understand you. Please explain."

"Certainly. General Lee never carves and never helps--all that is left
to Colonel Chilton--but General Lee asks the guests what they will have:
they tell him, then he issues his orders, and Colonel Chilton executes
them. That's all."

"Go on, go on!" opening his notebook: "give me an example--tell me
exactly how it is done."

"Suppose, then, that we have beef--we generally have beef. Grace is said
by the chaplain, then General Lee raps on the table with the handle of
his knife and says, 'Attention!' Everybody is silent. Every eye is
turned toward General Lee. He looks at one of us--me, for example--and
I rise and make a military salute. 'Captain C----, what will you be
helped to?' says General Lee. I say 'Beef,' make another salute, and sit
down. General Lee, fixing his eye on Colonel Chilton, says, 'Beef, for
Captain C----.' My plate is passed, helped, and then Colonel Chilton,
handing it to the servant, says,

'Beef for Captain C----,
By order of General Lee.
R. H. CHILTON, A. A. G.'"

And this absurd story went the round of the Southern papers.

After the war, General Lee rarely smiled, and one may say never laughed
outright. Yet he was neither sad nor unsociable. But there was that
about him which made it wellnigh impossible to believe that he could
ever have given completely away to feelings of mirth and indulged in a
real fit of cachinnation. Such, however, was the fact, and it occurred
at a time when, of all others, one would have least expected it--in the
retreat to Appomattox--and General Henry A. Wise was the occasion of it.

On the second or third day of the retreat, General Wise, who had long
desired an interview with General Lee, discovered him at a distance, and
immediately hastened toward him. While he was yet a great way off,
General Lee, who happened at the time to be alone, turned and began to
stare in a way that was most unusual with him. As Wise drew nearer the
stare became intense and mixed with wonderment. A few steps more, and
still General Lee gazed and gazed wonderingly, as if he had never seen
Wise in his life. Amazed and puzzled at General Lee's unmistakable
ignorance of his identity, Wise advanced quite close to him and said
rather stiffly, "Good-morning, General Lee." It was very early and very
cool, too--a sharp spring morning.

As he said this, General Lee's intense gaze relaxed, a smile appeared in
its place, the smile deepened, broa