to give up housekeeping. She had been very
happy and had loved her home. Now she wanted the furnishings to belong
to someone who would appreciate and would care for them. She wrote she
sympathized with them in not having their own furniture and that there
was no one to whom she had rather give hers.

General Lee hated the thought of accepting, until he read on, that if he
could not use the furniture himself, perhaps he could use it in his
college. After some time he wrote the lady he would be very grateful and
would appreciate it very much.

In the meantime Mrs. Lee was looking forward to its coming, for her
large rooms were indeed very bare. At last the great boxes came. General
Lee was busy, so Mrs. Lee waited until he could be present to have them
opened.

After lunch one day, General Lee had men come to open them. Mrs. Lee's
eyes shone as the first box revealed two huge red velvet carpets.

She looked at the General. His eyes were shining too.

"Look, my dear," he said, "The very thing we need! If we cut them
carefully, we will have enough to carpet the platform and the aisles of
the new chapel!"

"Of course," she smiled, never saying one word about how warm and lovely
they would make the double parlors in their own home.

The next box was opened with intense interest. The men lifted out the
upper part of a handsome bookcase. The next brought the lower half, a
lovely desk, with many drawers.

"Oh," thought Mrs. Lee. "That will fill up that terrible space between
the windows."

"This is the very thing we want," General Lee said, as the men took them
to the walk. "We will put that in the basement of the new chapel. We
will use it for our records and put our best books in the bookcase, and
this will be the beginning of our college library."

And so it went. He used the best of everything for his college, and Mrs.
Lee took only the odds and ends which did not fit anywhere else.
Someone told her she should have taken a stand and insisted upon taking
some of the best.

"Oh, no," she laughed, "it was worth giving all of it up to see the joy
the General had in putting it to use in his college. The boys come
first--both of us are so interested in them."

General Lee died in October, 1870, loved by men and women, boys and
girls in both the North and South. His body rests under a beautiful
white marble figure, which was sculptured by his friend, Edward
Valentine. It is called the Recumbent Statue of General Lee