of the greatest and highest-minded
soldiers of the ages, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. I do not
think of them merely as soldiers, but as knights and champions with
flaming swords. One of them, alas! is gone, but we have the other,
and if man can conquer he will. Here in the West we repose our faith in
Lee, as surely as do you in the East, you who see his face and hear his
voice every day.

I have had two or three letters from Pendleton. That part of the State
is for the present outside the area of conflict, though I hear that the
guerilla bands to the east in the mountains still vex and annoy, and
that Skelly is growing bolder. I foresee the time when we shall have to
reckon with this man, who is a mere brigand.

I hear that the prospects for fruit in our orchards were never finer.
You will remember how you prowled in them when you were a little boy,
Harry, and what a pirate you were among the apples and peaches and pears
and good things that grew on tree and bush and briar in that beautiful
old commonwealth of ours. I often upbraided you then, but I should like
to see you now, far out on a bough as of old, reaching for a big yellow
pear, or a red, red bunch of cherries! Alas! there are many lads who
will never return, who will never see the pear trees and the cherry trees
again, but I repeat I cannot feel that you will be among them. Who would
ever have dreamed when this war began that it could go so far? More than
two years of fierce and deadly battles and I can see no end. A deadlock
and neither side willing to yield! How glad would be the men who made
the war to see both sections back where they were two and a half years
ago! and that's no treason.

Water rose in Harry's eyes. He knew how terribly his father's heart
had been torn by the quarrel between North and South, and that he had
thoughts which he did not tell to his son. Harry was beginning at last
to think some of the same thoughts himself. If the South succeeded, then,
after the war, what? Another war later on or reunion.

The rest of the letter was wholly personal, and in the end it directed
Harry, when writing to him, to address his letters care of the Western
Army under General Bragg. Harry was moved and he responded at once.
He went to the hotel in which he had met the young men who constituted
the leading lights in what was called the Mosaic Club, and, securing
writing materials, made a long reply, which he posted with every