nd were on the Atchafalaya River with
friends, all well. While reading my letters, an acquaintance in high
position in the office greeted me, but went on to say, if I knew what
was afoot, my stay in Richmond would be short. Taking the hint, and
feeling improved in health in consequence of relief from anxiety about
my family, I returned to the station at once, and took rail to
Charlottesville. Arrived there, I met the Valley army in march to the
southeast, and joined my command.

That night we camped between Charlottesville and Gordonsville, in Orange
County, the birthplace of my father. A distant kinsman, whom I had never
met, came to invite me to his house in the neighborhood. Learning that I
always slept in camp, he seemed so much distressed as to get my consent
to breakfast with him, if he would engage to have breakfast at the
barbarous hour of sunrise. His house was a little distant from the road;
so, the following morning, he sent a mounted groom to show the way. My
aide, young Hamilton, accompanied me, and Tom of course followed. It was
a fine old mansion, surrounded by well-kept grounds. This immediate
region had not yet been touched by war. Flowering plants and rose trees,
in full bloom, attested the glorious wealth of June. On the broad
portico, to welcome us, stood the host, with his fresh, charming wife,
and, a little retired, a white-headed butler. Greetings over with host
and lady, this delightful creature, with ebon face beaming hospitality,
advanced, holding a salver, on which rested a huge silver goblet filled
with Virginia's nectar, mint julep. Quantities of cracked ice rattled
refreshingly in the goblet; sprigs of fragrant mint peered above its
broad rim; a mass of white sugar, too sweetly indolent to melt, rested
on the mint; and, like rose buds on a snow bank, luscious strawberries
crowned the sugar. Ah! that julep! Mars ne'er received such tipple from
the hands of Ganymede. Breakfast was announced, and what a breakfast! A
beautiful service, snowy table cloth, damask napkins, long unknown;
above all, a lovely woman in crisp gown, with more and handsomer roses
on her cheek than in her garden. 'Twas an idyl in the midst of the stern
realities of war! The table groaned beneath its viands. Sable servitors
brought in, hot and hot from the kitchen, cakes of wondrous forms,
inventions of the tropical imagination of Africa, inflamed by Virginian
hospitality. I was rather a moderate trencherman, but the perfor