h some of Sheridan's Cavalry, which attacked and tried
to ride us down, but was cut to pieces by our cannister fire, and went
off as hard as their horses could run--as if the devil was after them.
Then the surrender closed our service.

=Back to Civil Life=

My comrades, as the rest of the army, scattered to their homes. I went
to my home in Danville, and had to walk 180 miles to get there. After a
few days, which I chiefly employed in trying to get rid of the sensation
of starving, I went to work--got a place in the railroad service.

After eighteen months of this, I proceeded to carry out a purpose that I
had in mind since the closing days of the war. I had been through that
long and bloody conflict; I had been at my gun every time it went into
action, except once when I was lying ill of typhoid fever; I had been in
the path of death many times, and though hit several times, had never
been seriously wounded, or hurt badly enough to have to leave my
gun--and here I was at the end of all this--alive, and well and strong,
and twenty years of age. As I thought of God's merciful protection
through all those years of hardship and danger, a wish and purpose was
born, and got fixed in my mind and heart, to devote my life to the
service of God in the completest way I could as a thanksgiving to Him.
Naturally, my thoughts turned to the ministry of the Gospel, and I
decided to enter the seminary and train for that service as soon as the
way was open.

While I was in the railroad train work, I studied hard in the scraps of
time to get some preparation, and in September, 1866, I entered the
Virginia Theological Seminary along with twenty-five other students--all
of whom were Confederate soldiers. I here tackled a job that was much
more trying than working my old twelve-pounder brass Napoleon gun in a
fight. I would willingly have swapped jobs, if it had been all the same,
but I worked away, the best I could, at the Hebrew, and Greek, and
"Theology," and all the rest, for three years.

Somehow I got through, and graduated, and was ordained by Bishop Johns
of Virginia, the twenty-sixth of June, 1869. Thus the old cannoneer was
transformed into a parson, who intended to try to be as faithful to
duty, as a parson, as the old cannoneer had been. He has carried that
purpose through life ever since. How far he has realized it, others will
have to judge.

After serving for nine years in several parishes in Virginia, I came to
Balti