those who knew, advising him that the attack would be made upon the following day. He consented that my brother Richard and myself should accompany him, and the next morning the horses, which now had been well fed and rested for a month at home, were saddled and ready for us at the door.

When we reached the city, the Merrimac, accompanied by two little gunboats, the Beaufort and the Raleigh, had already passed out, and all three were below Fort Norfolk. The waterway is more circuitous than that by land, and we were sure we should reach Sewell's Point, the most favorable position for observing the conflict, before the slow-moving vessels; in this we were correct. After a sharp gallop of eight miles, we rode out upon the sandy hills facing Hampton Roads at Sewell's Point.

The scene was truly inspiring. Hampton Roads is as beautiful a sheet of water as any on the face of the globe. It is formed by the confluence of the James, the Nansemond and the Elizabeth rivers. The James enters it from the west, the Nansemond from the south, and the Elizabeth from the east. The tides in the Roads run north and south, and pass to and from the Chesapeake Bay through a narrow entrance at the north, between Old Point Comfort and Willoughby's Spit. Midway between these is the fort then known as Rip-Raps, the proper name of which was Fort Calhoun, now changed to Fort Wool. On the eastern side of the Roads the Confederates had fortified two points, - Sewell's Point, where we were, and Lambert's Point, at the mouth of the Elizabeth. On the southern side, between the mouths of the Elizabeth and Nansemond rivers, were the Confederate fortifications on Craney Island. On the western side, at the entrance to the Roads, is Fortress Monroe. From there the land runs westwardly to Hampton, thence southwardly to Newport News, which marks the entrance of the James River. The Roads are about four miles in width and seven in length. From where we stood, looking north, Fortress Monroe and the Rip-Raps were perhaps, four miles away; looking westward across the Roads, Newport News was five miles away; and, looking south, Lambert's Point and Craney Island were plainly visible three miles off.

Upon the battlements of Fortress Monroe and the Rip Rap's great numbers of Union troops could be seen through field-glasses, and we could also make out the camps and fortifications of the enemy at Newport News, and between that point and Hampton, while our own people lined the shores and crowded the ramparts at Craney Island and Lambert's Point.

Anchored in the Roads were a great number of vessels of every description, steam and sail, from the smallest tugs and sloops to the largest transports and warships. Rumors of the attack had brought down to Sewell's Point a number of civilians, and the whole appearance of the scene was suggestive of the greatest performance ever given in the largest theatre ever seen. The Merrimac and her attendants had passed Craney Island, and were coming down the channel east of Craney Island light when we arrived. As she passed our fortifications, she was saluted and cheered, and returned the salutes. From the way in which she was shaping her course when first seen, it looked to the uninitiated as if she proposed to sail directly upon the Rip-Raps. Such hurrying and scurrying was seen among the non-combatant craft in the Roads as was never witnessed before. From great three-masters and double-deck steamers to little tugs and sailboats, all weighed or slipped anchor and made sail or steam for Fortress Monroe, except three dauntless war vessels, - two steamers, the Minnesota and the Roanoke, and one sailing vessel, the St. Lawrence, - whose duty called them in the opposite direction. A long tongue of shoal, running out from Craney Island, compelled the Merrimac to go below Sewell's Point before she struck the main channel; then she swung into it and pointed westward, showing her destination, for she headed straight for Newport News, where the masts and spars of the Congress and the Cumberland were plainly visible.

It was now past midday. The Merrimac on her new course was nearly stern to us, and grew smaller and smaller as she followed the south channel to Newport News. The three United States vessels - Minnesota, Roanoke, and St. Lawrence - started after her by what is known as the north channel. It was a bitter disappointment to us that the battle was to be waged so far away, but the ships and their movements were still in view. The sun was shining, and a fresh March breeze would, we thought, blow away the smoke. It seemed an eternity before the first gun was fired. The Merrimac, Cumberland, and Congress were nearly ranged in our line of vision. The Merrimac appeared to us as if she was almost in contact with the nearest of the two vessels. Captain Buchanan states in his report that he was within less than a mile of the Cumberland when he commenced the engagement by a shot at her from his bow gun. We saw a great puff of smoke roll up and float off from the Merrimac; a moment later, the flashes of broadsides and tremendous rolls of smoke from the Congress, the Cumberland, the batteries on shore, and the Union gunboats; and then came the thunderous sounds, following each other in the same order in which we had seen the smoke. The engagement had begun.

It was a time of supreme excitement and supreme suspense; for the details, we who had no glasses were dependent upon those who had. “She has passed the congress!” exclaimed an officer, who was straining forward, trying to descry the positions of the ships through the smoke, which now enveloped the point of Newport News and the water beyond. Bang - crash - roar - went the guns, single shots and broadsides, making all the noise that any boy could wish. “She is heading direct for the Cumberland!” shouted another between the thunders of the broadsides. “She has rammed the Cumberland!” was announced fifteen minutes after the first gun was heard, and our people gave three cheers. Our teeth chattering with excitement, we awaited the next announcement; it soon came: “The Cumberland is sinking!” and again we cheered. Then came an ominous lull, the meaning of which we did not know. Those watching through the glasses notified us that three steamers were in sight, standing down James River, and we knew it was Commander Tucker with the Patrick Henry, Jamestown, and Teazer. Think of it! The Jamestown, which, but four years ago, had brought the remains of President Monroe to Richmond, with the New York Seventh Regiment, on that visit of fraternity and good-will. Here she was, armed as a war-vessel, fighting, those very men!

Once more the cannon belched and thundered. This time what we saw and heard was alarming: “The Merrimac is running up the river, away from the Congress and other vessels; she is fighting the shore batteries as she goes.” It looked indeed as if she was disabled in some way; again a lull and anxious waiting. “The Merrimac is turning around and coming back!” Again the roar of a hot engagement with the forts; another lull and another heavy roll. “She is back pounding the Congress and raking her fore and aft. The Congress is aground.” Again our people went wild with enthusiasm. Poor fellows on the Congress! When the Merrimac withdrew and passed upstream, it was only to gain deep water in order to wind her, for where she had rammed the Cumberland, her keel was in the mud and she could not be put about. The fearless sailors on the Congress, deluded by the appearance of retreat, believed that she had hauled off, and, leaving their guns, gave three cheers. Having brought his ship around into position to attack the Congress, Captain Buchanan now came back at her, and, as he approached, blew up a transport alongside the wharf, sunk one schooner, captured another, and proceeded to rake the Congress where she had run ashore in shoal water.

Describing this stage of the fight, Captain Buchanan says in his report: “The carnage, havoc, and dismay caused by our fire compelled them to haul down their colors and to hoist a white flag at their gaff and half mast, and another at the main. The crew instantly took to their boats and landed. Our fire immediately ceased, and a signal was made for the Beaufort to come within hail. He then ordered Lieutenant Commander Parker to take possession of the Congress, secure the officers as prisoners allow the crew to land, and burn the ship. This Captain Parker did, receiving her flag and surrender from Commander Smith and Lieutenant Pendergrast, with the sidearms of those officers. They delivered themselves as prisoners of war on board the Beaufort, and afterwards being permitted, at their own request, to return to the ship to assist in removing the wounded, never returned. The Beaufort and Raleigh, while alongside the Congress after her surrender, and while she had two white flags flying, were subjected to a heavy fire from the shore and from the Congress, and withdrew without setting her afire, after losing several valuable officers and men.

Then Lieutenant Minor was sent to burn the ship, when he was fired upon and severely wounded. His boat was recalled, and Captain Buchanan ordered the Congress to be destroyed by hot shot and incendiary shell.

By this time the ships from Old Point opened fire upon the Merrimac. The Minnesota grounded in the North channel; the shoalness of the water prevented the near approach of the Merrimac. The Roanoke and St. Lawrence, warned by the fate of the Cumberland and Congress, retired under the guns of Fortress Monroe. The Merrimac pounded away at the grounded Minnesota until the pilots warned her commander that it was no longer safe to remain in that position; then, returning by the south channel, she had an opportunity to open again upon the Minnesota, although the shallow water was between the two; and afterwards upon the St. Lawrence, which responded with several broadsides. It was too tantalizing to see these vessels, which in deep water would have been completely at her mercy, protected from her assaults by the shoals. By this time it was dark, and the Merrimac anchored off Sewell's Point. The western sky was illuminated with the burning Congress, her loaded guns were successively discharged as the flames reached them, until, a few minutes past midnight, her magazine exploded with a tremendous report.

Thus ended the first day's doings of the Merrimac. Soon after she anchored, some of her officers came ashore, and we, who had been waiting all day, and who had now decided to remain all night in order to see the next day's operations, were gratified with a full and graphic description of the fighting. Captain Buchanan, Lieutenant Minor, and the other wounded were sent to Norfolk. Having been tendered the hospitality of Sewell's Point by some of the officers, our party remained, and were lulled to sleep by the firing of the guns of the burning Congress, and rudely aroused about midnight by the tremendous explosion of her magazine.

Up betimes in the morning, we saw the Minnesota still ashore. She was nearly in line with us, and about a mile nearer to us than Newport News. A tug was beside her, and a very odd-looking iron battery. We expected great things from this day's operations. About eight o'clock, the Merrimac ran down to engage them, firing at the Minnesota, and occasionally at the iron battery. She was now under command of Lieutenant Jones. We confidently expected her to be able to get very near to the Minnesota, but in this the pilots were mistaken. When about a mile from the frigate, she ran ashore, and was some time backing before she got afloat. Her great length and draught rendered it difficult to work her. Notwithstanding these delays, she succeeded in damaging the Minnesota seriously, and in blowing up the tug-boat Dragon lying alongside her.

While this was going on, the iron battery, which looked like a cheese-box floating on a shingle, moved out from behind the frigate and advanced to meet the Merrimac. The disparity in size between the two was remarkable we could not doubt that the Merrimac would, either by shot or by ramming, make short work of the cheese-box but as time wore on, we began to realize that the newcomer was a tough customer. Her turret resisted the shells of the Merrimac, and not only was she speedier but her draught was so much less than that of her antagonist that she could run off into shallow water and prevent the Merrimac from ramming her. There was no lack of pluck shown by either vessel. The little Monitor came right up and laid herself alongside as if she had been a giant. She was quicker in every way than her antagonist, and presented the appearance of a saucy kingbird pecking at a very large and very black crow.

The first shot fired by the Merrimac missed the Monitor, which was a novel experience for the gunners who had been riddling the hulls of frigates. Then, again, when the eleven-inch solid shot struck the casemates, knocking the men of the Merrimac down and leaving them dazed and bleeding at the nose from the tremendous impact, they realized that the cheese-box was loaded as none of the other vessels had been. Neither vessel could penetrate the armor of the other, both tried ramming unsuccessfully: the Monitor had not mass sufficient to injure the Merrimac; the Merrimac only gave the Monitor a glancing ram, weakened by the Monitor's superior speed; and then the Monitor ran off into shallow water, safe from pursuit.

Twice we thought the Merrimac had won the fight. On the first occasion, the Monitor went out of action, it seems, to replenish the ammunition in the turret, it being impossible to use the scuttle by which ammunition was passed unless the turret was stationary and in a certain position. The second occasion was about eleven o'clock, when a shell from the Merrimac struck the Monitor's pilot-house, and seemed to have penetrated the ship. She drifted off aimlessly towards shoal water; her guns were silent, and the people on board the Minnesota gave up hope and prepared to burn her. This was when Lieutenant Worden, commander of the Monitor, was blinded and the steersman stunned. Their position was so isolated that no one knew their condition for 80 minutes; then Lieutenant Greene discovered it, took command, and brought the vessel back into action.

Shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Jones withdrew to Merrimac. In his report of the action, he said: “The pilots declaring that we could get no nearer the Minnesota, and believing her to be entirely disabled, and the Monitor having run into shoal water, which prevents our doing her any further injury, we ceased firing a twelve o'clock and proceeded to Norfolk. The stem is twisted and the ship leaks; we have lost the prow, starboard anchor, and all the boats. The armor is somewhat damaged, the steam-pipe and smoke-stack both riddled the muzzles of two of the guns shot away.”

When from the shore we saw the Merrimac haul off and head for Norfolk, we could not credit the evidence of our own senses. “Ah!” we thought, “dear old Buchanan would never have done it.” Lieutenant Jones was afterwards fully justified by his superiors, but it did seem to us that he ought to have stayed there until he drove the Monitor away. Beside the reasons assigned above, Lieutenant Jones declared that it was necesary to leave when he did, in order to cross the Elizabeth River bar. The inconclusive result of that fight has left to endless discussion among naval men the question, “Which was the better ship of the two?” It is not within the scope of this volume to investigate that problem. It is certain that, up to the time the Monitor appeared, the Merrimac seemed irresistible, and that but for the presence of the Monitor, she would have made short work of the Minnesota. It is equally certain that the Monitor performed her task of defense. It is said she was anxious to renew the fight; but two weeks later, the Merrimac went down into deep water, where the Monitor was lying under the guns of Fortress Monroe, and tried to coax her out, but she would not come, and even permitted the Jamestown and Beaufort to sail up to Hampton and capture two schooners laden with hay. The truth is that, if the Merrimac could have induced the Monitor to meet her in deep water, she would easily have rammed and sunk her.

On our ride back to the city, my father, while greatly elated at what had been done, continued to deplore the errors of construction in the Merrimac, which the two days' fighting had made all the more manifest; but we boys thought she had earned glory enough, and joined the others in the general jubilation.

Everybody in Norfolk knew the officers and men on board our ships; many of them were natives of the town. When they were granted shore leave, they were given a triumphal reception. Some time since, I read an account of the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, who, the day after his four days' battle with the English fleet, was seen in his yard in his shirt-sleeves, with a basket on his arm, feeding his hens and sweeping out his cabin. It reminded me of the simple lives and unpretentious behavior of those splendid fellows who handled the Merrimac. Yesterday, they revolutionized the naval warfare of the world; to-day, they were walking about the streets of Norfolk, or sitting at their firesides, as if unaware that fame was trumpeting their names to the ends of the earth.

NOTWITHSTANDING our elation over the performance of the Merrimac, which every one in the Confederacy regarded as brilliant victories, the fact that Norfolk was in imminent peril became more and more apparent.

The lodgment gained by the Union forces at Roanoke and their possession of the sounds and rivers on the North Carolina coast, had given them control of the canals tributary to the city, and their presence was a constant menace to the railroads, which were now the chief remaining means of supplies. Union troops could at any time be transported up the North Carolina rivers to within a few miles of the Seaboard and Petersburg lines.

If our army should at any time retreat from the lower peninsula between the York and the James, the Petersburg line would be further imperiled; for in that event, it would be easy to throw a force of Union troops across the James to cut the railroad. The fifteen thousand Confederate troops in and about Norfolk would then be in a position of extreme danger.

These things were, of course, much more apparent to those in command than to us boys; but throughout March and April we saw and heard enough to make us realize that there was a grave prospect that Norfolk might at any time be evacuated, and our home left within the Union lines.

My father became so thoroughly satisfied of the approaching evacuation of Norfolk that he suspended farming operations, directed the sale of surplus stock to the Confederate commissary, ordered that all the hogs should be killed and cured, and that all the corn upon the place should be ground and sold. Out of abundant precaution, the family was removed in the latter part of April to the vicinity of Richmond, and thither also were sent a number of the young, able-bodied slaves.

Meanwhile, his military duties called him to Richmond, where he was placed in command of the inner line of defenses at Chaffin's farm, on the James River.

Our home was thus left in the temporary custody of the miller, a white man, and a few of the old trusted slaves, my father having arranged with a friend in Norfolk, a man past the age of military service, that, in the event of the evacuation of the city, he would move out and take possession of Rolleston, occupy it, and as far as possible act as protector.

About May 1, satisfied that the crisis was near at hand, my father gave my brother Richard a leave of absence, and he and I, with an orderly, were sent to Rolleston to do what we could towards disposing of the remaining stock, and shipping our movables to a place of safety.

The plans of the military authorities were of course guarded with as much secrecy as possible, but upon our journey to Norfolk, the crowded condition of the railroads and the immense shipments of government stores and munitions not only confirmed us in the opinion that this was preparatory to evacuation, but satisfied us it was almost idle to hope to secure transportation for our private effects.

Still, we hustled around in a very lively way. We sold some horses and cattle to the government, and, with a little more time, would have succeeded fairly well in stripping the old place “down to bare poles,” as the sailors say. It was a sad and lonely mission. The farm was just beginning to assume an orderly and well-kept appearance. Two years of hard work, and the expenditure of a large amount of money in new buildings and fences and in painting, had brought it out wonderfully. New roads had been built, trees had been planted, and ragged spots had been cleaned up, until Rolleston, while nothing grand or fine, was a sweet, home-like old farm, endeared to us especially by the memory of the delightful days of boyhood which we had spent there. Now everything about it was gloomy and sad enough. Not a human being was in the house with us, except Skaggs, the white orderly, who was sent to assist us, and old Aunt Mary Anne, the cook, and Jim, the butler. Jim my father regarded as his man Friday. Jim was to accompany us on our return to Richmond. Nobody doubted that one so faithful and so long trusted would prove true in this emergency.

We wandered back and forth through the old house, looking over the deserted rooms to see what particular articles, most prized, we might wrap in small packages for removal, in case we could not arrange for the transportation of everything. It was a difficult problem to solve. The house was filled with souvenirs from all parts of Europe and North and South America. That was before the days of bricabrac, but our house abounded with the things now so called. Our drawing-room contained several pictures of great value, and many valuable historical relics. Among the pictures were the original of Herring's Village Blacksmith; a beautiful Bacchante, painted in 1829 by Pauline Laurent, presented to my father by Baron Lomonizoff; and a set of exquisite Teniers (paintings of Dutch drinking-scenes), beside sundry works of less note but great value. The cabinets were literally loaded with pretty souvenirs of foreign travel, and articles of historic interest.

We determined that these things should be first packed and shipped, and had succeeded, on our visit to the city the day before, in securing a promise from a friend in the transportation department that, if we had them in Norfolk the next day, he would send them through for us, even if they went along with government goods. Accordingly, we had ordered up the lumber for boxing them, and with Skaggs and Jim were just preparing to pack, when, looking out of the window, we saw, rapidly approaching in a buggy, the friend whom our father had engaged to occupy the farm in case Norfolk was evacuated. As he drove up to the yard gate, opened it hastily, and hurried to the front steps, he exclaimed excitedly, even before alighting, “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming! You had better get out of here quickly, if you don't want them to catch you!” Then, in calmer tones, he told us that the city was being evacuated; that the garrison from Sewell's Point and Lambert's Point had been withdrawn during the night, and, together with the troops in the intrenched camps between us and Norfolk, had all been marched into the city, and transported quietly under cover of darkness to the south side of the Elizabeth River; that the work of destroying the Gosport Navy Yard at Portsmouth had begun; that the Merrimac had sailed out of the harbor to go up James River; that the enemy at Fortress Monroe were landing troops at Sewell's Point and Willoughby's Spit; that they were rapidly approaching, if they had not already reached, the city; and that there was not a Confederate soldier between us and them.

It took us about two minutes to decide upon our course of action. By taking the Princess Anne County road via Great Bridge, we could pass around the head of the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River, and, going thence westwardly to Suffolk, get once more within the Confederate lines. We bore in mind that the Union troops in North Carolina were probably acting in concert with those at Fortress Monroe, and, marching up from the South, might intercept us. Skaggs hurried to the stable, harnessed four mules to a farm wagon, and went straight to the smoke house. We harnessed a pair of carriage horses to our best carriage, and proceeded to the house. The faithful Jim was on hand to aid in loading the carriage with such silverware and valuables as it-would hold, and such of the farm hands as were left aided Skaggs in loading the wagon with meat.

Just before we were ready to start, Jim disappeared. In vain we called and searched for him. We never saw him again. The prospect of freedom overcame a lifetime of love and loyalty. There never was an hour of his life at which he could not have had his freedom for the asking. He had several times refused it. But now the opportunity was irresistible.

Skaggs with his wagon drove out ahead of us. My brother for the last time disappeared in the house. When he returned, he had in his hands a long roll of canvas. He had with his knife cut “The Village Blacksmith” out of its frame, and wrapped it upon a roller. We tied it firmly, and strapped it in the top of the carriage. After the war, we sold that picture for fifteen hundred dollars, and the money came at a very good time. During the present year (1897), the press has announced its sale in England at a very large sum. Some years afterwards, I found the Bacchante of Pauline Laurent in the parlor of a Union volunteer general in Washington, and have it now. He delivered it upon a very persuasive note from General Schofield, then Secretary of War. Our Teniers paintings, and several others of considerable value, have never been recovered. Soon after the war ended, General Brown of the Freedmen's Bureau, returned to my father a valuable meerschaum pipe, the gift of the King of Holland to a friend; and when I was in Congress, General B. F. Butler presented me with a cup made from the original timber of the United States ship Constitution, received by my father from Captain Percival, of the navy. Thus, from time to time, a few of the things we left that day drifted back to us; but the great bulk of them were swept out by the tide, and lost upon the all- engulfing sea of war. My father's correspondence, which was very extensive, was left in his library. It was placed by the Union authorities in the hands of the late Ben Perley Poore, of Boston, for examination. It was said that the chief purpose of such searches was to find, if possible, disloyal correspondence between Southern leaders and people in the North known as Southern sympathizers. Many years after the war, a box of unimportant letters was returned to me by one of the departments. The valuable portions of the correspondence were missing. When Mr. Poore died, a few years ago, his effects were advertised for sale, and among them were a great number of letters from my father's files.

We bade farewell to Rolleston with heavy hearts, and bent our cheerless way to Great Bridge. Even before we left, the explosions in Norfolk began, and we heard them as we drove along. We were very anxious lest the enemy, coming up from the South, should reach Great Bridge before we did, but we passed it safely, and late in the night reached Suffolk. It was a profound relief when we found ourselves once more safely within the Confederate lines. We saved our bacon in more senses than one: for a party of Union troops reached our place a few hours after we left it, and the next day the Union forces occupied the route we had traveled to Suffolk. Not long after our arrival there, we heard an unusually loud explosion, which, as we afterwards learned, was the blowing up of the magazine of the Merrimac, an event which depressed us greatly.

Reaching Richmond after several days' quiet driving, we were directed to proceed to my sister's home in Goochland County, whither the women of our family had preceded us. There I remained until shortly after the seven days' fighting about Richmond, when I was sent in charge of some of our slaves to a temporary home secured by my father in the mountains of southwest Virginia, at Rocky Mount, in Franklin County. He correctly foresaw that, whatever happened, no enemy would penetrate into that remote region.

Before our departure for Franklin County, I made several visits to Richmond, which was now on all occasions crowded to overflowing with troops. The most vivid impression of handsome soldiery made upon me during the war was by the Third Alabama Regiment. In the two months which had elapsed since the evacuation of Norfolk, I had not seen the regiment. Of its splendid conduct in the battle of Seven Pines, and in the other engagements, I had of course heard, and, knowing many of its members, was naturally interested in everything concerning it. Passing along the streets of Richmond one day, I saw three or four soldiers, looking as ragged and dirty as the average, and I should have passed them by without further attention but for hearing my name called. Then it was I recognized a party of the dear old boys whom I had known in the intrenched camp at Norfolk. It is impossible to convey any idea of the change which I had been wrought in their appearance by two mostly of hard campaigning on the Peninsula. Their uniforms, once so neat, were worn and torn and patched, marked with mud and clay, and scorched by camp-fires. Their bright buttons and trimmings had lost all lustre. Their flair was long, the freshness of their complexions gone, and their eyes seemed lustreless and bleared by camp-fire smoke. Even their voices were softened and subdued. Oh! nobody knows, until he has seen it, how marching and fighting by day, and sleeping under the stars or in the storm at night, can wear men out. The Third Alabama had had many a hard knock since we parted. In one of its earliest engagements, it had been subjected by the mistake of some commander to a murderous attack, in which it lost its noble colonel, Lomax, whose body was never found. I was shocked and surprised, upon inquiry for this or that light- hearted fellow whom I had known in the gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails, when they camped at Norfolk, to hear that he was killed at such a place, or wounded at such a place, or lay ill in such and such hospital, or was granted sick leave. Nothing I had ever seen or heard before so brought home to me the vivid realization that this war was becoming all- consuming and all-devouring.

“And where is the regiment now?” I asked. It was on the nine-mile road, facing the enemy, about seven miles from the city, near the Chickahominy bottoms, waiting to yield up yet other victims to the Confederate cause in the seven days' fighting about Richmond. That evening I rode down to see them, but there was little to cheer one in the visit. There were no more tents, or cooks, or attendant servants, or bright uniforms, or bands, or dress parades. The camp was located in a copse of pines in rear of a line of breastworks from which the Union troops had been driven in the battle of Seven Pines, and which were now made to face the enemy. The men slept on the ground, without any covering. The few camp fires were built along the line, and the soldiers were cooking their own rough fare. Out at the front, picket firing resounded all along the line, and the men seemed to be silently brooding upon the deadly storm then gathering. The seven days' fighting, from Mechanicsville to Malvern Hill, began a little later, and many another friend among them yielded up his life in those sultry summer days of 1862.

As we were returning to Richmond that afternoon, attracted by artillery firing upon the Mechanicsville pike, we rode out to Strawberry Hill, a beautiful farm overlooking the Chickahominy valley, and witnessed an artillery duel between Captain Lindsay Walker's battery and a Union battery stationed in a field just above Mechanicsville. The firing was across the Chickahominy valley. Through field-glasses, large masses of the enemy were plainly visible about Mechanicsville, and the spires of Richmond were the background of the battery at which the Union troops were firing. One of General McClellan's anchored balloons rode high in the heavens behind Mechanicsville, and altogether the sight was exceedingly inspiring. The distance between the combatants was not more than two miles; but the damage done in these encounters, with the short-ranged artillery of that day, was insignificant.

It was on this occasion that I first saw President Davis, who had ridden out with several members of his staff to inspect the lines. Mr. Davis was an excellent horseman, and looked well on horseback. He had a passion for military life, and was a man of cool nerves under fire. His presence was always greeted with considerable enthusiasm by the troops, although he never had the hold upon their hearts possessed by “Ole Joe,” or “Mars' Robert,” as General Johnston and General Lee were called. I do not recollect distinctly who accompanied him, but have an impression that his young secretary, Burton Harrison, was one of the party. It was a time of deep solicitude for Mr. Davis, no doubt, as the army had just changed commanders General Johnston had been wounded at Seven Pines, and General Lee had been relieved from duty at Charleston and appointed to succeed him.

The war had by this time produced two comparatively new industries. One was the issuing of “shinplaster” currency, and the other was the manufacture of fruit brandy.

The United States laws relating to currency and revenue no longer obtained, and the Confederate laws had not been put into enforcement. The lack of small currency soon gave rise to the issue of one dollar and fifty-cent and twenty-five-cent bills, by nearly all the towns and counties of the State. Private bankers also issued these bills, and even private individuals. I remember particularly one Sylvester P. Cocke, an old fellow who had formerly kept a country store at Dover Mills, in Goochland County. In 1862, he had a little office upon the bank of the “Basin” or terminus of the James River and Kanawha Canal, in Richmond. The office was not exceeding ten feet square, and stood in the corner of a large vacant coal- yard. Mr. Cocke's banking facilities consisted of a table, a small safe, a stack of sheets of bills, and a stout pair of shears. He had his I. O. U.'s printed on ordinary letter-paper. They had in one corner a picture of a mastiff lying in front of an iron safe, holding its key between his paws, and, besides the date, declared, “On demand I promise to pay to bearer” one dollar, fifty cents, or twenty-five cents, or ten cents, and were signed by Sylvester P. Cocke in a clerical hand. There he sat signing, or clipping his promises apart with his shears, and, although Mr. Cocke's means of redemption were an unknown factor, his notes passed current with people in Richmond, and all through the valley of the James, as if they had been obligations of the Bank of England.

Everybody in the country was engaged in converting his fruit into brandy. Wherever there was a clear stream and a neighboring orchard, there was sure to be a still. Where all these stills and worms and kettles came from, nobody could conjecture. It was a great fruit year, and there were no markets, and it was apparent that liquor would be scarce and high. In July, 1862, I drove our horses and carriage from a point just above Richmond to the abode of the family in Franklin County, a distance of two hundred miles or more, and I feel confident that there was not ten miles upon the route in which I did not pass one or more fruit distilleries.

The passion for speculating in things which were likely to become high-priced as the war progressed took possession of everybody about this time. Staple articles, like sugar and coffee and flour, were growing scarce. Prudent housekeepers who had the means to procure these things laid in large supplies. Speculators were buying them up, and storing them for the rise which was sure to come. About this time also, in view of the scarcity of sugar and molasses, people began to cultivate sorghum, which thrived in our climate, and yielded a reasonably good substitute for cane molasses.

But the spirit of speculation was not confined to the larger products; it extended to every variety of small manufactured articles. On my drive to Rocky Mount I stopped one night in Buckingham County with an old fellow who had a wayside tavern and a country store. During the evening, conversation turned upon the increased price of everything, and the profits to be made by purchasing and holding articles which it would soon be difficult to procure. I became infected with the trading spirit and on the following morning my host admitted me to his store to inspect his stock, and determine whether there was anything which I particularly desired.

War had made sad changes in the appearance of country stores. The shelves, once filled with bright prints and cloths and rolls of gleaming white goods, were now almost empty. Only here and there were a few bolts of common cloth, such as the Confederate mills could produce. The posts were no longer decorated with bright trace-chains and horse-collars and currycombs, but simply displayed a few rough shuck collars and improvised farming gear. The showcases had been utterly cleaned out of their stock of ribbons and laces, cakes and candies, and cotton and scissors and gilt things. Perfumed soaps and toilet articles, the glory of country stores in peace time, had disappeared. A few skeins of yarn for knitting socks, and cakes of home-made soap and moulds of beeswax, a few chunks of maple-sugar, all at very high prices, constituted about all the stock in trade that was left. I cast about in vain for rare articles in which to invest for a rise, until at last I spied, upon a dusty shelf, a box of watch-crystals! Timidly I inquired the price, and it was not very high.

“Do you think they will increase in value?” I asked hesitatingly.

“Increase?” said the storekeeper; “young man, you have a trader's instincts. Increase? Why, in a year there will not be a watch-crystal in the Confederacy. You can name your own profit, and anybody will be glad to give it.” So I bought the nest of watch-crystals, feeling sure I had a fortune in them. Perhaps I should have made a great profit. With this idea firmly in my mind, I nursed them carefully for several days, fully intending to put them aside until watch-crystals were at the top notch of Confederate prices, and then pocket a princely gain; but unfortunately, before I reached the end of that journey, I one day, in a fit of absent-mindedness, sat down upon the seat in the carriage beneath which my watch crystals were stored, and thus ended my first and last Confederate speculation.

ROCKY MOUNT, our place of refuge, was a typical Virginia mountain village. Even at this present time, when it has its railroad and telegraph, one in search of seclusion from the outside world might safely select it for his purpose. Month after month, year after year, roll by without other things to vary its monotony than the horsetradings, or public speakings, or private brawls of court days, or an occasional religious “revival.”

But in the summer of 1862, the excitement of war, and the feverish anxiety to know of its progress, and the unusual activity in every sort of trading, pervaded even that secluded locality.

The nearest point to us reached by railroad or telegraph was a station named Big Lick, upon the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, in the county of Roanoke. Round about Big Lick, whose population did not exceed thirty persons, the valley of the Roanoke River was, as it still is, a veritable land of Goshen. The adjacent farms, now covered by the populous city of Roanoke, were in a state of excellent cultivation, and counted among the most fertile in that beautiful valley. Hereabouts were the stately homes of the Tayloes, the Wattses, the Prestons, and many other representatives of the oldest and wealthiest families of southwestern Virginia.

When a visitor known to them arrived at Big Lick, it was useless, whithersoever he was bound or howsoever urgent his mission, to decline their generous hospitality. He was sure to encounter some of them at the station and no protestation availed against first accompanying them to their homes, and then accepting their equipages in lieu of the public conveyance for the remainder of his journey.

My brother Henry, being a clergyman and non-combatant, was in charge of our family in Franklin. After driving our horses across country and conducting our slaves to their new abode, I again went East for some household effects, and he and I, returning together to Big Lick, were there seized upon by some friends, detained for several days, and finally dispatched to our journey's end in the private vehicle of a Mr. Tinsley. His home stood near the river bank, in a handsome inclosure, surrounded by fields of harvested wheat, where the very heart of the city of Roanoke is now located.

His adjoining neighbors, not far distant, were the Tayloes, whose mansion stood in a stately grove with well-kept lawns, at a spot where engine-shops and the houses of railroad men are built at present.

The thing which impressed me most, upon the visit to these good folk, was the absence of all the males of fighting age. The Tayloes of Roanoke were prominent people, and in all public affairs had figured conspicuously as representatives of their county and their section. The only members of the family at home to welcome the stranger within their gates were the aged, white-haired head of the house and four or five daughters and daughter in-law, clad in mourning. We were received with faultless courtesy, and entertained with exquisite hospitality.

Tremulously and anxiously the fine old gentleman, with his female brood about him, asked for the latest news from the front. Eagerly they plied us with new questions concerning the progress and prospects of the struggle. Insatiable and unabated seemed their desire to talk on and on concerning that bloody phalanx aligned about Richmond, whence we came.

And well might their deepest interest be centred there, for every arms-bearing Tayloe - son, brother, husband - was in the forefront of the fight, save one. He had already fallen; his portrait hung in the spacious drawing room beside the others. His name was spoken and spoken again with gentle tears, and with that reverence which the devout render to the Christian martyr.

In this spacious, peace-embowered home, nestled close to the river, under the looming Mill Mountain, whose afternoon shadows were already creeping across the lawn of oaks and elms, and maples and hickories, with the summer breezes stealing around its white pillars and through its wide hallways and swaying its muslin curtains, with naught but gently murmured conversation to break the delicious quietude, how far away seemed the war! How startling was the contrast with the seething cauldron of strife in which their strong men struggled about Richmond!

Yet which were suffering the most? Who shall measure the agony which racked those hearts, outwardly so placid, during the long years they waited while the strife went on?

Who can picture the desolating sorrow which engulfed them as, one by one, the strong arms on which that house depended fell helpless, and the news came home that the brave hearts for whose safety they prayed had ceased to beat! for it was so. The war filled grave after grave in the graveyard of the Tayloe family, until, when it ended the male line was almost extinct.

Our visit to these good folk was charming, and from time to time, when wearied of our mountain isolation, we would return to their lovely valley to mingle anew with such congenial friends.

To the east and south of them was the Blue Ridge and beyond it our home. From the railroad station the stage road ran for a mile or two through the valley then crossed the Roanoke River by a ford at the base of the mountains, then plunged into the rugged range. Winding up hill and down vale it went on, through pass and gorge and over tumbling mountain-stream, until it emerged into the rough foot-hill country east of the Blue Ridge, in which was our new home.

Twenty-eight miles of travel over such a route seems much more than the measured distance, and carried us indeed into a new class of population, as distinct from that which we left behind as if an ocean instead of a mountain range had separated the two communities. Soon the broad pastures and fields of grain had disappeared. In their place were rough, hillside lots, with patches of buckwheat or tobacco. Instead of the stately brick houses standing in groves on handsome knolls, all that we saw of human habitations were log-houses far apart upon the mountain sides, or in the hollows far below us. No longer were pastures visible, with well-bred cattle standing in pooly places, shaded by sugar maples bathing their flanks at noontide. No more did we meet smart equipages drawn by blooded horses. No more the happy darkey greeted us with smiles.

Up, up, up, - until the mountain side fell far below our track; down, down, down, until our wheels ground into, and our horses scattered about their feet, the broken slate of a roaring stream. Now, following the sycamore along its banks, with here a patch of arable land and its mountain cabin, whence a woman smoking a pipe, and innumerable tow-headed children hanging about her skirts, eyed us silently; and there another roadside cabin, with hollyhocks and sunflowers and bee-hives in the yard, the sound of a spinning-wheel from within, a sleeping cat in the window, and a cur dog on the doorstep; here a carry-log, with patient team drawn aside upon the narrow road to let us pass, the strapping teamster in his shirtsleeves, with trousers stuck into his cowhide boots, leaning against his load so intent in scrutiny of us that he barely noticed our salutation; here a bearded man, clad in homespun and a broad slouched hat, riding leisurely along on is broad- backed, quiet horse, carrying the inevitable saddle-bags of the mountaineer; here a woman on horse back, with long sunbonnet, and coarse, cotton riding-skirt, and bag slung at the saddle-bow, and small boy, with dangling bare feet, riding behind her; here a spout-spring by the roadside, where the living water of the mountain side leaped joyously from a hollow gum-tree log grown green in service; now mounting upward again until all that is visible is the winding road, with the blue sky above it, and the massed tree-tops below, and the curling smoke of some mountain distillery, with nothing to break far the stillness but the heavy hammering of the log-cock upon some dead limb, or the drumming of the ruffed grouse far away. So, on and on we toiled, until we reached the open country beyond the mountains, and late the in the evening our steaming horses drew up at our new home which was strange and different from any we had below ever had before.

Our house was large, among the newest and most modern in the village, prettily located on the outskirts on the highest knoll in the place, and commanded a fine; view of the little valley and Bald Knob, and the mountains through which we came. The stage road, after passing our house, entered the main street of the village which was a rocky lane upon a sharp decline, with store and houses scattered on either side, terminating at an inclosure where stood the court house, clerk's office, and county jail. Halfway down this street was the tavern, an antiquated structure, with a porch extending along its entire front, its brick pillars supporting a second story overhanging the porch. This porch, which was almost on a level with the street, was provided with an ample supply of benches and cane- bottom chairs. At one end of it, suspended in a frame, was the tavern bell, whose almost continual clang was signal for grooms to take or fetch horses, or summons to meals.

The tavern porch was the rallying-point of the town: hither all news came; here all news was discussed; hence all news was disseminated. From this spot the daily stage departed in the morning. Here villagers and country folk assembled in the day and waited in the evening and to this spot came the stage in the evening, bearing the mail, the war news, and such citizens as had been absent, visitors who drifted in, or soldiers returning sick wounded, or on furlough.

Supreme interest centred ever about the arrival or departure of the stage. In the foggy morning it appeared with its strong four-in-hand team, and took its place majestically in front of the old tavern. The porter rocked it as they dumped the baggage into the boot the red-faced driver came forth from the breakfast-room with great self- importance. With his broad palm he wiped away the greasy remnants of his meal, lit his brier root pipe, drew on his buckskin gloves, settled his slouched hat over his eyes, clambered to his seat upon the box gathered his reins and whip, and cast a glance towards the post-office across the way; an aged man and a meek-eyed woman in simple garb slipped quietly into the rear seats, going perhaps on some sad mission under summons to a far- off hospital at the front; a dainty miss, with bonnet-box and bunch of flowers, kissed papa and mamma and took her place within, full of joyous anticipation doubtless, for even in war times girls love to visit each other; a fat commissary, returning from his search in the back country for supplies, came forth, reeking with rum and tobacco, and swung up awkwardly to the seat beside the driver. Tom, Dick, and Harry, the new recruits bound for the front, proud in their new and misfit uniforms, seized mother, wife, sister, or sweetheart in their arms, kissed them, bade them have no fear, and scrambled lightly to the top. The lame and tardy postmaster hobbled forth at last, and threw his mail-pouch up to the dashboard. The coachman gave his warning cry of “All aboard,” the hostlers drew off the blankets, the long whip cracked its merry signal; with discord in each footfall at the start and concord as they caught the step, the horses pulled away; and the lumbering stage went grinding up the stony street, its horn singing its morning carol to those who were awake. As they disappeared over the hill- top, a last merry cry of parting came back from the bright boys on the stage-top, and the last they saw of home was the waving tokens of love from those they left behind.

As the day advanced, the tavern porch again took on an air of life.

Everybody traveled upon horseback. By midday, the country folk began to stream in. Up and down the street a gradually increasing line of saddle-horses were “hitched.” Women, old and young, arrived, - all of conventional dress, and with horses singularly alike. Their bonnets were the long- slatted poke-bonnet; their riding-skirts, of coarse cotton. Alighting at the horse-blocks, they untied and slipped off the skirts and tied them to their saddle-bows, revealing their plain homespun dress. Their horses were broad- backed, short on the leg, carried their heads on a level with their shoulders, and moved with noses advanced like camels. They had no gaits but a swift walk, a gentle fox-trot, or a slow, ambling pace. When they had “hitched the critturs,” these women went poking about the stores, or the tavern kitchen, or the private houses, with chickens or butter, or other farmyard produce, seldom speaking further than asking one to buy; and when their sales were effected and little purchases made, they went away as silently as they had come.

The men came by themselves. Their principal occupation seemed to be horse-trading. At times, the neighboring stables, and even the street itself, were filled with men, leading their animals about, and engaged in the liveliest of horse- trading. A considerable proportion of the population ration belonged to a religious sect known as Dunkards. In appearance, they were solemn and ascetic. The men wore long, flowing beards, and their homespun dress was of formal cut. Their doctrinal tenets were opposed to slavery and to war. Whenever political or military discussions arose, they promptly withdrew. They were very strict temperance men, and decent, orderly, law-abiding citizens, but horse-traders! It must have been a part of their religious faith. A Dunkard was never so happy as when he was horse-trading.

There were others, too, to whom temperance was not so sacred as to the Dunkards. By three or four o'clock, the tavern bar was liberally patronized. The recruiting office had its full quota of young fellows inquiring about the terms of enlistment. The tavern porch was filled with people discussing war news, and the quartermaster down the street had more horses offered to him than he was authorized to buy.

At such times, a favorite entertainment was to draw General Early out upon his views of men and events, for the edification of the tavern-porch assemblage.

He was a resident of Franklin, and at that time sojourning at the tavern. He had been severely wounded in the battle of Williamsburg in May, 1862, and was now quite convalescent, but still on sick leave. He was a singular being.

Franklin County had been strongly opposed to secession. Jubal A. Early was a pronounced Union man, and was elected from his county as her representative to the Secession Convention. In that body he had opposed and denounced secession until the ordinance was passed. As soon as the State seceded, he declared that his State was entitled to his services, and tendered them. He was a man of good family, a graduate of the West Point Military Academy, and possessed unsurpassed personal courage. In 1862, he was a brigadier- general, and had been conspicuously brave in the battle in which he was wounded. His subsequent career in higher commands was disastrous. After the war, he became notorious as the most implacable and “unreconstructed” of all the Confederate generals. He was a man deeply attached to a small circle of friends, but intensely vindictive and abusive of those he disliked.

At the time of which I write, he was the hero of Franklin County, and, although he professed to despise popularity and to be defiant of public opinion, it was plain that he enjoyed his military distinction. It had done much to soften old time asperities, and blot out from the memory of his neighbors certain facts in his private life which had prior to the war, alienated from him many of his own class. In fact, I doubt not he was a happier man then than he had been for many a year before, or was at a later period, when he became more or less a social and political lshmaelite.

He was eccentric in many ways, - eccentric in appearance, in voice, in manner of speech. Although he was not an old man, his shoulders were so stooped and rounded that he brought his countenance to a vertical position with difficulty. He wore a long, thin, straggling beard. His eyes were very small, dark, deep-set, and glittering, and his nose aquiline. His step was slow, shuffling, and almost irresolute. I never saw a man who looked less like a soldier. His voice was a piping treble, and he talked with a long-drawn whine or drawl. His opinions were expressed unreservedly, and he was most emphatic and denunciatory, and startlingly profane.

His likes and dislikes he announced without hesitation, and, as he was filled with strong and bitter opinions, his conversation was always racy and pungent. His views were not always correct, or just, or broad; but his wit was quick, his satire biting, his expressions were vigorous, and he was interestingly lurid and picturesque.

With his admiring throng about him on the tavern porch, on summer evenings in 1862, General Early, in my opinion, said things about his superiors, the Confederate leaders, civic and military, and their conduct of affairs, sufficient to have convicted him a hundred times over before any court-martial. But his criticisms never extended to General Robert E Lee. For Lee he seemed to have a regard and esteem and high opinion felt by him for no one else. Although General Lee had but recently been called to the command of the army, he predicted his great future with unerring judgment. The arrival of the stage not infrequently interrupted General Early's vigorous lectures. For half an hour or more before the event, the expectant throng would increase, and, as those who “brace” themselves for the crisis were there, as everywhere else, conversation grew louder and agitation greater as the time approached. Then the stage would heave in sight in the gloaming, and come rattling down the rough street, the horseshoes knocking fire from the flints. Before the smoking and jaded beasts had fairly stopped, loud inquiries would be made on all hands, of driver and passengers, for war news. Somebody would throw down the latest newspaper; somebody would mount a chair and read aloud; and, just as the news was encouraging or depressing, there would be cheering or silence. Then would come the rush for the mail to the post-office across the way.

The passengers, also, were a source of engrossing interest. There was young So-and-so, with his empty sleeve. A year ago he had left the place, and passed safely through all the earlier battles; but at Malvern Hill a grapeshot mutilated his left arm. Amputation followed, and now, after a long time in hospital, here he was, home again, pale and bleached, with an honorable discharge in his pocket, and maimed for life. And there, collapsed upon the rear seat, more dead than alive, too weak to move save with the assistance of friends, was a poor, wan fellow, whom nobody knew at first. How pitiful he seemed, as they helped him forth, his eyes sunken yet restless, his weak arms clinging about their necks, his nubs scarce able to support his weight, his frame racked by paroxysms of violent coughing! “Who is it?” passed from mouth to mouth. “Good God!” exclaimed some one at the whispered reply, “it can't be! That is not Jimmie Thomson. What! Not old man Hugh Thomson's son, down on Pig River? Why, man alive, I knew the boy well. He was one of the likeliest boys in this whole county. Surely, that ar skeleton can't be him! But it was. The exposure of camp life had done for poor Jimmie what bullets had failed to do.

There, perched gayly in air, and tumbling down upon the heads of the bystanders with joyous greeting, was the sauciest, healthiest youngster in the village, come home on his first furlough in a twelvemonth, wearing on his collar the bars of a lieutenant (conferred for gallantry at Seven Pines), in place of the corporal's chevrons on his sleeve when he marched away. Camp life had made no inroads on his health. The sun and rain had only given him a healthy bronze. His digestion would have assimilated paving-stones. The bullets had gone wide of him. And his little world, the dearest on earth to him, - the little world which had laughed and cried over the stories of his capers and his courage in the field, - stood there surprised and delighted, with smiling faces and open arms, to welcome him home, their own village boy, their saucy, gallant fighting-chap, their hero, - home again, if only for a week!

Each day opened and passed and closed, with its excitements. It was all very narrow and primitive, the out of-the-way world of the obscure village in an unknown region. Yet in it were the same old hopes and fears and joys and tears, hearteases and heartaches, loves and hates and all the moods and tenses of human nature, to be found in the most populous and cosmopolitan hives of humanity.

I was now nearly sixteen. Many youths of my age were in the army. I had written more than once for my father's consent to enlist, but received stern denials. The war talk at the old tavern, the stories of camps and fight and military glory, the daily enlistments, the desire to appear a man in the eyes of certain girls, were all coöperating to inflame my desire to be a soldier. I was growing mannish and rebellious. My brother saw it all, and heard me threaten to run away, and wrote father seriously, advising him that I was getting beyond his control, and urging him to send me to the Virginia Military Institute, where I would be under restraint, and receive instruction, instead of growing up in ignorance and idleness.

It was soon settled. September 1, 1862, I left Rocky Mount, took the train at Big Lick, went to the neighboring station of Bonsacks, and there perched myself upon the stage-top, booked for Lexington. It was a long journey, occupying sixteen hours. We started at six P. M., and, riding continuously, reached Lexington at ten o'clock the following morning. It was a glorious ride in brilliant autumn weather, with moonlight. We passed through Fincastle and Buchanan, and over the Natural Bridge.

As we approached Lexington, and I caught sight of the Virginia Military Institute and its beautiful parade grounds, and professors' houses and other buildings, my mind was filled with thoughts of glorious military life, and the commission in the army which awaited me when I graduated for I was now a cadet in the West Point of the Confederacy.

GREAT differences in soil, climate, and scenery exist between the grand divisions into which Virginia is cut up geographically. But they are not more striking than the diversity of the populations, one from the other, in these several sections, springing from differences in the time and the manner in which, and the people by whom, her several early settlements were made.

Two or three centuries of common government would ordinarily seem sufficient to produce a homogeneous population ration in a State. While this result has been attained in Virginia in essentials, it is nevertheless surprising to observe in each section local peculiarities, types, and characteristics plainly traceable to its earliest settlement.

We were first introduced to the lower Tidewater section, where the soil is sandy, the climate balmy, the landscape flat, viewless, save as it is redeemed from monotony by the boundless, ever-changing grandeur of old Ocean. The people, while of her oldest strains, are simple in their mode of living, and admit neither lineage nor wealth as basis for any caste or class distinction. Then we turned to the region of the upper and lower James, with Richmond as its centre, settled later than Tidewater by the so-called Cavalier immigration of 1649- 60. There, of old, social relations were akin to those of Rome's patricians and plebeians, patrons and clients. Not alone was the haughty descendant of Charles I. owner of a plantation and of slaves, - he was more: the poor whites and the shopkeepers of country and town alike, consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, rendered him homage as if he were their superior. And he, while often proclaiming principles of social equality, seldom practiced them, and quietly accepted, as his legitimate due, the preëminence granted him by his humbler neighbors.

Then, with a mere glimpse of the Roanoke region, we passed into the rocky soil, the wild and mountainous landscape, and the rough, new, and nondescript population which, from one direction and another, has collected upon and taken possession of the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge range. Here, again, we found a democracy full of independence and courage, but in all things of education and refinement, far inferior to that in Tidewater.

Now, at Lexington, we are in the heart of the valley lying between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny ranges. It is a region with a different soil, a different climate, different scenery, and a population more distinctly sui generis than any yet described. The soil is based upon blue limestone. It is where the grasses grow. The lands lie tumbled into knobby hills and rolling fields, with here and there narrow fertile valleys traversed by limpid streams, whose banks are cedar-clad bluffs of limestone shale. The great valley is more broken here, less pastoral, and not so charming as in its lower section to the north, where it widens, and is watered by the Shenandoah; but this is the bolder landscape, with a rugged beauty peculiar to self. The mountain framing of the picture is the same; but the land is higher, for, as the cloud-capped peaks of the Blue Ridge and Alleghany ranges draw nearer to each other, the vale between them is nearer to their own altitude We are in Rockbridge County, so called because within its limits is the superb natural arch of limestone known the world over as the Natural Bridge.

Lexington, the county seat of Rockbridge is near the summit of the transverse watershed of the great valley. Within a few miles of the town, streams rise, some pouring their waters southward into the tributaries of the James, and others coursing northward, tributary to the Shenandoah, which enters the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. The place itself is beautiful. Looking east and south the rolling country falls away to the base of the Blue Ridge, where the South River and North River unite and flow onward to join the James, where their united waters turn eastward through the pass at Balcony Falls. The magnificent Blue Ridge range bounds the eastern view and is last seen to southward, where the twin breasts of the Peaks of Otter rear themselves against the distant blue. Northward, beyond the wooded bluffs of the North River, steep hills of farming lands are tilted towards us, their sides dotted with cattle, their summits crowned with forests. Beyond these, crest after crest of the smaller foothills of the Alleghanies appear. To the northwest looming in isolated majesty, is the House Mountain, with the peak of the Devil's Backbone behind it, marking the route through historic Goshen Pass. North and south, as far as the eye can reach, shading away in their tints from deep emerald to dreamy blue as they become more and more remote, are masses of hills. To the west and south west, now strongly outlined, now melting into the last visible things of the distance, are the azure peaks of the Alleghanies. Such is the country about Lexington, where Virginia has her Military Institute. It is a spot almost as beautiful as West Point, and the school is second only to the Military Academy in thoroughness. It is an ideal spot for healthfulness, and the isolation of youth from the temptations and distracting influences of crowded communities. The boy who finds allurement to idleness and vice in that town would discover it anywhere.

It is a community of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. For more than a hundred years after the settlement of Jamestown, and for over fifty years after Richmond was an incorporated city, this valley remained unviewed by the eye of any white man.

As early as 1608, Newport, on his second visit to the Virginia colony, brought with him a boat built in sections, to be transported by him under orders to find the South Sea beyond the mountains. The extent to which he performed that order was that he marched to the Monacon country, about twenty miles west of Richmond, and his company returned footsore to Jamestown.

One hundred and two years later (1710), Governor Spotswood wrote to the Council of Trade in London that a party of adventurers had found the mountains “not above a hundred miles from our upper settlements, and went up to the top of the highest mountains with their horses,” and looked over into the valley. This is supposed to have been near Balcony Falls. It was not until 1716 that the first passage of the Blue Ridge was effected. Then Governor Spotswood and his “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe” entered the lower or Shenandoah valley by way of Swift Run Gap, and took possession in the name of George the First. Governor Spotswood's expedition resulted in nothing important. The only diary of its performance extant is principally devoted to description of the liquors which the party carried with it, whereof eleven sorts are enumerated. A few adventurers may have straggled into the valley after this, but it was not until 1732-36 that it as settled by any considerable population.

Shortly prior to 1732, an immense number of Scotch- Irish and Germans poured into Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. Within thirty years, the population of Pennsylvania increased from about thirty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand. The Scotsmen, who, for religious liberty, had originally sought the north of Ireland, were the people who saved Ireland to William and Mary from Catholic James. Their loyalty was rewarded by new persecutions for non- conformity, until they resolved to seek asylum in America. So, also, about the same time came to America a great migration of German Lutherans, who were induced to settle in Pennsylvania. The Scotsmen occupied the regions about Princeton, New Jersey, Easton, Carlisle, and Washington. The Germans settled about York, Lancaster, Columbia, and Harrisburg. Governor Logan, himself a Scotch-Irishman, enforced some laws about 1730 which were so offensive to the Presbyterians and Lutherans that great numbers of them left the Pennsylvania colony, crossed the Potomac west of the Blue Ridge, in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, entered Virginia, and settled the Blue Ridge valley.

As if by agreement, the two bands separated. The lethargic Germans, as soon as they escaped the Pennsylvania jurisdiction, occupied the lower valley from Harper's Ferry to Harrisonburg. The aggressive Scotch Irish pressed on to the upper valley, then called West Augusta, now divided into the counties of Augusta Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, and Montgomery. From then until now, the two races have retained possession of and dominated their respective settlements.

And a very striking race of men are these Scotch-Irish so called yet with nothing Irish about them save them for a little while they tarried in Ireland. Hated by Irish because they were Protestants, persecuted by the English because they were Presbyterians, they in turn cordially detested both, and, in our Revolutionary struggles were among the earliest and most intense rebels against the king. For liberty, as they conceived it, whether it was liberty of conscience or liberty of the person, the Scotch-Irishmen and their descendants have never hesitated to sacrifice comfort, fortune, or life. Their mountain origin has always manifested itself by the places they have chosen in their migrations. The few who went to the Puritan settlements of New England soon moved from among them and sought the inhospitable highlands of New Hampshire, where they bestowed on their new settlement the name of Londonderry. The little band who found asylum among the Dutch of New York pressed onward from uncongenial associates to the mountainous frontier, and named the county where they settled Ulster, in memory of their Irish home. Those who wearied of Pennsylvania and went to Virginia avoided the light society of the Cavaliers in Tidewater and Piedmont, preferring the mountain wilds of West Augusta.

Wherever they appeared, they seemed to be seeking for some secluded spot, where, undisturbed by any other sect, they might enjoy liberty unrestrained, and worship God after their own fashion.

And great have they been as pioneers. They populated western New England, northern New York, western Pennsylvania, and the Virginia valley. Then they pressed onward through western North Carolina, even to northern South Carolina. Then they spread westward through Cumberland Gap to the settlement of Kentucky. In later days, their Lewis and their Clarke were the explorers of the Northwest; another Lewis was the first to view Pike's Peak, and even the territory of Texas was in part reclaimed by Sam Houston, son of a Rockbridge County Presbyterian. The pioneer work of the Scotch- Irish has been greater than that of all other races in America combined.

Great also have they been as fighters. John Lewis, their first leader in the Virginia valley, was the terror of the frontier Indians from the day of his arrival. Never after his coming did the Indians come east of the Blue Ridge. Another Scotch- Irishman, Patrick Henry, uttered the immortal sentence, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

General Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame, the only New England representative in Washington's cabinet, was a Scotch-Irishman.

It was the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg, North Carollina, who framed the first resolutions embodying the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It was of the Scotch-Irish and their valley home that Washington was speaking when, in the darkest hours of the Revolution, he declared that, if the worst came to the worst, he would retire to the mountain fastnesses of West Augusta, and there, with a few of his brave followers about him, defy forever the power of Great Britain. It was from the same spot that Stonewall Jackson, another of the stock, went forth in our great civil war, followed by his brave men of Scotch-Irish ancestry recruited here, to revive, by his grim prowess and their unshaken valor, the mentors of Old Ironsides and his Presbyterians.

And great have they been as disseminators of learning. They founded the ancient college of New Jersey now known as Princeton University. To their efforts are we indebted for the colleges of La Fayette at Easton and Washington Jefferson College at Washington in Pennsylvania and Liberty Hall Academy, now called Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia; and Chapel Hill in North Carolina.

LOOKING eastward from the front of the tavern where the stage-coach deposited us, the barracks, mess-hall, professors' houses, parade ground, and limits of the Virginia Military Institute were in view upon a hill about half a mile distant.

My first care was to send a messenger with a note announcing my arrival to my cousin Louis, who had preceded me at the Institute by a year. When he came, he explained that his tardiness was due to the length of time it required for an application for permission to leave the limits of the Institute to pass through the necessary official channels.

His greeting was hearty and joyous, it had been a long time since he had seen any relative from the outside world, and this little release was quite a lark. How well and bright- eyed he looked in his tight-fitting shell jacket! When we parted at Norfolk a year before, he was an easy-going, slack- twisted little civilian, without particularly attractive dress or bearing. Now, he carried himself like a fighting-cock. Exercise had hardened him and developed his figure, his clothing fitted him like a glove, and there was an easy confidence in his manner. In a word, he had been licked into military shape.

We sallied forth together to report for duty at office of the superintendent, General Francis H. Smith. His study was a very attractive place: it was a hexagonal room, well lit; bookcases stood about the walls, and it was ornamented with a number of striking military pictures chiefly French; a bright wood-fire crackled in the open fireplace. In a former chapter I alluded to General Smith. He had, at the time about which I write, been superintendent twenty-three years, although he was then only about fifty.

Your elderly soldier is generally of one of two types: one is the rubicund, thunderous type; the other, the lean pale, spectacled, quiet type. There are modifications and variations of these two generic classifications, of course: but under one or the other the great mass of elderly soldiers may be grouped.

To the latter belonged General Smith. He was tall thin, agile; in youth he had been an extreme blonde, his lithe figure still bore a soldierly aspect. His face was that of a student, with that expression emphasized by the gold spectacles through which he looked keenly; those spectacles were so much a part of him that he was universally known as “Old Spex.” As he sat in his office in his blue uniform, with one leg crossed over the other, many a cadet has no doubt wondered how thin those long legs really were, seeing how close they lay together. His life had been given up entirely to his work as superintendent; he had traveled abroad to study foreign schools and secure their best features; he was author of several mathematical treatises, as well as a most admirable teacher. A prominent churchman; a man of abstemious habits and boundless industry; one of the best politicians in the State-he knew every man of importance in Virginia and had the faculty of enlisting the interest of politicians of all parties in the success of the Virginia Military Institute. No matter what might be the acrimony of factions or the stress of public necessities in other directions, his legislative appropriations never failed, and support of his school never flagged. His tact in management and insight into the character of cadets was marvelous. His acquaintance with the minutest details of every department in the school was perfect, and the personal interest which he manifested in every cadet intrusted to his care was at once a warning and a stimulus to the boy. He was in truth a very remarkable man; his peculiarities were as marked as his excellencies; and, while those peculiarities did not seriously detract from him, they gave him a distinct individuality. A monument to Colonel Thayer stands in front of the United States Military Academy, describing him as the father of the institution. One like it should be reared to General Smith at the Virginia Military Institute, for to it he was even more a father than was Thayer to West Point, or Arnold to Rugby.

Behind those gold spectacles, and with those long, thin legs lapped over each other, he sat at a table writing as we entered and stood near the door, caps in hand, at attention. He seemed engrossed; a moment later, he lifted his eyes; squinting a little and peering through his glasses, he caught sight of us and exclaimed, “Ah-h! who's this?” Louis explained. “Well, young, man, how are you? Glad to see you. How is your father? What have you studied? How far have you been is mathematics? In French? In Latin?” And, going straight at the matter in hand, he plied me with queries until he knew all that was necessary; then “Fourth-class is best for him,” he said.

Soon fixed up by the adjutant, we started for the commandant's office across the parade ground. The commandant of cadets, Major Scott Shipp, was a large man with close-trimmed black hair and beard, a solemn bearing, and a deep voice. Although he was then but twenty-one years of age, I thought he was forty. He remained commandant for nearly thirty years after this, and is now superintendent. In its fifty-eight years of life, the school has had but two superintendents. Our business with the commandant consisted of securing an assignment to a room and to a company, and attending to some minor details. Then we reported to my first sergeant, who was no other than Benjamin Colonna, our room-mate.

Louis and I found my trunk at the sallyport; whither it had been sent from the hotel, and lugged it off to the arsenal, which stood in the quadrangle, for no trunks were allowed in rooms. Cadet clothing was kept in a large wardrobe, placed in each room, divided into compartments which were assigned to the respective occupants.

The cadet barracks was a handsome four-storied building, occupying three sides of a quadrangle, with towers at the corners and at a sallyport with central arch. On the inner side were three broad stoops running all around the building, reached by stairways upon the stoops. The cadet quarters opened upon these stoops. At the turrets the rooms were double, occupied in most instances by tactical officers; elsewhere, the rooms were single. The ventilation, light, and heat of the quarters were excellent. The furniture of each room consisted of a gun-rack, washstand, wardrobe; large oak table in the centre of the room, under a gas-light; a chair for each cadet, a book rack and a blacking-stool, beds and bedsteads. Thirty minutes after reveille, the beds were required to be rolled up, strapped, and stood in the corner, flanked by the bedclothes folded. Beds could not be put down until after tattoo. The occupants of the room were alternately detailed as orderly for a week, and each was held responsible for observance of regulations and for the police of the room, which was inspected at least twice a day.

On arrival at our rooms, I had a bluff but pleasant welcome from Colonna, who called me “Mr. Rat,” and as it was a rule of the Institute that every plebe should be “bucked,” he and Louis proceeded to attend to my case. A bed-strap was buckled about my wrists; I was ordered up on the table and compelled to draw up my knees, over which my bound arms were slipped; a ramrod was run under my knees and over my arms, and then I was rolled over on my side, and Louis and Colonna, with a bayonet scabbard, spelled CONSTANTINOPLE. The taps given by these laughing friends were light, but sufficiently stinging to make me appreciate what it might have been.

“Now, Rat, you have been bucked,” laughed Colonna, as they set me upright and loosened the cords. “If anybody asks you whether you have been ‘bucked,’ say, ‘Yes, sir;’ be sure to say sir, d' ye understand? Then, if they ask you whose Rat you are, say, ‘Mr. Colonna's rat, sir.’ Be sure to say sir, d' ye understand? And then you take care to say as little more as you can, for it's these long-tongued Rats that get into trouble, d' ye understand?” Yes, I understood. I resolved to keep that mouth, that has gotten me in trouble all my life, shut tight.

Up to now, I had been agreeably surprised. I expected that I should be seized upon as soon as I entered the barracks, but so far I had seen very few cadets about. I did not realize that it was study-hours, at which time the cadets were in their class-rooms, or confined to quarters, and were strictly forbidden to visit, or to loiter on the stoops or about the archway.

“What is that?” I asked, as a drum was beaten in the area, its sounds reverberating through the barracks.

THAT was a great flight of wild pigeons in the Brushy Hills in the autumn of 1863, and nobody ever before saw so many squirrels there. Louis and I had been behaving well. Our class standing was good, and our conduct exemplary.

We found it easy now to secure special permits, and for privileges were content to apply on Fridays for leave of absence from Saturday dinner roll-call. This gave us substantially all day for hunting. General Philip St. George Cocke, a wealthy patron of the school, had presented to it a stand of small smooth-bore muskets, which we found to be excellent fowling-pieces.

At this period of the war, no shot were purchasable in stores. The devices to which we resorted to provide shot may be interesting. Our lead we obtained from the roof of an unoccupied outhouse. In our earlier efforts, we beat the lead into thin sheets, then cut it into narrow strips, then cross-cut the strips into cubes. These we rolled between two drawing-boards until the pellets were approximately round. That method proving slow, we shifted to another. We obtained a piece of sheet tin, which we perforated with small nail-holes. To this sheet of tin we attached a long handle. Then we secured a brazier with some charcoal and a ladle. With this outfit we heated the lead on the brazier. When it was thoroughly melted one man poured it slowly from the spoon upon the sheet of tin, while the other shook the tin gently over a bucket of water. The lead dropped into the water in little globules, through the perforations of the tin. When the operation was complete, we had shot shaped like exclamation points. All that remained was to cut off their tails, and this we did with a patience and perseverance worthy of a more important cause. The shot were heavier than those we buy in stores, and very deadly in their effects.

One Friday night in October, 1863, we had obtained a permit to be absent next day from breakfast roll-call until dress parade. We had been so pressed with academic and military duties that we had not manufactured our supply of shot. Conic sections, Livy, and surveying had me in their grip, and Louis was wrestling with calculus and engineering. Something must be done, or our hunt, so cherished in anticipation, would fall to the ground. True, we were now good boys, but we had not been such so long that our old tricks were forgotten. In the busy days preparatory to examinations, a favorite method of studying out of hours had been to wait until after taps inspection, affix blankets around the sides of the square oaken table, and, crawling under the table with a candle, to study there for an hour or two. To-night we resolved to utilize that device.

It is providential that the fumes of the charcoal in the brazier did not smother us both. It was close quarters under there. With brazier, bucket, and lead spoon, little room was left for the workmen; but we made famous progress. Our legs stuck out under the blankets, and now and again we would pull out, or, so to speak, come to the surface, and have a breathing spell. Oblivious of all else, and unable to hear outside sounds, we had nearly finished our task, when “Rap, rap, rap!” came the knock of an inspector upon our door. We blew out the light, and drew our legs inside, but the brazier sent forth a ruddy glow which betrayed us.

“Who is orderly her?” asked the voice of a sub- professor. We crawled up, red and begrimed. “What does this all mean?” said he.

We mumbled out some explanations. “The sentinel has been ordering lights out in this room for five minutes,” said he sternly. I glanced at the confounded blankets and saw that the corner of one of them had been sagged by our scrambling about, so that an aperture was left, through which a beam of light went straight out the glass doorway and shone upon a pillar of the stoop, making a daring signal. Coming into barracks late, the officer had seen it, and this visit was the result of our calm disregard of repeated cries of “Lights out in 28,” which cries we had not heard.

“Take that fire out and extinguish it. Open the windows, and let out these poisonous gases. It is a mercy you are not smothered to death, and that the barracks have not been set on fire,” said the officer, as he departed.

On Monday morning, we answered to the following reports: “Lights up after taps; repeated disobedience of orders in failing to extinguish lights; introducing fire into barracks.” We expected about ten demerits each, to say nothing of extra tours and confinement to limits. But my troubles were not ended with this episode. The quartermaster's store was only opened upon Saturday after breakfast. It was essential that both of us should have certain things from the store in the morning before starting on our hunt. With pass-books in hand, the cadets who sought supplies formed in line, and were admitted to the store in the order of their arrival. That we might leave as early as possible, Louis and I cast lots to decide which should remain from breakfast with the pass-books and get near the store door. The one who went to breakfast was to bring the other man's meal buttoned in the breast of his jacket. The lot to remain fell to me. When Louis came back from breakfast, he found a very damaged- looking comrade in our room; and this is how it all came about: -

The store was on the fourth stoop, in a large room over the archway. Only six or eight boys had remained from breakfast. I was fourth or fifth in line. In front of me were three plebes and an old cadet. While waiting, a quarrel arose between the old cadet and the plebes about their respective places in line. The old cadet insisted that they should let him enter first, and they refused. It was a cold, gray morning, and none of us were in pleasant humor at being kept standing there shivering during the long delay. The grumbling went on between them until at last the old cadet punched the little fellow in front of him in the ribs, and butted him with his knees, until he began to cry. The boy's name was Logan. He was no match for his antagonist. It was a mean piece of bullying and such as no old cadet had the right to indulge in. The old cadet had been there two years already, having been found deficient the previous July; so that, while we were both now third-class men, he had been an old cadet when I was a plebe. Our class relations had been friendly enough, and at last I ventured to remonstrate in a concilatory way with him about his cruelty to Logan.

To my surprise, he wheeled about and said: “What have you got to do with it? Maybe you want to take the rat's part. Ever since you came here, you have been that way.” This was not true, for I had been a terror to plebes in camp.

“No,” I protested, still good-tempered. “But you have no right to take his place in line, and he is too small to defend himself.”

“You're a liar!” he blurted out.

“Don't say that,” said I. “You and I are friends. You don't mean it, and will be sorry when you are cool.”

“Yes, I do mean it!” shouted he. “You are a liar; and you sneaked out of the first row you got into when you came here.”

He proceeded no further in that story. I popped him in the eye with the best left-hander I could plant; and at it we went, like a pair of jack-snappers, the plebes dancing about in wonder. He had a great reach. He fetched me several very substantial cracks. Nevertheless, the first blow I hit him gave me a decided advantage, and I succeeded in closing with him and getting his head in chancery. Thus holding him, I punched his nose and eyes and mouth in fine form; but, in spite of all I could do, I felt his long, sinewy arm steal up my back, and his fingers close with a choking grip upon my collar. Hug! I hugged his head with all my might and main, as he tugged to extricate himself.

“Stop that noise on fourth stoop!” shouted the sentry in the area, time and time again; but we were too busy to pay attention to his commands. We were panting like two young bucks with locked horns. Renewing the whacking at his head under my arm, I asked, “Have you got enough?” I knew he did not have enough. Still I thought it would do no harm to inquire.

“No!” roared he; “I'll give you enough before this thing is over.” With that I slung him around and tried to throw him; but his bow-legs seemed set as firmly as the towers of the arch. I not only found that he could stand punishment, but that he had the advantage of me in wind.

IN the spring of 1864, I was still a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. “Unrest” is the word to describe the feeling pervading the school.

Rosser's brigade had wintered in Rockbridge, but a few miles from the Institute. Lexington and the Institute were constantly visited by Rosser, his staff, and the officers of his brigade. They brought us in touch with the war, and the world beyond, more than anything else we had seen. They jangled their spurs through the archway, laughed loudly in the officers' quarters, and rode off as if they carried the world in a sling. In March, they broke camp, and came ambling, trotting, galloping, prancing past the Institute, their mounted band playing, their little guidons fluttering, bound once more to active duty in the lower valley. Before their departure, General Rosser presented a captured flag to the corps of cadets. His escort on the occasion was decked with leaves of mountain laurel, the evergreen badge which the brigade had adopted. We felt ashamed of having flags captured for us by others. When the Laurel Brigade took its departure, many a cadet followed it longingly with eyes and heart.

Then, too, we heard that Grant had been transferred to command in the East; and we all knew that there would be great fighting at the front. Many cadets resigned. Good boys became bad boys for the express purpose of getting “shipped,” parents and guardians having refused to permit them to resign.

The stage-coaches for the railroad stations at Goshen and Staunton stopped at the sallyport on nearly every trip to take on cadets departing for the front.

Many a night, sauntering back and forth on the sentry beat in front of barracks, catching the sounds of loud talk and laughter from the officers' quarters, or pondering upon the last joyous squad of cadets who had scrambled to the top of the departing stage, my heart longed for the camp and I wondered if my time would ever come. I was now over seventeen, and it did seem to me that I was old enough.

The proverb saith, “All things come to him who waits.”

It was the 10th of May.

Nature bedecked herself that springtime in her loveliest garb. Battalion drill had begun early, and the corps had never been more proficient at this season of the year.

The parade ground was firm and green. The trees were clothed in the full livery of fresh foliage. The sun shone on us through pellucid air, and the light breath of May kissed and fluttered our white colors, which were adorned with the face of Washington.

After going through the manœuvres of battalion drill, the corps was drawn up, near sundown, for dress-parade. It was the time of year when townsfolk drove down, and ranged themselves upon the avenue to witness our brave display; and groups of girls in filmy garments set off with bits of color came tripping across the sod; and children and nurses sat about the benches at the guard-tree.

The battalion was put through the manual. The first sergeants reported. The adjutant read his orders. The fifes and drums played down the line in slow time, and came back with a jolly, rattling air. The officers advanced to music and saluted. The sun sunk beyond the House Mountain. The evening gun boomed forth. The garrison flag fell lazily from its peak on the barracks' tower. The four companies went springing homeward at double time to the gayest tune the fifes knew how to play. Never in all its history looked Lexington more beautiful.

Never did sense of secluded peacefulness rest more soothingly upon her population. In our leisure time after supper, the cadets strolled back and forth from barracks to the limits gate, and watched the full-orbed moon lift herself over the mountains. Perfume was in the air, silence in the shadows. Well might we quote: -

And so, tranquil, composed by the delightful scenes around us, three hundred of us closed our eyes and passed into the happy dreams of youth in springtime.

Hark! the drums are beating. Their throbbing bounds through every corner of the barracks, saying to the sleepers, “Be up and doing.” It is the long roll.

Long roll had been beaten several times of late, sometimes to catch absentees, and once for a fire in the town. Grumblingly the cadets hurried down to their places in the ranks, expecting to be soon dismissed and to return to their beds. A group of officers, intently scanning by the light of a lantern a paper held by the adjutant, stood near the statue of George Washington, opposite the arch. The companies were marched together. The adjutant commanded attention, and proceeded to read the orders in his hands.

They announced that the enemy in heavy force was advancing up the Shenandoah valley; that General Lee could not spare any forces to meet him; that General Breckinridge had been ordered to assemble troops from southwestern Virginia and elsewhere at Staunton; and that the cadets should join him there at the earliest practicable moment. The corps was ordered to march, with four companies of infantry and a section of artillery, by the Staunton pike, at break of day.

First sergeants were ordered to detail eight artillerists from each of the four companies, to report for duty immediately, and man a section of artillery.

As these orders were announced, not a sound was heard from the boys who stood there, with beating hearts, in the military posture of parade rest.

“Parade's dismissed,” piped the adjutant. The sergeants side-stepped us to our respective company parades.

Methinks that even after thirty-three years I once more hear the gamecock voices of the sergeants detailing their artillery and ammunition squads, and ordering us to appear with canteens, haversacks, and blankets at four A.M. Still silence reigned. Then, as company after company broke ranks, the air was rent with wild cheering at the thought that our hour was come at last.

Elsewhere in the Confederacy, death, disaster, disappointment may have by this time chilled the ardor of our people, but here, in this little band of fledgelings, the hope of battle flamed as brightly as on the morning of Manassas.

We breakfasted by candle-light, and filled our haversacks from the mess-hall tables. In the gray of morning, we wound down the hill to the river, tramped heavily across the bridge, ascended the pike beyond, cheered the fading turrets of the school; and sunrise found us going at a four-mile gait to Staunton, our gallant little battery rumbling behind.

We were every way fitted for this kind of work by our hard drilling, and marched into Staunton in the afternoon of the second day, showing little ill effects of travel.

Staunton, small as it is, seemed large and cosmopolitan after our long confinement. As we marched past a female school, every window of which was filled with pretty girls, the fifes were laboring away at “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” There was no need for the girls to cry, “Fie! fie!” at such a suggestion. Not one of us were thinking of the girls we left behind us. The girls we saw before us were altogether to our liking.

We found a pleasant camping ground on the outskirts of the town, and thither the whole population docked for inspection of the corps, and to witness dress parade, for our fame was widespread. The attention bestowed upon the cadets was enough to turn the heads of much humbler persons than ourselves. We were asked to visit nearly every house in town.

Having an invitation to dine at the home of a friend, Louis and I waded in a creek to wash the mud off our shoes and trousers. With pocket-comb and glass we completed our toilet in a fence-corner. Then we walked about until our garments were dry, and proceeded to meet our engagement. Everything goes in war time.

At night, the town was hilarious. Several dances were arranged, and, as dancing was a cadet accomplishment, we were in our element.

The adoration bestowed upon us by young girls disgusted the regular officers. Before our coming, they had had things all their own way. Now, they found that fierce mustaches and heavy cavalry boots must give place to the downy cheeks and merry, twinkling feet we brought from Lexington. A big blonde captain, who was wearing a stunning bunch of gilt aiguillettes, looked as if be would snap my head off when I trotted up and whisked his partner away from him. They could not and would not understand why girls preferred these little, untitled whippersnappers to officers of distinction. Veterans forgot that youth loves youth.

Doubtless some feeling of this sort prompted the band of a regiment of grimy veterans to strike up “Rock-a-bye, Baby,” when the cadets marched by them. Quick as soldiers' love of fun, the men took up the air, accompanying it by rocking their guns in their arms as if putting them to sleep. It produced a perfect roar of amusement with everybody but ourselves. We were furious.

All this on the eve of a battle? Yes, of course. Why not? To be sure, everybody knew there was going to be a fight. That was what we came for. But nobody among us knew or cared just when or where it was coming off. Life is too full of trouble for petty officers or privates, or young girls, to bother themselves hunting up such disagreeable details in advance. That was the business of generals. They were to have all the glory; and so we were willing they should have all the solicitude, anxiety and preoccupation.

At dress parade, May 12, orders were read for the movement of the army down the valley the following morning. We always moved on time. Now, who would have believed that a number of girls were up to see us off, or that two or three were crying? Yet it was so. And quick work of the naked boy with the cross-bow I call that.

As we passed some slaughter-pens on the outskirts, an old Irish butcher, in his shirt sleeves, hung over his gate, pipe in mouth. With a twinkle in his eye he watched the corps go by, at last exclaiming, “Begorra, an' it's no purtier dhrove av pigs hev passed this gate since this hog killing began.”

We made a good day's march, and camped that night near Harrisonburg. During the day, we met several couriers bearing dispatches; they reported the enemy advancing in heavy force, and had left him near Strasburg and Woodstock.

Pressing on through Harrisonburg, which we reached early in the morning, we camped the second night at Lacy's Springs, in Shenandoah; rain had set in, but the boys stood up well to their work, and but few lame-ducks had succumbed.

Evidences of the approach of the enemy multiplied on the second day. We passed a great many vehicles coming up the valley with people and farm products and household effects, and a number of herds of cattle and other livestock, all escaping from the Union troops; now and then a weary or wounded cavalryman came by. Their reports were that Sigel's steady advance was only delayed by a thin line of cavalry skirmishers, who had been ordered to retard him as best they could until Breckinridge could march his army down to meet him.

Towards evening, we came to a stone church and spring, here a cavalry detail with a squad of Union prisoners were resting; the prisoners were a gross, surly-looking lot of Germans, who could not speak English. They evidently could not make us out; they watched us with manifest curiosity, and talked in unintelligible, guttural sounds among themselves.

When we reached camp, the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted, but everything was wet and gummy. To add to my disgust, I was detailed as corporal of the guard, which meant loss of sleep at night, and a alone some time next day with the wagons in rear of the corps.

Looking down the valley, as evening closed in, we could see a line of bivouac fires, and were uncertain whether they were lit by our own pickets or by the enemy. At any rate, we were getting sufficiently near to the gentle men for whom we were seeking to feel reasonably certain we should meet them.

Night closed in upon us; for a little while the woodland resounded with the axe-stroke, or the cheery halloos of the men from camp-fire to camp-fire; for a while the fire-lights danced, the air laden with the odor of cooking food; for a while the boys stood around the camp-fires for warmth and to dry their wet clothing; but soon all had wrapped their blankets around them and laid down in silence, unbroken save by the champing of the colonel's eel's horse upon his provender, or the fall of a passing, shower.

I was on duty as corporal of the guard; a sentry stood post near the pike; the remainder of the guard and the musicians were stretched before the watch-fire asleep. It was my part to remain awake, and a very lonesome, cheerless task it was, sitting there in the darkness, under the dancing shadows of the wide-spreading trees, watching the fagots flame up and die out, speculating upon the events of the morrow.

An hour past midnight, the sound of hoofs upon the pike caught my ear, and in a few moments the challenge of the sentry summoned me. The newcomer was an aid-de-camp, bearing orders for Colonel Shipp from the commanding general. When I aroused the commandant he struggled up, rubbed his eyes, muttered something about moving at once, and ordered me to arouse the camp without having the drums beaten. Orders to fall in were promptly given, rolls were rattled off, the battalion I was formed, and we debauched upon the pike, heading in the darkness and mud for Newmarket.

Before the command to march was given, a thing occurred which made a deep impression upon us all, - a thing which even now may be a solace to those whose boys died so gloriously that day. In the gloom of the night, Captain Frank Preston, neither afraid nor ashamed to pray, sent up an appeal to God for his protection of our little band: it was a humble, earnest petition, that sunk into the heart of every hearer. Few were the dry eyes, little the frivolity, when he had ceased to speak of home, of father, of mother, of country, of victory and defeat, of life, of death, of eternity. Captain Preston had been an officer in Stonewall Jackson's command; had lost an arm at Winchester; was on the retired list; and was subprofessor of Latin, and tactical officer of B Company: he was a typical Valley Presbyterian. Those who, a few hours later, saw him commanding his company in the thickest of the fight, his already empty sleeve attesting that he was no stranger to the perilous edge of battle, realized fully the beauty of the lines which tell that “the bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring.”

Day broke gray and gloomy upon us toiling onward in the mud. The sober course of our reflections was relieved by the lightheartedness of the veterans. We overtook Wharton's Brigade, with smiling “Old Gabe,” a Virginia Military Institute boy, at their head. They were squatting by the roadside, cooking breakfast, as we came up. With many good-natured gibes they restored our confidence; they seemed as merry, nonchalant, and indifferent to the coming fight as if it were their daily occupation. A tall, round- shouldered fellow, whose legs seemed almost split up to his shoulder-blades, came among us with a pair of shears and a pack of playing cards, offering | to take our names and cut off love-locks to be sent home after we were dead; another inquired if we wanted rosewood coffins, satin-lined, with name and age on the plate. In a word, they made us ashamed of the depressing solemnity of our last six miles of marching, and renewed within our breasts the true dare-devil spirit of soldiery.

Resuming the march, the mile-posts numbered four, three, two, one mile to Newmarket; then the mounted skirmishers hurried past us to their position at the front We heard loud cheering at the rear, which was caught up by the troops along the line of march. We learned its import as General John C. Breckinridge and staff approached, and we joined heartily in the cheering as that soldierly man, mounted magnificently, galloped past, uncovered, bowing, and riding like a Cid. It is impost impossible to exaggerate the gallant appearance of General Breckinridge. In stature he was considerably over six feet high. He sat his blood-bay thoroughbred as if he had been born on horseback; his head was of noble mould, and a piercing eye and a long, dark, drooping mustache completed a faultless military presence.

Deployed along the crest of an elevation in our front, I we could see our line of mounted pickets and the smouldering. fires of their last night's bivouac. We halted at a point where passing a slight turn in the road would bring us in full view of the position of the enemy Echols's and Wharton's brigades hurried past us; this time there was not much bantering between us. “Forward!” was the word once more, and, turning the point in the road, Newmarket was in full view, and the whole position was displayed.

At this point, a bold range of hills on the left parallel with the mountains divided the Shenandoah valley into I two smaller valleys; in the easternmost of these lies Newmarket. The valley pike on which we had advanced passes through the town parallel with the Massanunten Mountains on our right, and Smith's Creek, coursing along its base. The hills on our left, as they near the town, slope down to it from south and west, and swell beyond it to the west and north. Through this depression from the town to the Shenandoah River in the stern valley runs a transverse road with heavy stone walls. Between the pike by which we were advancing and the creek at the base of the mountains lies a beautiful strip of meadowland, extending to and beyond the village of Newmarket; on these meadows, in the outskirts of the village, were orchards, where the enemy's skirmishers were posted, his left wing being concealed in the village. The right wing of the enemy was posted behind the heavy stone fence in the road running westward from the town, parallel with our line of battle. Behind the infantry, on the slope of the rising ground, the Union artillery was posted: the ground rose behind this position until a short distance beyond the town; to the left of the pike it spread out in an elevated plateau. The hillsides from this plateau to the pike were broken by several gullies, heavily wooded by scrub cedar.

It was Sunday morning at eleven o'clock. In a picturesque little Lutheran churchyard, under the very shadow of the village spire and among the white tombstones, a six-gun battery was posted in rear of the infantry lines of the enemy. Firing over the heads of their own troops, that battery opened upon us the moment we came in in sight.

Away off to the right, in the Luray Gap, we could see our parallel signal corps telegraphing the position and numbers the enemy. Our cavalry was galloping to the cover of the creek to attempt to turn the enemy's left flank. Echols's brigade, moving from the pike at a double-quick by the right flank, went into line of battle across the meadow. its left resting on the pike. Simultaneously its skirmishers were thrown forward at a run and engaged the enemy. Out of the orchards and on the meadows, puff after puff of blue smoke rose as the sharpshooters advanced, the pop, pop, pop of their rifles ringing forth excitingly. Thundering down the pike came McLaughlin with his artillery. Wheeling out upon the meadows, he swung into battery action left, and let fly with all his guns.

The cadet section of artillery pressed down the pike a little farther, turned the left, toiled up the slope in front of us, and, going into position, delivered a plunging fire in reply to the Federal battery in the graveyard. We counted it a good omen when, at the first discharge of our little guns, a beautiful blue-white wreath of smoke shot upward and hovered over them. The town, which a moment before had seemed to sleep so peacefully upon that Sabbath morning, was now wrapped in battle smoke and swarming with troops hurrying to their position. We had their range beautifully. Every shell hit some obstruction, and exploded in the streets or on the hillsides. Every man in our army was in sight. Every position of the enemy was plainly visible. His numbers were uncomfortably large; for, notwithstanding his line of battle already formed seemed equal to our own, the pike beyond the town was still filled with his infantry.

Our left wing consisted of Wharton's brigade; our centre, of the 62d Virginia infantry and the cadet corps; our right, of Echols's brigade and the cavalry. Until now, as corporal of the guard, I had remained in charge of the baggage-wagon with a detail of three men, - Redwood Stanard, and Woodlief. My orders were to remain with the wagons at the bend in the pike unless we were driven back. In that case, we were to retire to a point of safety.

When it was clear that the battle was imminent, one thought took possession of me, and that was, if I sat on a baggage wagon while the corps of cadets was in its first, perhaps its only engagement, I should never be able to look my father in the face again. He was a grim old fighter at that moment resisting the advance on Petersburg, and holding the enemy in check until Lee's army could come up. I had annoyed him with importunities for permission to leave the Institute and enter the army. If, now that I had the opportunity to fight, I should fail to do so, I knew what was in store for me, for he had a tongue of satire and ridicule like a lash of scorpions.

Napoleon in Egypt, pointing to the Pyramids, told his soldiers that from their heights forty centuries looked down upon them. The oration I delivered from the tailboard of a wagon was not so hyperbolical, but was equally emphatic. It ran about this wise: “Boys, the enemy is in our front. The corps is going into action. I like fighting no better than anybody else. But I have an enemy in my rear as dreadful as any before us. If I should return home and tell my father that I was on the baggage guard when the cadets were in battle, I know what my fate would be. He would kill me with ridicule, which is worse than bullets. I intend to join the command at once. Any of you who think your duty requires you to remain may do so.”

All the guard followed. We left the wagon in charge of the black driver. Of the four who thus went, one was tilled and two were wounded. We overtook the battalion as it deployed by the left flank from the pike. Moving at double-quick, we were in an instant in line of battle our right resting near the turnpike. Rising ground in our immediate front concealed us from the enemy.

The command was given to strip for action. Knapsacks sacks, blankets, - everything but guns, canteens, and cartridge-boxes, was thrown upon the ground. Our boys were silent then. Every lip was tightly drawn, eve cheek was pale, but not with fear. With a peculiar, nervous jerk, we pulled our cartridge-boxes round to the front, laid back the flaps, and tightened belts. Whistling rifled shells screamed over us, as, tipping the hill-crest in our front, they bounded past. To our right, across the pike, Patton's brigade was lying down abreast of us.

“At-ten-tion-n-n! Battalion forward! Guide center-r-r!” shouted Shipp, and up the slope we started. From the left of the line, Sergeant-Major Woodbridge ran out and posted himself forty paces in advance of the colors as directing guide, as if we had been upon the drill ground. That boy would have remained there, had not Shipp ordered him back to his post; for this was no dress parade. Brave Evans, standing six feet two, shook out the colors that for days had hung limp and bedraggled about the staff, and every cadet leaped forward, dressing to the ensign, elate and thrilling with the consciousness that this was war.

Moving up to the hill crest in our front, we were abreast of our smoking battery, and uncovered to the range of the enemy's guns. We were pressing towards him at “arms port,” moving with the light tripping gate of the French infantry. The enemy's veteran artillery soon obtained our range, and began to drop his shells under our very noses along the slope. Echols's brigade rose up, and was charging on our right with the well known rebel yell.

AFTER a few days in Richmond, the cadets were ordered back to Lexington. We resumed academic duties promptly, and were just beginning to settle down to hard work, when General Hunter advanced up the valley of the Shenandoah, unopposed save by a small cavalry force under General McCausland.

McCausland was another Virginia Military Institute graduate. “Well,” said we, when we heard the news, “we'll have to whip 'em again.” But this time the story was to be very different from the last. Following almost immediately upon the heels of the first announcement came the alarming statement that Hunter had reached Staunton, but thirty-six miles to the north of us; and the next day we were advised that he had not paused in Staunton, but pressed on, and that his advance was skirmishing with McCauseland at Midway, but twelve miles from Lexington.

Resistance to a force like Hunter's being out of the question, we were ordered to prepare for the evacuation of Lexington. A detail of sappers was sent forthwith to the bridge across the North River, with directions to load it with bales of hay saturated with turpentine, leaving space just sufficient for the passage of McCausland's retreating forces. We were kept under arms all night. Before sunrise, the main body of our troops came stream streaming down the hills across the river; and, half a mile behind them, their rear guard emerged from the woods along the hill-tops, skirmishing with, and hotly pressed by, the enemy. At the river, after crossing the bridge, McCausland deployed a force upon the bluffs above and below the bridge, to cover the crossing of his rear guard.

The rear guard, called in, rallied at a run to the bridge, and the Union skirmishers, emboldened by their quick movements, dashed after them down the hills. Coming too near to the force behind the bluffs, they were compelled to retreat under a heavy fire upon Hunter's advance guard, which was now coming up. A battery of Union artillery, under Captain Henry Du Pont, galloped out upon the hills overlooking Lexington from the north side of the river, and opened fire upon the Institute. A section of McCausland's artillery came up, after crossing the bridge, and took position at the northeast corner of the parade ground to respond to Du Pont. As soon as our troops were across the bridge, it was fired, and a fine column of black smoke rolled heavenward. Our sappers, their task performed, hurried back at double time to rejoin their respective companies. Along the pike in the valley in front of the Institute, the cavalry, weary and depressed, was retiring to the town.

The whole panorama, front and rear, was visible from the Institute grounds, and made a very pretty war scene.

When the Union battery opened, the corps was drawn up in front of barracks awaiting orders. It was, of course, invisible to the enemy from his position directly in rear of barracks. If his guns had been aimed at the centre of the building, his shells would have exploded in our midst. But the massive parts were at the corners, where the towers were grouped, and thither the fire was directed. The first shell that struck crashed in the hall of the Society of Cadets, sending down showers of brickbats and plaster when it exploded. Thereupon we were ordered to pass over the parapet in front of barracks, and thence were marched westward until clear of the building, so as to avoid the splinters and debris. It was very well, for while several of his guns turned their attention to our section of artillery on the parade ground, Captain Harry filled the air with fragments as he pounded away at our quarters.

In our new position under the parapet, about opposite the guard-tree, although fully protected, we were nearly in the line of fire of the shots directed at our battery. A number of shells struck the parade ground, some exploding there, and others ricocheting over our heads.

Soon after this we marched away. As we were leaving, the artillery was limbering up, and the only force opposing the entrance of the enemy was the thin line of skirmishers on the river bluffs.

With heavy hearts we passed through the town, bidding, adieu to such of its residents as we had known in happier days. Our route was southward to Balcony Falls, which we reached late that evening. At a high point, probably five miles south of Lexington, we came in full sight of our old home. The day was bright and clear, and we saw the towers and turrets of the barracks, mess-hall, and professors' houses in full blaze, sending up great masses of flame and smoke. The only building on the entire reservation not destroyed by fire was the residence of General Smith. His daughter was very ill, and as the physicians declared it would cost her life to remove her, the house was spared through the intercession of Colonel Du Pont.

No words could describe our feelings as we rested on the roadside, and watched the conflagration. The place was endeared by a thousand memories, but above all other thoughts, it galled and mortified us that we had been compelled to abandon it without firing a shot.

Thinking that the enemy might follow us and attempt to reach Lynchburg through the pass at Balcony Falls, our commandant determined, if that should prove to be the purpose of General Hunter, to offer resistance there, for it was a very defensible position. Accordingly, upon reaching Balcony Falls, pickets were posted, the corps was deployed along the mountain side, and we were held ready for a fight all that night and until late in the following day. Then we ascertained that General Hunter had passed on up the valley to the approaches of Lynchburg by way of the Peaks of Otter. We impressed a canal-boat, and resumed our journey to Lynchburg, reaching there some hours in advance of the enemy. On our arrival, Early's division was pouring into the town, having just arrived by rail from Petersburg. It was hurried forward to the fortifications in the outskirts.

We remained in the streets of the town several hours, awaiting orders, and were finally sent to the front in reserve.

Our position was in a graveyard. The afternoon we spent there, sitting upon graves and among tombstones in a cold, drizzling rain, was anything but cheerful.

The enemy, unaware of the presence of Early's division advanced to a brisk attack with infantry and artillery. Although he was roughly handled, the assault continued until dark, and he had pressed up very close to a salient in our front, at a point near the present residence of Mr. John Langhorne. A renewal of the attack on the following morning was confidently expected. About ten o'clock that night, orders came for the cadets to move to the front to relieve the troops in the salient, who had been fighting since midday. When the corps was formed in line, Colonel Shipp, in low tones, explained the nature of the service, and the importance of silence. We were warned not to speak, and, as the night was very black, each man was instructed to place his left hand upon the cartridge-box of the man in front of him, so as to keep distance and alignment. Thus formed, we proceeded to the bastion, and entered it in gloomy silence. The troops occupying it were drawn up as we entered, and glided out after we were in, like the shadows of darkness.

The place was horrible. The fort was new, and constructed of stiff red clay. The rain had wet the soil, and the feet of the men who had been there had kneaded the mud into dough. There was no place to lie down. All that a man could do was to sit plump down in the mud, upon the low banquette, with his gun across his lap. I could not resist peeping over the parapet, and there, but a short distance from us, in a little valley, were the smouldering camp-fires of the enemy. Wrapping my blanket about me, its ends tucked under me, so as to keep out the moisture from the red clay as much as possible, I fell asleep, hugging my rifle, never doubting that there would be work for both of us at daybreak.

I must have slept soundly, for when I awoke it was broad daylight. The men were beginning to talk aloud, and several were exposing themselves freely. No enemy appeared in our front. He was gone. Hunter, discovering that he was overmatched, had retired during the night, and was now in full retreat.

Lexington was now accessible to us once more, and thither we proceeded in a day or two.

On our return to Lexington, we temporarily quartered in Washington College. Nothing worth having was left of the Virginia Military Institute. The scene was one of such complete desolation, and so depressing, that I avoided it as much as possible.

We were furloughed until September 1, and ordered to report at that time at the almshouse in Richmond.

This apparently absurd announcement was another illustration of the resourcefulness of General Smith. The city of Richmond had a very fine almshouse, but at this period of the war all our people were paupers, and the city could not maintain the almshouse. Knowing this, General Smith had opened telegraphic correspondence from Lynchburg with the Richmond authorities, and secured the place free of rent.

For myself, I now saw a chance of entering the service and had no idea of going to live in an almshouse. My objective point was Petersburg, where my father's brigade was stationed. He was in command of the city, having been engaged with the enemy almost daily since his arrival from South Carolina in May. Against overwhelming odds, Beauregard had held the place until the arrival of General Lee.

It was about sundown on the 22d of June, 1864, that our train from Richmond stopped in a deep cut about a mile frown Petersburg. We could not safely approach nearer to the city. When General “Baldy” Smith, with 22,000 men, attacked my father with 2200 men on the 15th of June, he captured several redoubts, numbered from 5 to 9, near the Appomattox River, just below Petersburg. From these, with his siege-guns, he could shell the town, and particularly the railroad depot and the Pocahontas Bridge nearby across the Appomattox. As a consequence, the trains stopped at a point of safety, whence passengers could take a back route to the town, or go by way of the railroad without attracting attention. The disagreeable persons at the captured batteries soon ascertained the railroad schedules, and shelled the vicinity of the depot about train time.

Soldiers had become accustomed to shells, and did not fear them much; so our party, consisting of several members of my father's brigade, followed the short route, not withstanding quite a lively artillery fire. We crossed the bridge at Pocahontas without incident. The firing seemed directed higher up town. Passing on to Bolingbroke Street, we saw evidences of recent damage in a great hole made by a shell in the Bolingbroke Hotel, but a few moments before, and a dead man was lying on the curb stone near where the shell had exploded. Turning into Bolingbroke Street, which ran nearly parallel with the line of fire from Battery 5, two heavy shells went screaming over our heads, and burst near where Bolingbroke Street terminates in Sycamore Street. It was a decided relief when we reached the latter, and struck off at right angles from the range of those guns. The official headquarters were in the court house, which, while it was in the line of fire, was protected by heavy masses of intervening buildings. Thither we repaired, but found they were closed for the day.

The appearance of the town was exceedingly depressing. The streets were almost deserted, and the destructive work of the shells was visible on every hand. Here a chimney was knocked off; here a handsome residence was deserted, with great rents in its walls, and the windows shattered by explosion; here stood a church tower mutilated, the churchyard filled with new-made graves. As we moved onward, one of our party pointed to where Colonel Page of our brigade was buried. He had been killed but a week before, and was buried near the front door of a church, within three feet of the sidewalk. On the court-house steps a group of dirty soldiers were gathered about a poor little half-starved white girl, who sat singing. She had an attractive face, with large, wistful eyes, and a sweet child-voice. When she sang, her whole soul was in her song, which seemed to be highly appreciated by the soldiers. They joined in the chorus after each verse. I remember the name of the song, the first verse, and the chorus, although I never heard them before or since. It was called “Loula,” and ran as follows: -

The soldiers seemed deeply touched by the plaintive melody, and joined with genuine feeling in the mournful chorus. Its sadness was in accord with their own desperate situation. They made her repeat it several times, and, when it was over, paid her in food, or such little trifles or trinkets as they possessed, - not in money, for they had none.

About the song, the singer, the soldiers, the scene, and its surroundings there was something intensely pathetic and depressing, and I turned away with a heartsick feeling, not relieved by the silence and desolation along the route to my father's quarters at the residence of a Mr. Dunlop in the western part of the town. I found him in the act of going to tea with his staff, if a meal at which there was neither tea nor coffee may be so designated.

Our meeting after two years' separation - years in which so much bad happened to both of us - was inexpressibly delightful. In my father's greeting was blended love for his “little Benjamin,” pride in recent events, and solicitude concerning my fate in the dangerous present future.

The two years of war since we parted showed their effects upon him. He had aged decidedly. But his eye was as bright and his spirit as unconquered as at the outset.

We hugged and kissed each other as if I had been a boy of ten, and then, turning to his staff and a visitor, he introduced me as his boy, whose “head was so hard he had burst a bombshell against it.”

The evening being very warm, the tea-table was spread under the trees in the Dunlop yard. Among those present were: Colonel Roman, of Beauregard's staff, young Fred Fleet, adjutant-general, my brother Richard, and Barksdale Warwick, the two aids-de-camp. The conversation was jolly, and the meal surprisingly inviting, for Lieutenant Warwick had returned that day from a short leave of absence, bringing a number of good things. My father occupied some outbuildings, where his generous host, Mr. Dunlop, had supplied him with knives, forks, plates, and table outfit, giving our tea-table under the trees quite a luxurious appearance. And there were my old companions, Joshua and Smith, two of my father's young slaves, who performed all the offices of grooms, butlers, and dining-room servants for the staff. Lieutenant Warwick's Jim was the cook. As Joshua and Smith appeared with plates and hot biscuits and a smoking pot of parched-corn coffee, they broke into broad grins at sight of me. Putting down their things unceremoniously; they rushed up, exclaiming, “How you do, Mars' John? Gord Amighty! how you is grow'd! Dey didn't hu't you much when dey shot you, did dey?” When my father repeated his joke about bursting a bombshell with my head, they guffawed and said, “Spec' it's so, fur he certainly always did have a pow'ful hard head.” And then they hurried off about their duties, reserving more confidential chats about old times for later occasions when we should meet at the stables or the kitchen.

Although our beds were on the floor, the quarters were very comfortable, with some features of decent living, such as tables, chairs, and a few books. As we sat there, the picket- firing along the lines from the Appomattox on the east to the Salem plank road to the south of the city was unusually brisk, making one think of corn rapidly popping. These sounds were interspersed with exploding shells at intervals of less than a minute, often as frequent as every few seconds. By stepping out beyond the cover of the trees, we could see the trajectory of the mortar-shells sent up from both sides. The burning fuses gave us the line through the darkness. The firing generally became more active in the evening. Our brigade was already in the trenches, but my father, being still in command of the city, had not yet joined his own command.

“There has been heavy firing on the right this afternoon, general,” said Colonel Roman.

“Yes,” replied my father, “Grant is evidently trying to extend his left as far as the Weldon Railroad. I met Mahone to- day, who said that he and Wilcox were moving out to intercept him. Whenever Mahone moves out, somebody is apt to be hurt.”

“Mahone is a Virginia Military Institute graduate,” said I, with undisguised pride.

“There he goes again,” said my father, smiling; “up to this time we have had West Point, West Point, West Point. Now we shall have Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Military Institute, I presume. But seriously speaking, colonel, since the death of Stonewall Jackson, the two men who seem to me to be the most gallant, enterprising, and ‘coming’ soldier of Lee's army are this little fellow Mahone and young Gordon, of Georgia.” He then proceeded to give a sketch of Mahone, whom he knew well. Mahone was born in Southampton County, at Jerusalem, the county seat. It was only about fifty or sixty miles east of Petersburg. His father was known to everybody in the county as Major Mahone, and kept the tavern at Jerusalem. Keeping tavern did not imply that he was not as good as anybody else in the community, and in fact he was, although he may not have been of such patrician extraction as some of the other people thereabouts. He associated with the best of them, and they with him, and he was respected as a man of many sterling good qualities, possessed of strong individuality. Of Irish extraction, he inherited the most prominent characteristics of his race; was brave, open-hearted, free-spoken, a free liver, and not over- prosperous.

His son “Billy,” as everybody called him, grew up in the atmosphere of a country tavern. He did not hesitate in his youth to hold a horse for one of his father's guests, and take a tip for the service. He saw a great deal of liquor drunk at his father's bar, and a great deal of card playing in his father's tavern. He was not, in his day, above taking in a tray of toddies to the people in a private room playing draw poker, or brag, or lou. He heard a great deal of hard swearing, and had acquired that accomplishment himself. His youth was in the days of cock fighting; and betting upon the result was by no means deemed disreputable. He not only witnessed cocking mains between the Virginia birds and those from Weldon and vicinity in the adjoining counties of North Carolina but soon had birds of his own, and scrupled not to fight them with all comers, or to back them with all the means he could command. It was the days of horse racing also, and young “Billy” owned a crack quarter-nag, which he would race with anybody for all he had, at any time and in any place. He generally rode himself, for he was of very diminutive stature. And he usually won, for he was a youngster of precocious judgment, boundless enterprise, great ambition to win at any game he played, and indomitable grit. He also had the faculty of making friends, and interesting people in his success. Everybody in Southampton County knew him, and recognized in him elements of unusual power.

His father was perhaps too much interested in his business or his own diversions to concern himself overmuch about Billy's education, but the subject did not escape a neighbor, who had brought his influence to bear in favor of young, Mahone. He was a state senator, with the right to appoint a state cadet to the Virginia Military Institute. This meant that the cadet so appointed received board and tuition free. Interested in Billy, he persuaded his father and himself that he ought not to waste his youth in dissipation and grow up in ignorance, but should accept this appointment. Mahone was prompt to do so. He entered the Institute, and graduated with distinction at the age of twenty-one in the class of 1847. He conscientiously performed the obligation which a state cadet assumes, to teach school for three years after graduation; and meanwhile made other powerful friends, who advanced him in his subsequent career.

At the Virginia Military Institute, he developed a decided talent for engineering. Having completed his term as school teacher, he secured a position as surveyor of a railroad running from Alexandria, Va., to Orange Court House. His talents were recognized; he was promoted; and finally, through the influence mainly of Colonel Francis Mallory, of Norfolk, he was made engineer of a line from Norfolk to Petersburg. Here he was confronted by the problem of securing a roadbed through the oozy morasses of the Dismal Swamp. He solved the problem, built the road, and made it straight as an arrow for sixty miles, regardless of obstructions. His engineering methods to obtain a solid roadbed on marshy ground, then pronounced as impracticable, have now come to be accepted by the profession as the best yet invented. He rose from position to position, until, at the outbreak of the war, when but thirty-five years old, he was president of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad.

He promptly formed, and was elected colonel of, the Sixth Virginia Regiment, composed of the élite of Norfolk and Petersburg, and, when that regiment was brigaded, was made brigadier. Thenceforth, in every engagement in which it took part, his command was conspicuous. In the peninsular and Rappahannock campaigns, at second Manassas, in front of Petersburg, his course was like the eagle's, “upward and onward and true to the line,” and, after all his fighting and losses, when Lee's army stacked arms at Appomattox, Mahone's division had maintained its organization better, and laid down more arms, than any in the Army of Northern Virginia. The facts of his youth and the brilliancy of his career up to date were that night the subject of conversation until the visitors departed.

We lay awake talking for some time after we retired. My father recounted his hard fighting from June 15 to June 19 inclusive, in the effort to hold the city until General Lee's arrival, and never seemed to tire of asking about the behavior of the cadets, seeking ever to conceal his pride in our achievements by denouncing the crime of putting such babies into battle. In his own command, the losses had been terrific. Many a fine fellow whom I knew well had been killed or maimed in the hard fighting of the previous week. Then we counted up the casualties in our own immediate family. Since 1861 he, three sons, and nine nephews had gone into the Confederate service. Thus far, two had been killed and six wounded.

“You must go down the first thing in the morning to the hospital, and see your cousin Douglas. It may be the last opportunity,” said he, his voice softening as he spoke.

“Why, he is not much hurt, is he?” said I, for he had been reported only slightly wounded. We were talking of his brigade-inspector, a member of his staff, a favorite nephew, who had always been more like a son than a nephew.

“Yes, very seriously,” he said; “at first we thought it a mere scalp wound like yours, but his brain is affected now, and I apprehend the most serious result.”

I soon discovered that my own future was causing him great anxiety, and that before my coming, notwithstanding all the cares and anxieties surrounding him, he had been thinking and planning about me. He had not, perhaps, even confessed it to himself, but his plans involved putting me in a place of safety. He told me that General Kemper, of Gettysburg fame, now permanently disabled by the wounds received there, was organizing the Virginia reserve forces, that is, men over forty-five years old and boys under eighteen; that, in doing so, the services of a large number of drill-masters would be required; that they would have the rank of second lieutenants, and be assigned to staff duty in active service as soon as their work as drill-masters was completed; and, finally, that he had already been in correspondence with General Kemper, who was an old friend, and had secured the promise of one of these appointments for me.

FOLLOWING close upon Mahone's successful manœuvre came the raid of General Wilson around our right flank, whereby he attempted to destroy General Lee's line of supply, - the Southside Railroad. He was promptly and hotly attacked and driven off near Black's and White's Station by General W. H. F. Lee; then, pursuing, the line of the Danville Railroad, he was repulsed at Staunton River bridge by local militia; turning back from that point to rejoin the Union army, Hampton, Fitz Lee, Heth, and Mahone attacked him near Reams's Station, and handled him so roughly that he became the laughing stock of Lee's army. We at Petersburg saw nothing of these operations, but the incidents of Wilson's discomfiture and final rout furnished merriment for the camps during the ensuing period of comparative inactivity.

About the middle of July, I visited Richmond to inquire about my appointment as drill-master. General Kemper's reception was pompous; he was a striking-looking man, notwithstanding a waxen pallor proceeding from the severe wounds he had received at Gettysburg; he apparently suffered great pain; hobbling back and forth upon his crutches, he descanted, with loud voice and consequential manner, upon the noble work of preparing raw troops for service in the field. He also indulged in sentimental flights upon military glory, not failing to refer to the fact that he was the only survivor of Pickett's three brigadiers who entered the fight at Gettysburg. General Kemper had a good record as a soldier, both in Mexico and in our own service; otherwise, judging by manner and conversation alone, he would have been classed as a Bombastes Furioso.

The upshot of our interview was the promise of a commission, coupled with the information that my duties under it would not begin before October 1, as his department was not yet fully organized; that was delightful, for Petersburg had fascinated me, and I hurried back there. My father was not overpleased at my reappearance. He had depended upon his friend Kemper to put me away in some safe place; I, on the other hand, still cherished the hope that he might yet listen to Mahone's request that he should give me to him.

If a boy just closing the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Æneid, should be permitted to behold their heroes in the flesh, and performing the valorous deeds which immortalize them, fancy what would be his ecstasy! Yet, for three years past, modern heroes had come upon the stage who were, in my enthusiastic estimate of their powers, second to no half-clothed ancient whose deeds are celebrated by Homer or Virgil.

Until now, I had lived in torturing apprehension lest a perverse fate should deny me opportunity to see them, and to follow, however humbly, leaders who had been the subject of my thoughts by day and dreams by night since the great struggle began. Here they were all about me; a house, or a tent by the roadside, decorated with a headquarters flag, guarded by a few couriers, was all that stood between their greatness and the humblest private in the army. They were riding back and forth, and going out and coming in at all hours, so that everybody saw them.

MUCH of the month of July we passed in the trenches. Father was in command of Petersburg, and Colonel J. Thomas Goode commanded the brigade, but we visited it almost daily. It was assigned to Bushrod Johnson's division, and our position was next to the South Carolinians under Elliott. Our left was about a hundred yards south of a bastion known as Elliott's salient.

Life in the trenches was indescribably monotonous and uncomfortable. In time of sunshine, the reflected heat from the new red-clay embankments was intense, and unrelieved by shade or breeze; and in wet weather one was ankle- deep in tough, clinging mud. The incessant shelling and picket- firing made extreme caution necessary in moving about; and each day, almost each hour, added to the list of casualties. The opposing lines were not over two hundred yards apart, and the distance between the rifle-pits was about one hundred yards. Both sides had attained accurate marksmanship, which they practiced with merciless activity in picking off men. One may fancy the state of mind of soldiers thus confined, who knew that even the act of going to a spring for water involved risk of life or limb.

The men resorted to many expedients to secure some degree of comfort and protection. They learned to burrow like conies. Into the sides of the trenches and traverses they went with bayonet and tin cups to secure shade or protection from rain. Soon, such was their proficiency that, at sultry midday or during a rainfall, one might look up or down the trenches without seeing anybody but the sentinel. At sound of the drum, the heads of the soldiers would pop up and out of the earth, as if they had been prairie-dogs or gophers. Still, many lives were lost by the indifference to danger which is begotten by living constantly in its presence.

To appreciate fully the truth that men are but children of a larger growth, one must have commanded soldiers. Without constant guidance and government and punishment, they become careless about clothes, food, ammunition, cleanliness, and even personal safety. They will at once eat or throw away the rations furnished for several days, never considering the morrow. They will cast aside or give away their clothing because to-day is warm, never calculating that to-morrow they may be suffering for the lack of it. They will open their cartridge-boxes and dump their cartridges on the roadside to lighten their load, although a few hours later their lives may depend upon having a full supply. When they draw their pay, their first object is to find some way to get rid of it as quickly as possible. An officer, to be really efficient, must add to the qualities of courage and firmness those of nurse, monitor, and purveyor for grown-up children, in whom the bumps of improvidence and destructiveness are abnormally developed.

Thus, in spite of warnings and threat of punishment for failure to approach and depart from the lines by the protected covered ways, it was impossible to make the men observe these reasonable precautions. For a long time they had been shot at, night and day. A man, because he had not been hit, would soon come to regard himself as invulnerable. The fact that his comrades had been killed or wounded appeared to make little impression upon him. Past immunity made him so confident that he would walk coolly over the same exposed ground where somebody else had been shot the day before. The “spat,” “whiz,” “zip” of hostile bullets would not even make him quicken his pace. Mayhap he would take his short pipe out of his mouth and yell defiantly, “Ah-h - Yank - yer - kain't - shoot,” and go on his way tempting fate, until a bullet struck him and he was dead, or maimed for life. At times I questioned whether these soldiers were not really seeking relief by death or wounds from the torture of such intolerable life. It was enough to make men mad and reckless.

Occasionally we had suspension of firing. At such times even ladies visited the trenches. I recall particularly one party of pretty girls who came over from Richmond, rode out on horseback to a point in rear of our position, and, dismounting, advanced boldly across the exposed ground, and stood for some time on our parapets watching the Union lines. The intrenchments of the enemy were lined with soldiers sunning themselves, or engaged in a favorite occupation familiar to all old soldiers, but not to be described in polite literature. “Hello, Johnnie! it's ladies' day, ain't it?” called out a fellow from a rifle-pit, when he saw the riding-habits outlined against the sky.

We often talked to each other. Sometimes our conversation was civil and kindly enough. Sometimes it was facetious. At others it was of the grossest and most unmentionable character. On an occasion like this, the presence of ladies was greeted as a high compliment by our men, and accepted by the enemy as gratifying evidence of our confidence in their good faith. By both sides the fair visitors were treated with the utmost deference.

IN September, 1864, the commission as drill-master with rank and pay of second lieutenant, arrived, accompanied by orders to report for duty October 1 to Colonel Robert Preston, commanding a newly organized regiment of reserve forces at Dublin Depot, in southwestern Virginia. The red seal and signature of the Secretary of War, and the idea of being addressed as lieutenant, made their distinct impressions, but did not overcome the desire to remain with the army at the front.

Vain, however, were all pleadings; and even Mahone, when appealed to intercede for my services, seemed indifferent, and dwelt upon the honor to be gained by faithful work in preparing raw troops for actual service, and the duty of deferring to the judgment and wishes of a parent. It was easy to see that he and “the old general” had been talking together since that first meeting.

When, September 30, I boarded a west-bound train at Petersburg to join my command, the new, bright bar upon my collar and gilt scrolls upon my sleeves gave little satisfaction. I felt as if I had been treated like a baby, tucked away in a place of safety, and was consenting to turn my back upon the enemy just when every man was most needed in Lee's army. And was I not a man? Of course I was. I was nearly eighteen! When my father parted with me, after much good advice and an affectionate farewell, I know it was with the solacing reflection that I, at least, was out of harm's way. If such were his feelings and his purpose, great must have been his astonishment on opening his first letter from me.

When the train reached Dublin Depot next morning, I inquired of a soldier standing on the platform for Colonel Preston's headquarters. “He was camped on yonder bill,” said the person addressed; “but him and his regiment left here last night for Saltville. The Yankees is comin' over the mountain from Kentucky to the saltworks.”

Trains did not move, in those times, upon precise schedules. Ours had not yet pulled out of the depot. It was in a leisurely way taking on wood and water, and receiving or discharging army stores. Without another word, I resumed my place in the car, resolved to follow and join the regiment. On and on we went, until we came to Glade Spring Junction, near Abingdon and the Tennessee line. There, to my great delight, I found Colonel Preston, with his regiment of nondescripts, waiting for an improvised train of flat cars, which was to bear them to Saltville, eight or ten miles distant. Swinging off the car almost before it stopped, I hurried up to the colonel. I told him who I was. He gave me a merry and characteristic greeting.

From the number of Prestons so far mentioned, one might think this a history of the Preston family. It is, in truth, a large family, but, so far as I know, none of those referred to were kin to, or even connected with, each other. This dear old man, known to everybody in the army and in his section of the State as “Colonel Bob,” was one of the most lovable and unique characters it was ever my good fortune to be thrown with. He was short, thick- set, and had an immense snow-white beard, extending nearly to his sword-belt. He often buttoned it into and beneath his coat or waistcoat. When, as on this occasion, it was unconfined, his appearance, figure, beard, merry twinkling eye, and ruddy face instantly suggested Santa Claus.

At the outbreak of the war, he commanded a regiment in the Manassas campaign; brave as a lion, he was utterly ignorant of military tactics; and it was told of him that on one occasion, when his regiment was attacked in flank while marching in column of companies, he, after vainly endeavoring to think of the command by which to wheel by companies into line and charge the enemy, burst into an explosion of oaths and said, “Twenty-eighth! swing around in companies, like gates, and sick 'em!” On an other occasion, reaching a fence and not knowing how to defile his troops through an opening, he gave the following startling order, “Battalion! Oh, battalion! bust up! climb fence, and line up again on t'other other side!” These were but samples of the many tales concerning him as a tactician; notwithstanding these slight defects, Colonel Bob was honored, respected, and counted one of the gamest fighters in the army; and nothing but the infirmities of age had reconciled his beloved “28th” to parting with him.

When the growing necessities of the war forced upon the authorities at Richmond the formation of these reserve regiments, composed of old men and little boys. Colonel Bob was among the first appealed to for aid in the undertaking, for no man was more beloved or exercised a stronger influence in his section.

The day I joined him, he had a veritable Falstaffian army: his regiment of eight companies presented every stage of manhood, from immature boyhood to decrepit old age. One of his companies drawn up in line looked as irregular as a pile of barrel-hoops. There was no pretense of uniform; they wore everything, from straw hats to coon- skin caps. A vision of Colonel Bob's regiment must have presented itself to the mind of General Grant when he informed the country that the Confederacy was, like Micawber, “robbing the cradle and the grave.”

One thing uniform they had, - every man had a Belgian rifle, and a cartridge-box filled with pretty fair ammunition. To my surprise, they handled these weapons effectively and most courageously the following day.

Nobody realized the ludicrous appearance of his soldiers, or enjoyed it more thoroughly, than did Colonel Bob. He would have had a laugh at his own funeral, if opportunity had occurred. “Look at that!” said he, stroking his beard and chuckling a comfortable, inside shaking laugh; “look at that! Your cadets couldn't beat it.” He was pointing to his command, scrambling pell-mell helter-skelter, upon the dirty flats which now had been backed up. Two strapping young fellows were tugging at an old one, who looked as if he would come to pieces, pulling him up on the car, while a third was pushing him from behind.

“Henry!” shouted Colonel Bob, “you must ride Robin and lead Bob down to the salt-works. Take your time, Henry; you'll get there as soon as we do, I think. I must stay with my ragamuffins, Henry; do you understand?”

Henry was his smiling, handsome, and deferential mulatto body servant, who looked after his comfort as if the colonel were a baby. Bob was his strong, blood-bay, half-bred charger. The way he uttered the word Henry, and the tone in which he spoke of Bob, showed how he loved them, and how dependent he was upon them. Both Henry and Bob were very proud of their master. Henry bowed and smiled, assured him all would be as he wished, and, before departing, whispered to him that he had placed some food for him in the locker of the caboose car which we were to occupy.

“Did you put my bottle of brandy there, Henry?” said the colonel.

“Yes, sir,” said Henry, grinning and looking around suspiciously.

“Well, don't do it,” said the old man, raising his voice; “these - soldiers are honest enough about other things, but the last - one of them will steal whiskey, Henry, and you ought to know that by this time. Fetch it right here and put it in my haversack; even then it won't be safe.” The old fellow chuckled and Henry grinned as he tucked the flask snugly away in the corner of his bag. He was not a hard drinker, or at all dissipated, but was at his age somewhat dependent upon a regular stimulant.

“Boy,” said he, turning to me, for by this time he had begun to be familiar, - “boy, I hope you're not a little drunkard; it's the meanest, lowest, dirtiest passion in the world. When a man gets to loving whiskey, he'll steal it from his best friend.” Then, lowering his voice, he told me it was not the soldiers he feared, but one of his officers, who never left him a drop whenever he could lay hands upon his “poor little flask.”

By this time our troops were mounted on the train and, with a snort and a jerk and a bump and a thousand thumps, we began the trip to Saltville. After a most uncomfortable ride, we reached the place. Darkness was upon us. Like other localities where salt is found, it was a galled, cheerless spot, without verdure in the vicinity of the wells and troughs and boilers. The adjacent country was, however, pretty enough, and we soon found a camp in a neighboring wood. The hills about Saltville were almost as regular as hemispheres; some were prettily wooded and others were pasture lands to their summits. A mile below the town flowed the Holston River, which on our side had high, bluffy banks. The only crossing was at a ford, which was very defensible. The Union general, Burbridge, with a force organized in eastern Kentucky, was advancing to destroy these salt-works, which were important to the Confederacy. We were not well informed concerning the strength of the expedition, the direction of his advance, or the troops opposing him. The orders received by Colonel Preston had simply directed him to report with the regiment at Saltville as quickly as possible. Now we were to ascertain the situation.

By the time we had located our camp, Henry arrived with the horses. Our headquarters were established under a wide-spreading sugar-maple, where he proceeded to build a roaring fire, and spread our blankets upon the first incline of a hill. After unbuckling his sword and standing it against a tree, the colonel, seated upon a camp-stool, produced a comb, with which he caressed his long beard, and proceeded to swear, in livid and picturesque fluency, about everybody and everything he knew, without any ill temper or malice whatsoever. Henry busied himself brewing a pot of tea and preparing a really dainty meal. He always had a mysterious store of good things supplied by “Ole Missis,” who warned him to hide them from “Ole Marster” until used, because she knew he would surely give them away to some poor soldier, if they came into his possession. Whenever provisions ran low, Henry disappeared for a day or two, and when he returned he came “bearing sheaves.” The colonel's home in Montgomery County was not so far away that it was out of striking distance of the faithful slave, and there he found “Ole Missis,” one of God's noblest and best creatures, praying for “Ole Marster” and preparing comforts for him. Mrs. Preston was known far and wide as the most devout woman in all the countryside. She often wept at the unregenerate profanity of her husband, whose only fault was that inveterate habit.

Once I asked Henry if the colonel swore at home.

“Yes, sir, he do!” said Henry emphatically. “Ole Marster will cuss anywhar, nothin' kain't stop him. But, Lord, lieutenant, he doan' mean nothin' by it. Outside of cussin' he's des as good and des as 'ligious as Ole Missis; and bofe of 'em gwine to be saved, as sho' as you born, fur Ole Missis prays enough to wipe out Ole Marster's swearin', an' neither doan' do no harm in de world, and I know Gord ain't gwine to separate no such pa'r of people ez dey is, in Heaven.”

We sat in the cheery light of our camp-fire and refreshed ourselves with an excellent cup of tea. The autumn air was nipping, and the newly risen moon struggled through the mists which rose from the valley around the salt-wells.

“How are the horses feeling, Henry?” inquired the colonel.

“Fuss rate, sir. We tuk it easy comin' down, and they is fresh as kittens.”

“Can you ride, young 'un?” said the colonel, turning to me, as he dropped a coal from his hand into his long pipe and puffed away contentedly. Assured that I could he directed Henry to saddle Bob and Robin, and said, “I want to ride out somewhere and find out something I don't know what we came here for, or who is coming, or who is going to do the fighting.”

We rode out together to the depot. Ascertaining there that General Jackson, of Tennessee, called “Mudwall,” as the commanding officer, we repaired to his headquarters. From him we soon ascertained what troops were on hand, and the location of the enemy. During the day, General Jackson's forces north of the Holston had been skirmishing with Burbridge's advance, and retiring before him. To-night, Burbridge was camped a short distance across the river, and our picket lines were only about three miles from town. Our main body of cavalry was camped near the ford, and there it was proposed to give the enemy battle on the morrow.

Old “Mudwall” was a common-looking man, with a drawl in his voice, and appeared to be taking things very easy. Still, he showed courage and intelligence in his dispositions. He told us he was expecting to be reinforced by Robertson's cavalry, which was coming up from east Tennessee. He hoped they would arrive before morning, but intended to fight whether they reached him in time or not.

“Kernel,” said he, “my men tell me the Yanks have got a lot of nigger soldiers along. Do you think your reserves will fight niggers?”

“Fight 'em?” said the old colonel, bristling up; “by - ,sir they'll eat 'em up! No! not eat 'em up! That's too much! By - , sir, we'll cut 'em up!”

General Jackson explained the plan of battle to Colonel Preston; showed him how his line of battle would be formed upon the river, above and below the ford; explained what troops he proposed to place in front; and then pointed out to us a little valley on the left of, and at right angles to, the road to the ford. In that valley we were to take our position in reserve as soon as the enemy appeared area and firing began. It was but a short distance from our camp. As we rode homeward, the colonel visited the ground we were to occupy. It was now bright moonlight. After going a short distance down the depression he said, “This place is as snug and safe as a dovecote. We can sleep here to-morrow until we are ordered in.”

He was jolly at the prospect of a fight. I told him what a good joke on my father I considered it that, sending me down here to get me out of harm's way, I had come straight to a battle. He and my father were old and devoted friends. When he heard that, instead of joining in my laughter, he grew silent, and at last, with an effort at badinage, he said, “I don't care a - whether you get shot or not, but, boy, I would not be compelled to tell the general about it, if you are hurt, for all the wealth of the Indies.” The idea seemed to prey upon him. In the few short hours we had been together, he had evidently begun to look upon me as his pet. He had few congenial companions among his rough command, and he preferred always the society of young people. When we reached camp, he stood warming himself by the fire, musing, as he held out his hands to the glare.

“Fetch my woolen nightcap, Henry,” said he, at last; and, as he fitted it over his white locks, he gave a sigh, saying, “what the devil did they send you here for anyhow? There's nothing for you to do.” Changing his mood as he turned towards his pallet, his face broke into a broad grin, and he exclaimed, “Oh, I know! They sent you to keep my back warm. I told Kemper I had the rheumatics, and he sent you to snuggle up to me o' nights. Come on to bed.”

So, doing as I was bid, I crawled up close to Colonel Bob, and, for many and many a night thereafter, that was the way we always fell asleep together. God bless him! I know he is in heaven. A heart more tender, a soul more generous, a courage more dauntless, no man ever possessed; and in battle, in bivouac, or under his own roof- tree he was the sweetest old man that ever granted to a young one the privilege of his instruction and confidence, - barring one fault, that he “swore like our army in Flanders.”

Up betimes in the morning, we found the road to the ford filled with cavalrymen. Some had fallen back before the advance of the enemy; some had arrived from Abingdon during the night. All were dismounting to fight on foot. Horse details were leading the beasts back to positions of safety.

We moved our command out promptly, and defiled to our assigned position on the left. The hill in our front, on which our advance line was posted, concealed us completely from the enemy. Behind us, another hill of unusual height, cleared on its summit, gave a battery planted there the range of the ford and of the ground beyond. Our front lines had not completed their formations on the river bluffs when we heard first a volley, and afterwards a dropping fire of musketry. Our pickets beyond the river were engaged, and falling back before the advancing enemy. Climbing the hill behind us, the view was excellent.

Soon our videttes were all safely across the ford and within our lines, and the next move in the game was to be made by the enemy. Out he came in due time, in battle array, - infantry, cavalry, and artillery, - showing himself along the edge of the woods which crowned the slopes of pasture land beyond the ford.

“Bang!” went the guns of the battery on the hill behind us, and a flock of little six-pound shells flew singing over our heads towards some cavalry debouching from the woods a mile away. The artillery of the enemy promptly took position and delivered a return fire, but was unable to secure an elevation sufficient to reach our battery.

Out of sight, fully protected, our regiment lay then between those dueling batteries. It was very noisy, for the shells of the enemy exploded in the woods on the hillside in our rear. Curious to know how our raw recruits would behave under fire, I returned to where they were and was much gratified at the spirit of the men, especially the youngsters. It was with difficulty that the colonel kept them from scrambling up to the top of the hill in our front to watch the fight. The men were conducting themselves like veterans. Many of the boys were sighting their guns, and showing how they would “shoot a nigger,” if they had a chance.

“Where are your field officers, colonel?” said I, observing that he was the only one upon the ground. “The lieutenant- colonel is on furlough, and the major cut his foot with an axe last week, and is in the hospital at Dublin,” said he, apparently unconscious that their absence made any difference, or should be supplied. “Say, young'un, you'll have to give orders to the left side. I'll attend to the right.” By the left side he meant the left flank of the regiment. He proposed that he should act as colonel and lieutenant-colonel, and was unconsciously promoting me to be major.

“But, colonel,” I protested, “will not your senior captains take offense that you do not assign them to the positions to which their rank entitles them?”

“Shut up!” said he fiercely; “I'm running this regiment They don't know, and don't care a - about that! I know what I want. If you put such notions in their heads, there'll be no end of trouble here. You go and do what I tell you! Do you hear?” So off I went, and perched myself opposite the left battalion. I did not know a man in the regiment, or half a dozen officers. It would not have surprised me to hear them tell me to go to the devil when I undertook to give them commands. It seems, however, that they considered me as a member of the colonel's staff, and nobody raised any question of precedence.

The battle of Saltville was a very pretty affair. The enemy advanced with great spirit to the attack, but our troops on our first line had little difficulty in repulsing him. Only once were we brought under fire. Near midday, some colored troops of the enemy found a rather open place on the left of our line, near where the streamlet, coursing through the depression we occupied, entered the river, at a point where it was shallow and rocky. They pushed up dangerously near to this possible crossing, and their bullets began to search our valley. The officer commanding the line in our front ran down to where we were asking for reinforcements. Colonel Bob, without a moment's hesitation, moved our left battalion down the valley and up the hill.

There the men laid down on the bluffs, and were hotly engaged for fifteen minutes, driving the enemy back with a loss of but one or two of our men. Then we were ordered to withdraw and resume our place in reserve, and took no further part in the action.

The Confederate losses were quite heavy, especially upon the hill in our immediate front. There Colonel Trimble, in command, was killed in sight of, and but a hundred yards in front of, our men. His death was remarkable. He was standing still, directing the firing of his troops. Of a sudden he sprang high in the air, with arms and legs extended at full length. He leaped at least five feet, and fell to the ground collapsed and stone-dead. We afterwards learned that he was shot through the heart, and were told that this spasmodic action is not at all unusual in such instances.

Our forces captured about two hundred prisoners, mostly wounded. By three o'clock, Burbridge was in full retreat, pursued by our cavalry. All danger being past, we were directed the next day to repair to Wytheville and go into camp. While our reserve regiment had not been seriously engaged, another regiment of reserves commanded by Colonel Tom Preston, was in the front line, acquired a great reputation for its gallantry in the action, and sustained severe losses.

“Not much of a fight for us,” said Colonel Bob contemptuously, that night. He seemed graveled at the better luck of his cousin Tom. His impatience to have a hand in the sport had given me some very unpleasant moments. All during the day he would beckon to me to leave my post as major, and, converting me into a courier for a while, he would send me to the general with requests for leave to “move up.” The general was on the other side of the road leading to the ford. The bullets were singing up that road like bumble-bees, and every time I crossed it, my heart was in my mouth. My sudden transitions from major to courier and back again were most amusing.

“Well, the Yankees didn't kill papa's little bouncing boy after all,” said he contentedly, as we hugged up together under the blankets that night. “I'm glad of it, for you're warm as a toast, and my back is better already.” I knew how much stronger his feeling was than he expressed it.

At Wytheville, the regiment was ordered to drill, and an additional drill-master arrived. We two toiled away at our hopeless task of making men sixty years old stand straight and keep step with sixteen-year-old boys. One day I suggested to Colonel Bob that, if he would let me make up a company of boys by selections from several companies, I would give him a really efficient company. He liked the idea, and before long we had a real slashing company of soldiers, worthy of any regiment.

About November 1, we were ordered to move to Christiansburg, and march thence into Floyd County, deserter- hunting. The mountainous regions of southwest Virginia; western North Carolina, and east Tennessee were the places of rendezvous for runaway Confederate soldiers. So numerous and so bold had they become in Floyd County, Virginia, that they not only defied arrest, but often formed bands, seized Confederate supplies, and threatened the property and even the lives of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers. Our command was ordered there to break up some of these organizations, and to capture the ringleaders. It was a thankless task, but one requiring some ability, and not unattended with danger.

Marching out from Christiansburg to a point in the mountains of Floyd, we went into camp in the very heart of what was known as Sisson's Kingdom. That was the name of a large family residing there. Many of them had volunteered, and then deserted; and now they and their friends held sway, defied the law, invited other runaways to join them, and resisted all control of Confederate authority.

When this state of affairs, extending over a wide stretch of country, became known to me in the autumn of 1864, it caused my first misgivings concerning our ultimate success; it was so widespread, and so strangely in contrast with the loyalty of the mountaineers in the Revolution, when Washington proclaimed that to them he looked as his last reliance in extremity.

Colonel Preston, notwithstanding his genial nature, was a man of resources and firmness. If he hated one mean thing worse than another, it was a sneak. He counted these deserters among the most contemptible of the human race; and, while he was incapable of brutality towards any living creature, he knew when to be severe, and believed it was his duty to deal with them summarily, and break them up.

His first advices upon our arrival were to the effect that our presence had caused the deserters to abscond. He did not believe a word of this, but pretended that he did. With great cunning, he acted as if he proposed making no efforts to secure them. At the same time, through a well-planned system of spies, he was ascertaining accurately their whereabouts and habits. More than once, he sent me many miles away to receive reports from his spies, so as to avoid having them seen about our own camp.

In due time, he was ready to act. The deserters, who had in fact left their homes when we appeared, began to make their presence felt. Lured by our apparent indifference, they became incautious. The old fellow knew the location of the house of every deserter, and which were ringleaders, and which of them were at home. He had also located several deserter camps in the mountains. Now came the part of his plan most difficult of execution. Awaiting the time when the moon rose late, he divided several companies of our regiment into small parties under command of intelligent officers. The men were not told of the nature of the expedition. Only the officers intrusted with the work were thoroughly instructed in the locations to be sought, and the duties to be performed.

Upon the night selected, we started forth. Those having the greatest distances to travel left earliest. The man whom I was assigned to capture was a notorious fellow, living about six miles away in a sequestered gorge of the mountains, quite remote from any road. I had a party of ten men. A guide conducted us, and the way in which he threaded his course in the darkness through a trackless forest was truly marvelous. Towards midnight he whispered that we were nearing the deserter's cabin.

Leaving the men behind us, we approached and walked around the premises to get the correct location. Returning I brought the men up and instructed them in their duties. They were deployed in a circle around the premises and advanced by signals given from man to man. It was a business calculated to make a man's blood run very chilly. A dog barked! He came bounding out. One of the men plunged a bayonet into his breast, between his forelegs, so true that he never yelped or whined.

“Who's there?” called a sharp, nasal, female voice from within. No one answered. The words were repeated. I was to do the talking.

“Is that Mrs. - ?” I asked, as soon as I could control my voice.

“Yes. Who are you? what do you want?” came back quickly and excitedly. I dropped to the ground, placed my ear to it, and was sure I heard shuffling about within the house, and a sound like that of a closing door.

When she had repeated her questions, I said quietly, “We have come to arrest your husband. He need not attempt to resist or escape. The house is surrounded.”

Betraying her excitement by her strident answer, she exclaimed: “William ean't here, thank God, and ean't bin here for more 'n a month. I hope by this he has reached the Yankee lines. Thar's whar he started fur, n' whar I told him to go ef he didn't want to be killed.”

“You must permit us to search the house, madam,” as kindly as I could.

HINTS from home indicated that by this time visitors to the Confederate capital were most welcome when they brought their rations.

I had been living in a land of milk and honey. In the rich pasture lands of the southwest, people were still blessed with comparative plenty. Their herds of cattle were unexhausted, and supplied them with abundance of dairy products. Before starting on furlough, I gathered together quite a supply of butter, eggs, maple sugar, honey, and other household comforts. We had no express service, and, to guard against the plunder of my treasures, I rode with them in a baggage-car. Butter cost only $8 a pound and eggs were but $3 a dozen, in southwest Virginia, whereas the prices in Richmond were $25 a pound and $6 a dozen.

On arriving in Richmond, I was hailed as a shrewd trader and rare purveyor. The city, in its chill winter garb, showed signs of desperate depletion. The problem of sustenance had become serious, even with the rich.

The clothing of the most prosperous was simple, domestic, even rough. The poorer classes were scantily clad in every kind of makeshift garment, ofttimes in rags. People without overcoats met one another upon the streets, and talked over the prospects of peace, with their teeth chattering, their thin garments buttoned over their chests their shoulders drawn up, their gloveless hands sunk deep into their pockets for warmth. At meals, the dishes were few and simple, procured at prices which sound fabulous. Many a family existed upon little else than bacon and cornfield peas. General Lee, who had a keen sense of humor, and who, under less trying conditions, would have owed his wit to play freely, was once asked by some idle chatterer who, in his opinion, was the best friend of the Confederacy. Answering a fool according to his folly, he replied, with a twinkle of his eye, “The only unfailing friend the Confederacy ever had was cornfield peas.”

Many States have chosen flowers as their emblem. Some, if not all, of the members of the Confederate sisterhood ought, in gratitude, to select the blossom of the corn-field pea. Time was when it was their “friend in need and friend indeed.” Nobody knows how many people in the Confederacy it kept from actual starvation. I never see a bag of cornfield peas without feeling like taking off my hat and saying, “Here is to you and the rest of your family. May you live long and prosper.”

Even the banked and economically screened coals in the grates showed the pinch of hard times. When gas was produced at all, it was of the most inferior quality, and at such exorbitant prices that most people were reduced to the use of tallow candles.

Hospitable friends, with ample means, were ashamed to invite visitors to share their humble fare. Long lines of stores were closed: there was nothing to sell. Cigars of ordinary quality were $10 each, and whiskey was $5 a drink. I needed a uniform coat. After diligent bargaining I engaged one at $2000, payable on delivery. My pay was $120 a month, but I borrowed the money, ordered the coat, and had to wait a month for it. A man who brought articles through the Union lines, by making trips in a canoe across the Chesapeake Bay, procured a black felt hat for me. I considered it a bargain when he delivered it for $100. I bought some leather from a tan-vat while in southwest Virginia, and the making of the boots with my own leather cost me $150.

The town was filled with hospitals. Several of then took their names from the people whose houses had been devoted to these uses. Many ladies had volunteered as matrons, and even as attendants. It was part of the daily life of Richmond for women to save something from their scant sustenance, and take or send it to the sick and wounded. One devoted woman so distinguished and endeared herself to everybody by her self-sacrifice that the name of Sally Tompkins is known to the Confederate as well as Florence Nightingale to the British, or Clara Barton to Americans. She was commissioned a captain. and the boys all call her, even now, “Captain Sally.” God will make her an officer of higher grade.

My father had long since rejoined his brigade. They were now transferred to the right of our army at Hatcher's Run. The privations and sufferings which officers and men were undergoing were very fearful. They were huddled in snow and mud, without adequate supplies of food or fuel or clothing. I went out to the camp, but had not heart to remain long. The struggle was no longer a test of valor in excitement: it had become one of inactive endurance.

The Confederate authorities had adopted the policy of enlisting negro troops. One sunny afternoon I visited the Capitol Square, and witnessed the parade and drill of a battalion of Confederate darkeys. The sight was in strange contrast with other parades I had witnessed there, - that, for example, of the New York Seventh in 1858 or of the cadets, even, in the preceding May.

AT the time of the evacuation of Richmond, in 1865, I had been in the Confederate army for about ten months, had reached the mature age of eighteen, and had attained the rank of lieutenant. I was for the time at Clover station on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, south of the fallen capital. A light glimmered in headquarters and at the telegraph station. Suspecting that news of importance had been received, and knowing the telegraph operator well, I repaired to his office. He was sitting at his instrument, closely attentive to its busy clicking.

“Any news, Tom?” inquired I.

Holding up his hand he said, “Yes! hush!” and continued to listen. Then, seizing his pad and pencil, he wrote rapidly. Again the clicking of the instrument began, and he resumed his attitude of intent listening. He was catching messages passing over the lines to Danville. During a lull, he informed me that heavy fighting on the right of the army at Five Forks had been going on all day, in which the slaughter on both sides had been very great, and that there were reports of the evacuation of Petersburg. Repairing to the quarters of General Walker, I found that he had substantially the same advices. Vainly and despondently we waited until late night for more particulars.

Sunday morning broke clear and calm. It was one the first of those heavenly spring days which to me seem brighter in Virginia than elsewhere. Sitting in a sunny spot near the telegraph station, a party of staff officers waited for telegrams until nearly eleven o'clock. Then a storm of news broke upon us, every word of which was freighted with deep import to our cause.

Click - click - click. “Our lines in front of Petersburg were broken this morning. General Lee is retiring from the city.”

Click - click - click. “General A. P. Hill was killed.”

Click - click - click. “Colonel William Pegram of the artillery also killed.”

Click - click - click. “In the battle of Five Forks, which continued until long after dark last night, Pickett was overwhelmed by Sheridan with a greatly superior force of cavalry and infantry, and the enemy is now endeavoring to turn our right, which is retiring toward the Appomattox, to make a stand there.”

Click - click - click. “Petersburg is evacuated. Our army in full retreat toward Burkeville.”

Click - click - click. “General Lee has notified the President that he can no longer hold Richmond, and orders have been issued for the immediate evacuation of the city. The town is the scene of the utmost turmoil and confusion.”

General Walker issued the necessary commands to place our own house in order. There was not much to be done. Such government stores and provisions as were at our post were promptly put on freight cars, and every preparation was made for an orderly departure, if necessary. We expected that Lee would make a stand at or near Burkeville, forty miles distant, and that, if he must, he would retreat along the line of the Richmond and Danville Railroad. From the accounts of the fighting, I felt sure that my father's command was in the thick of it; and this fear gave an added trouble to the gloomy reflections of those sad hours.

When we recall the way in which the most startling events in our lives have happened, we note how differently they unfolded themselves from our previous thought of them. Nay, more: we all recall that when great events which we had anticipated as possible or probable, have actually begun to occur, we have failed to recognize them So it was now with me. That the war might end disastrously to the Confederacy, I had long regarded as a possibility; that our army was sadly depleted and in great want, I knew; but that it was literally worn out and killed out and starved out, I did not realize. The idea that within a week it would stack arms at Appomattox, surrender, and be disbanded did not enter into my mind even then. I still thought that it would retreat, and, abandoning Richmond, fall back to some new position, where it would fight many other battles before the issue was decided.

A few hours later, train after train, all loaded to their utmost capacity with whatever could be transported from the doomed capital, came puffing past Clover Station on the way southward. These trains bore many men who, in the excitement, were unwilling to admit that all was lost. They frankly deplored the necessity of giving up the Confederate capital, but insisted that the army was not beaten or demoralized, and was retreating in good order. They argued that Lee, relieved of the burden of defending his long lines from Richmond to Petersburg, and of the hard task of maintaining his communications, would draw Grant away from his base of supplies, and might now, with that generalship of which we all knew him to be master, be free to administer a stunning if not a crushing blow to Grant in the open, where strategy might overcome force. These arguments cheered and revived me. I hoped it might so turn out. I dared not ask myself if I believed that it would.

Monday morning, April 3, a train passed Clover bearing the President, his Cabinet and chief advisers, to Danville. They had left Richmond after the midnight of that last Sunday when Mr. Davis was notified, while attending St. Paul's Church, that the immediate evacuation of the city was unavoidable. Mr. Davis sat at a car window. The crowd at the station cheered. He smiled and acknowledged their compliment, but his expression showed physical and mental exhaustion. Near him sat General Bragg, whose shaggy eyebrows and piercing eyes made him look like a much greater man than he ever proved himself to be. In this car was my brother-in-law, Dr. Garnett, family physician to Mr. Davis. I entered, and sat with him a few minutes, to learn what I could about the home folk. His own family had been left at his Richmond residence, to the mercy of the conqueror. The presidential train was followed by many others. One bore the archives and employees of the Treasury Department, another those of the Post Office Department, another those of the War Department. I knew many in all these departments, and they told me the startling incidents of their sudden flight.

I saw a government on wheels. It was the marvelous and incongruous debris of the wreck of the Confederate capital. There were very few women on these trains, but among the last in the long procession were trains bearing indiscriminate cargoes of men and things. In one car was a cage with an African parrot, and a box of tame squirrels and a hunchback! Everybody, not excepting the parrot, was wrought up to a pitch of intense excitement. The last arrivals brought the sad news that Richmond was in flames. Our departing troops had set fire to the tobacco warehouses. The heat, as it reached the hogs heads, caused the tobacco leaves to expand and burst their fastenings, and the wind, catching up the burning tobacco, spread it in a shower of fire upon the doomed city. It was after dark on Monday when the last train from Richmond passed Clover Station bound southward. We were now the northern outpost of the Confederacy. Nothing was between us and the enemy except Lee's army, which was retreating toward us, - if indeed it were coming in this direction. All day Tuesday, and until midday Wednesday, we waited, expecting to hear of the arrival of our army at Burkeville, or some tidings of its whereabouts. But the railroad stretching northward was as silent as the grave. The cessation of all traffic gave our place a Sabbath stillness. Until now, there had been the constant rumble of trains on this main line of supplies to the army. After the intense excitement of Monday, when the whole Confederate government came rushing past at intervals of a few minutes, the unbroken silence reminded one of death after violent convulsions.

We still maintained telegraphic communication with Burkeville, but we could get no definite information concerning the whereabouts of Lee. Telegrams received Tuesday informed us he was near Amelia Court House. Wednesday morning we tried in vain to call up Amelia Court House. A little later, Burkeville reported the wires cut at Jetersville, ten miles to the north, between Burkeville and Amelia Court House. When General Walker heard this, he quietly remarked, “They are pressing him off the line of this road, and forcing him to retreat by the Southside Road to Lynchburg.” I knew the topography of the country well enough to realize that if the army passed Burkeville Junction, moving westward, our position would be on the left flank and rear of the Union army, and that we must retire or be captured. Many messages came from Mr. Davis at Danville, inquiring for news from General Lee. Shortly after General Walker reported that the wires were cut at Jetersville, another message came from Mr. Davis. He asked if General Walker had a trusted man or officer who, if supplied with an engine, would venture down the road toward Burkeville endeavor to communicate with General Lee, ascertain from him his situation and future plans, and report to the President. I was present when this telegram arrived. By good luck, other and older officers were absent. The suspense and inactivity of the past three days had been unendurable, and I volunteered gladly for the service. At first, General Walker said that I was too young; but after considering the matter, he ordered me to hold myself in readiness, and notified Mr. Davis that he had the man he wanted, and requested him to send the engine. The engine, with tender and a baggage car, arrived about eight P. M.

General Walker summoned me to headquarters, and gave me my final instructions. Taking the map, he showed me that in all probability the enemy had forced General Lee westward from Burkeville, and that there was danger of finding the Union troops already there. I was to proceed very slowly and cautiously. If the enemy was not in Burkeville, I must use my judgment whether to switch my train on the Southside Road and run westward, or to leave the car and take a horse. If the enemy had reached Burkeville, as he feared, I was to run back to a station called Meherrin, return the engine, secure a horse, and endeavor to reach General Lee. “The reason that I suspect the presence of the enemy at Burkeville,” said he,“ is that this evening, after a long silence, we have received several telegrams purporting to come from General Lee, urging the forwarding of stores to that point. From the language used, I am satisfied that it is a trick to capture the trains. But I may be mistaken. You must be careful to ascertain the facts before you get too close to the place. Do not allow yourself to be captured.

The general was not a demonstrative man. He gave me an order which Mr. Davis had signed in blank, in which my name was inserted by General Walker, setting forth that, as special messenger of the President, I was authorized to impress all necessary men, horses, and provisions to carry out my instructions. He accompanied me to the train, and remarked that he had determined to try me, as I seemed so anxious to go; that it was a delicate and dangerous mission, and that its success depended upon my quickness, ability to judge of situations as they arose, and powers of endurance. He ordered the engineer, a young, strong fellow, to place himself implicitly under my command. I threw a pair of blankets into the car, shook hands cordially with the general, buttoned my papers in my breast pocket, and told the engineer to start. I did not see General Walker again for more than twenty years.

I carried no arms except a navy revolver at my hip, with some loose cartridges in my haversack. The night was chilly, still, and overcast. The moon struggled out now and then from watery clouds. We had no headlight, nor any light in the car. It seemed to me that our train was the noisiest I had ever heard. The track was badly worn and very rough. In many places it had been bolstered up with beams of wood faced with scrap iron, and we were compelled to move slowly. The stations were deserted. We had to put on our own wood and water. I lay down to rest, but nervousness banished sleep. The solitude of the car became unbearable. When we stopped at a water-tank, I swung down from the car and clambered up to the engine. Knowing that we might have to reverse it suddenly, I ordered the engineer to cut loose the baggage car and leave it behind. This proved to be wise precaution.

About two o'clock, we reached Meherrin Station, twelve miles south of Burkeville. It was dark, and the station was deserted. I succeeded in getting an answer from an man in a house near by, after hammering a long time upon the door. He had heard us, but he was afraid to reply.

“Have you heard anything from Lee's army?” I asked.

“Naw, nothin' at all. I heerd he was at Amelia Cote House yisterday.”

“Have you heard of or seen any Yankees hereabouts?”

“None here yit. I heerd there was some at Green Bay yisterday, but they had done gone back.”

“Back where?”

“I dunno. Back to Grant's army, I reckin.”

“Where is Grant's army?”

“Gord knows. It 'pears to me like it's everywhar.”

“Are there any Yankees at Burkeville?”

“I dunno. I see a man come by here late last evenin', he said he come from Burkeville; so I reckin there weren't none thar when he lef', but whether they is come sence, I can't say.”

I determined to push on. When we reached Green Bay, eight miles from Burkeville, the place was dark and deserted. There was nobody from whom we could get information. A whippoorwill in the swamp added to the oppressive silence all about. Moving onward, we discovered as we cautiously approached a turn in the road near Burkeville, the reflection of lights against the low hanging clouds. Evidently, somebody was ahead, and somebody was building fires. Were these reflections from the camp-fires of Lee's or of Grant's army, or of any army at all? On our right, concealing us from the village and the village from us, was a body of pine woods. Not until we turned the angle of these woods could we see anything. I was standing by the engineer. We were both uncertain what to do. At first, I thought I would get down and investigate; but I reflected that I should lose much time in getting back to the engine, whereas, if I pushed boldly forward until we were discovered, I should be safe if those who saw us were friends, and able to retreat rapidly if they were enemies.

“Go ahead!” I said to the engineer.

“What, lieutenant? Ain't you afraid they are Yankees? If they are, we're goners,” said he hesitatingly.

“Go ahead!” I repeated; and in two minutes more we were at the curve, with the strong glare of many fires lighting up our engine. What a sight! Lines of men were heaving at the rails by the light of fires built for working. The fires and working parties crossed our route to westward, showing that the latter were devoting their attention to the Southside Road. In the excitement of the moment, I thought they were destroying the track. In fact, as I afterward learned, they were merely changing the gauge of the rails. Grant, with that wonderful power he possessed of doing everything at once, was already altering the railroad gauge so as to fetch provisions up to his army. The enemy was not only in Burkeville, but he had been there all day, and was thus following up his occupation of the place. Lee must be to the north or to the west of him, pushed away from Danville Road, and either upon or trying to reach the Southside Railroad, which led to Lynchburg. All these things I thought out a little later, but not just at that moment. A blazing meteor would not have astonished our foes more than the sight of our locomotive. They had not heard our approach, amid the noise and confusion of their own work. They had no picket out in our direction, for this was their rear. In an instant, a number of troopers rushed for their horses and came galloping down upon us. They were but two or three hundred yards away.

“Reverse the engine!” I said to the engineer. He seemed paralyzed. I drew my pistol.

“It's no use, lieutenant. They'll kill us before we get under away,” and he fumbled with his lever.

“Reverse, or you're a dead man!” I shouted, clapping the muzzle of my pistol behind his ear. He heaved at the lever; the engine began to move, but how slowly! The troopers were coming on. We heard them cry, “Surrender!” The engine was quickening her beats. They saw that we were running, and they opened fire on us. We lay down flat, and let the locomotive go. The fireman on the tender was in an exposed position, and seemed to be endeavoring to burrow in the coal. A shot broke a window above us. Presently the firing ceased. Two or three of the foremost of the cavalrymen had tumbled into a cattle-guard, in their reckless pursuit. We were safe now, except that the engine and tender were in momentary danger of jumping the rotten track.

When we were well out of harm's way, the engineer, with whom I had been on very friendly terms til this last episode, turned to me and asked, with a grieved look, “Lieutenant, would you have blowed my brains out sure 'nuff if I hadn't done what you tole me?”

“I would that,” I replied, not much disposed to talk; for I was thinking, and thinking hard, what next to do.

“Well,” said he, with a sigh, as with a greasy rag he gave a fresh rub to a piece of machinery, “all say is, I don't want to travel with you no mo'.”

“You'll not have to travel far,” I rejoined. “I'll get off at Meherrin, and you can go back.”

“What” exclaimed he. “You goin' to get off there in the dark by yourself, with no hoss, and right in the middle of the Yankees? Durn my skin if I'd do it for Jeff Davis hisself!”

Upon our arrival at Meherrin, I wrote a few lines to General Walker, describing the position of the enemy and telling him that I hoped to reach General Lee near High Bridge by traveling across the base of a triangle formed by the two railroads from Burkeville and my route, and that I would communicate with him further when I could.

It was a lonesome feeling that came over me when the engine went southward, leaving me alone and in the dark at Meherrin. The chill of daybreak was coming on, when I stepped out briskly upon a road leading northward. I knew that every minute counted, and that there was no hope of securing a horse in that vicinity. I think that I walked three or four miles. Day broke and the sun rove before I came to an opening. A kind Providence must have guided my steps, for at the very first house I reached, a pretty mare stood at the horse- rack saddled and bridled, as if waiting for me. The house was in a grove by the roadside. I found a hospitable reception, and was invited to breakfast. My night's work had made me ravenous. My host was past military age, but he seemed dazed at the prospect of falling into the hands of the enemy. I learned from him that Sheridan's cavalry had advanced nearly to his place the day before. We ate breakfast almost in silence. At the table I found Sergeant Wilkins of the Black Walnut Troop, from Halifax County. He had been on “horse furlough.” Confederate cavalrymen supplied their own horses, and his horse furlough meant that his horse had broken down, that he had been home to replace it, and that he was now returning to duty with another beast. His mare was beautiful and fresh, - the very animal that I needed. When I told him that I must take his horse, he laughed, as if I were joking; then he positively refused; but finally, when I showed the sign manual of Jefferson Davis, he yielded, very reluctantly. It was perhaps fortunate for Sergeant Wilkins that he was obliged to go home again, for his cavalry command was engaged heavily that day, and every day thereafter, until the surrender at Appomattox.

On the morning of April 6, mounted upon as fine a mare as there was in the Confederacy, I sallied forth in search of General Lee. I started northward for the Southside Railroad. It was not long before I heard cannon to the northeast. Thinking that the sounds came from the enemy in the rear of Lee, I endeavored to bear sufficiently westward to avoid the Union forces. Seeing no sign of either army, I was going along leisurely, when a noise behind me attracted my attention. Turning in my saddle, I saw at a distance of several hundred yards the head of a cavalry command coming from the east, and turning out of a cross-road that I had passed into the road that I was traveling. They saw me, and pretended to give chase; but their horses were jaded, and my mare was fresh and swift. The few shots they fired went wide of us, and I galloped out of range quickly and safely. My filly, after her spin, was mettlesome, and as I held her in hand, I chuckled to think how easy it was to keep out of harm's way on such a beast.

But this was not to be my easy day. I was rapidly approaching another road, which came into my road from the east. I saw another column of Union cavalry filing into my road, and going in the same direction that I was going. Here was a pretty pickle! We were in the woods. Did they see me? To be sure they did. Of course they knew of the parallel column of their own troops which I had passed, and I think they first mistook me for a friend. But I could not ride forward: I should have come upon the rear of their column. I could not turn back: the cavalry force behind was not a quarter of a mile away. I stopped, thus disclosing who I was. Several of them made a dart for me; several more took shots with their carbines; and once more the little mare and I were dashing off, this time through the woods to the west.

What a bird she was, that little mare! At a low fence in the woods she did not make a pause or blunder, but cleared it without turning a hair. I resolved now to get out of the way, for it was very evident that I was trying to reach General Lee by riding across the advance columns of Sheridan, who was on Lee's flank. Going at a merry pace, just when my heart was ceasing to jump and I was congratulating myself upon a lucky escape, I was “struck flat aback,” as sailors say. From behind a large oak a keen, racy-looking fellow stepped forth, and, leveling his cavalry carbine, called “Halt!” He was not ten feet away.

Halt I did. It is all over now, thought I, for I did not doubt that he was a Jesse scout. (That was the name applied by us to Union scouts who disguised themselves in our uniform.) He looked too neat and clean for one of our men. The words “I surrender” were on my lips, when he asked, “Who are you?” I had half a mind to lie about it, but I gave my true name and rank. “What the devil are you doing here, then?” he exclaimed, his whole manner changing. I told him. “If that is so,” said he, lowering his gun, to my great relief, “I must help to get you out. The Yankees are all around us. Come on.” He led the way rapidly to where his own horse was tied behind some cedar bushes, and, mounting, bade me follow him. He knew the woods well. As we rode along, I ventured to inquire who he was. “Curtis,” said he, - “one of General Rooney Lee's scouts. I have been hanging on the flank of this cavalry for several days. They are evidently pushing for the High Bridge, to cut the army off from crossing there.”

After telling him of my adventure, I added: “You gave me a great fright. I thought you were a Yankee, sure, and came near telling you that I was one.”

“It is well you did not. I am taking no prisoners on this trip,” he rejoined, tapping the butt of his carbine significantly.

“There they go,” said he, as we came to an opening and saw the Union cavalry winding down a real-clay road to the north of us, traveling parallel with our own route. “We must hurry, or they'll reach the Flat Creek ford ahead of us. Fitz Lee is somewhere near here, and there'll be fun when he sees them. There are not many of them, and they are pressing too far ahead of their main column.”

After a sharp ride through the forest, we came to a wooded hill overlooking the ford of Flat Creek, a stream which runs northward, entering the Appomattox near High Bridge.

“Wait here a moment,” said Curtis. “Let me ride out and see if we are safe.” Going on to a Point where he could reconnoitre, he turned back, rose in his stirrups, waved his hand, and crying, “Come on, quick!” galloped down the hill to the ford.

I followed; but he had not accurately calculated the distance. The head of the column of Union cavalry was in sight when he beckoned to me and made his dash. They saw him and started toward him. As I was considerably behind him, they were much nearer to me than to him. He crossed safely, but the stream was deep, and by the time I was in the middle, my little mare doing her best with the water up to her chest, the Yankees were in easy range, making it uncomfortable for me. The bullets were splashing in the water all around me. I threw myself off the saddle, and, nestling close under the mare's shoulder, I reached the other side unharmed. Curtis and a number of pickets stationed at the ford stood by me manfully. The road beyond the ford ran into a deep gully and made a turn. Behind the protection of this turn, Curtis and the pickets opened fire upon the advancing cavalry, and held them in check until I was safely over. When my horse trotted up with me, wet as a drowned rat, it was time for us all to move on rapidly. In the afternoon, I heard Fitz Lee pouring hot shot into that venturesome body of cavalry, and I was delighted to learn afterward that he had given them severe punishment.

Curtis advised me to go to Farmville, where I would be beyond the chance of encountering more Union cavalry, and then to work eastward toward General Lee. I had been upset by the morning's adventures, and I was somewhat demoralized. About a mile from Farmville, I found myself to the west of a line of battle of infantry, formed on a line running north and south, moving toward the town. Not doubting they were Union troops, I galloped off again, and when I entered Farmville I did not hesitate to inform the commandant that the Yankees were approaching. The news created quite a panic. Artillery was put in position and preparations were made to resist, when it was discovered that the troops I had seen were a reserve regiment of our own, falling back in line of battle to a position near the town. I kept very quiet when I heard men all about me swearing that any cowardly, panic-stricken fool who would set such a report afloat ought to be lynched.

I had now very nearly joined our army, which was coming directly toward me. Early in the afternoon, the advance of our troops appeared. How they straggled, and how demoralized they seemed! Eastward, not far from the Flat Creek ford, a heavy fire opened, and continued for an hour or more. As I afterward learned, Fitz Lee had collided with my cavalry friends of the morning, and, seeing his advantage, had availed himself of it by attacking them fiercely. To the north, about four o'clock, a tremendous fire of artillery and musketry began, and continued until dark. I was riding towards this firing, with my back to Farmville. Very heavy detonations of artillery were followed time and again by crashes of musketry. It was the battle of Sailors' Creek, the most important of those last struggles of which Grant said, “There was as much gallantry displayed by some of the Confederates in these little engagements as was displayed at any time during the war, notwithstanding the sad defeats of the past weeks.” My father's command was doing the best fighting of that day. When Ewell and Custis Lee had been captured, when Pickett's division broke and fled, when Bushrod Johnson, his division commander, left the field ingloriously, my fearless father, bareheaded and desperate, led his brigade into action at Sailors' Creek, and, though completely surrounded, cut his way out, and reached Farmville at daylight with the fragments of his command.

It was long after nightfall when the firing ceased. We had not then learned the particulars, but it was easy to see that the contest had gone against us. The enemy had, in fact, at Sailors' Creek, stampeded the remnant of Pickett's division, broken our lines, captured six general officers, including Generals Ewell and Custis Lee, and burned a large part of our wagon trains. As evening came on, the road was filled with wagons, artillery, and bodies of men, hurrying without organization and in a state of panic toward Farmville. I met two general officers, of high rank and great distinction, who seemed utterly demoralized, and they declared that all was lost. That portion of the army which was still unconquered was falling back with its face to the foe, and bivouacked with its right and left flanks resting upon the Appomattox to cover the crossings to the north side, near Farmville. Upon reaching our lines, I found the divisions of Field and Malone presenting an unbroken and defiant front. Passing from camp to camp in search of General Lee, I encountered General Mahone, who told me where to find General Lee. He said that the enemy had “knocked hell out of Pickett.” “But,” he added savagely, “my fellows are all right. We are just waitin for 'em.” And so they were. When the army surrendered three days later, Mahone's division was in better fighting trim and surrendered more muskets than any other of Lee's army.

It was past midnight when I found General Lee. He was in an open field north of Rice's Station and east of the High Bridge. A camp-fire of fence-rails was burning low. Colonel Charles Marshall sat in an ambulance, with a lantern and a lap-desk. He was preparing orders at the dictation of General Lee, who stood near, with one hand resting on a wheel and one foot upon the end of a log, watching intently the dying embers as he spoke in a low tone to his amanuensis.