venteen, took himself severely to task before a public
assemblage for his blindness in 1865, and the years immediately
following; and his criticisms must have gone home to others, for the
older men who sat in the audience rose to their feet and shook the house
with their applause. They, too, had been as blind as the boy.

It was perhaps well for Shady Dale that Mr. Sanders came home when he
did. He had been in the field, if not on the forum. He had mingled with
public men, and, as he himself contended, had been "closeted" with one
of the greatest men the country ever produced--the reference being to
Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Sanders had to tell over and over again the story of
how he and Frank Bethune didn't kidnap the President; and he brought
home hundreds of rich and racy anecdotes that he had picked up in the
camp. In those awful days when there was little ready money to be had,
and business was at a standstill, and the courts demoralised, and the
whole social fabric threatening to fall to pieces, it was Mr. Billy
Sanders who went around scattering cheerfulness and good-humour as
carelessly as the children scatter the flowers they have gathered in the
fields.

Mr. Sanders and Francis Bethune had formed a part of the escort that
went with Mr. Davis as far as Washington in Wilkes County. On this
account, Mr. Sanders boasted that at the last meeting of the Confederate
Cabinet held in that town, he had elected himself a member, and was duly
installed. "It was the same," he used to say, "as j'inin' the
Free-masons. The doorkeeper gi' me the grip an' the password, the head
man of the war department knocked me on the forrerd, an' the thing was
done. When Mr. Davis was ready to go, he took me by the hand, an' says,
'William,' says he, 'keep house for the boys till I git back, an' be
shore that you cheer 'em up.'"

This sort of nonsense served its purpose, as Mr. Sanders intended that
it should. Wherever he appeared on the streets a crowd gathered around
him--as large a crowd as the town could furnish. To a spectator standing
a little distance away and out of hearing, the attitude and movements of
these groups presented a singular appearance. The individuals would move
about and swap places, trying to get closer to Mr. Sanders. There would
be a period of silence, and then, suddenly, loud shouts of laughter
would rend the air. Such a spectator, if a stranger, might easily have
imagined that these men and boys, standing close togethe