oung man from Norfolk who had made a good many things. He was killed
or died in the war; so he had not been quite ruined; was worth something
anyhow as a soldier. One of his things was a Psyche, and Cousin Fanny
used to talk a good deal about it; she said it was fine, was a work of
genius. She had even written some verses about it. She repeated them to
me once, and I wrote them down. Here they are:

To Galt's Psyche.

Well art thou called the soul;
For as I gaze on thee,
My spirit, past control,
Springs up in ecstasy.

Thou canst not be dead stone;
For o'er thy lovely face,
Softer than music's tone,
I see the spirit's grace.

The wild aeolian lyre
Is but a silken string,
Till summer winds inspire,
And softest music bring.

Psyche, thou wast but stone
Till his inspiring came:
The sculptor's hand alone
Made not that soul-touched frame.

They have lain by me for years, and are pretty good for one who didn't
write. I think, however, she was young when she addressed them to the
"soul-touched" work of the young sculptor, who laid his genius and
everything at Virginia's feet. They were friends, I believe, when she
was a girl, before she caught that cold, and her eyes got bad.

Among her eccentricities was her absurd cowardice. She was afraid of
cows, afraid of horses, afraid even of sheep. And bugs, and anything
that crawled, used to give her a fit. If we drove her anywhere, and the
horses cut up the least bit, she would jump out and walk, even in the
mud; and I remember once seeing her cross the yard, where a young
cow that had a calf asleep in the weeds, over in a corner beyond
her, started toward it at a little trot with a whimper of motherly
solicitude. Cousin Fanny took it into her head that the cow was coming
at her, and just screamed, and sat down flat on the ground, carrying on
as if she were a baby. Of course, we boys used to tease her, and tell
her the cows were coming after her. You could not help teasing anybody
like that.

I do not see how she managed to do what she did when the enemy got
to Woodside in the war. That was quite remarkable, considering what a
coward she was. During 1864 the Yankees on a raid got to her house
one evening in the summer. As it happened, a young soldier, one of her
cousins (she had no end of cousins), had got a leave of absence, and had
come there sick with fever just the day before (the house