ago.
Leaving the cars at the nearest station and following the trail
for a dozen miles, I found the Senator snugly ensconced in his
comfortable home at the top of the mountain. He was alone, his
family being "down in the settlements," as he told me. An old
negro man _to whom Vance once belonged,_ as he assured me, was
housekeeper, cook, and butler, besides being the incumbent of
various other offices of usefulness and dignity.

The first inquiry from Vance as, drenched with rain, I entered his
abode and approached a blazing fire, was, "Are you _dry?"_ It
would only gratify an idle curiosity to tell how the first moments
of this memorable visit passed. Suffice it to say that old-time
Southern hospitality was at its best, and so continued till the
morning of the fifth day, when I descended in company with my host
to the accustomed haunts of busy men.

The days and evenings passed with Vance at the cheerful fireside
of his mountain home still live in my memory. He literally "unfolded
himself," and it was indeed worth while to listen to his description
of the quaint times and customs with which he was familiar in
the long ago, to hear of the men he had known and of the stormy
events of which he had been a part.

His public life reached back to a time anterior to the war. He
was in Congress when its Representatives assembled in the Old Hall,
now the "Valhalla" of the nation. Events once of deep significance
were recalled from the mists of a long past; men who had strutted their
brief hour upon the stage and then gone out with the tide were made
to live again. Incidents once fraught with deep consequence but
now relegated to the by-paths of history, were again in visible
presence, as if touched by the enchanter's wand.

The scenes, of which he was the sad and silent witness, attendant upon
the withdrawal of his colleagues and associates from both chambers
of the Capitol, and the appeal to the sword--precursors of the
chapter of blood yet to be written--were never more graphically
depicted by mortal tongue.

I distinctly recall, even at this lapse of time, some of the
incidents he related. When first he was a candidate for Congress,
far back in the fifties, his district embraced a large portion
of the territory of the entire western part of his State. Fully
to appreciate what follows, it must be remembered that at that time
there was in the backwoods country, and in the out-of-the-way
places, far off from the