omed
from earliest youth to lavish housekeeping, kept it up after her
removal to Wills Forest, and, so long as her health permitted, ever
took delight in making her home all that a kindly, open-handed
hospitality could. Nor do I think its character deteriorated after
your grandfather became its master. Both he and I were fond of
society, and few strangers ever came to town who were not entertained
at Wills Forest. This could not be possible now, but previous to the
war it was not at all impossible, and, during the war, at times, we
received whole families of refugees. I do not mention these facts in a
boastful spirit, but only as a sample of the old customs of the South.

During the winter of 1865, we had the pleasure of entertaining the
family of Colonel Norris of Baltimore, and early in March we had an
unexpected visit from a large party of South Carolinians, who had been
wounded in an attack made by General Kilpatrick upon Gen. Joseph E.
Johnston's command at Fayetteville. Your grandfather met them in the
street seeking for shelter; and, compassionating their forlorn
condition, he directed them to Wills Forest. When we first caught
sight of the cortege surrounding two ambulances, we were alarmed,
thinking that it must be the Yankees coming to deprive us of house and
home. You may, perhaps, imagine the relief when I saw the dear
Confederate gray. I met the cavalcade at the front steps, and bade
them welcome; the wounded were brought in and laid upon beds in the
nursery, after which I directed one of our men, Frank, the
carriage-driver, I think it was, to conduct the horsemen to the
stable, to give the horses a plentiful feed, and then to bring the men
up to the house to get their dinners. In ordinary times, this
unlooked-for addition of more than twenty guests would, no doubt, have
been an unwelcome tax, but in those days preceding the sad termination
of the war there were so many poor, half-starved stragglers from the
different commands passing to and fro, that we were never unprepared
to feed as many as called upon us. At this time, two cooks were kept
continually at work in the kitchen preparing such plain food as we
could command: such as boiled hams, biscuit, loaf bread, corn bread,
and wheat coffee. The milk and butter, all that we had, were joyfully
given to our soldiers. The gray jacket was, indeed, a passport to
every Southern heart. I have fed many a poor, footsore "boy in gray,"
but never in a single insta