New York, their
conversation was lost on me, for my thoughts went back into my own past,
and two pictures came up to me from the time of the war.

[Note: Apropos of this passage my friend and classmate of the Princeton
days, Gen. BRADLEY T. JOHNSON, told me that one hot day riding to meet a
fight that would make the day still hotter, he stopped at a roadside
cabin and asked for a drink of water. The woman who brought it, brought
it in a broken and cracked mug, and he assured me that every
ramification of those cracks was indelibly impressed on his brain. He
could have drawn a map of the mug. Experiences like these help us to
understand the details of the Homeric narrative, and to me there is
nothing unnatural in Homer's mention of the washing troughs that Hector
saw as he fled before the face of Achilles (Il. 22, 154 foll.).]

[Note: The fight under EARLY, to which I refer, was fought July 24,
1864. It was a brilliant feat of arms and has left other memories than
those recorded. As A. D. C. to General GORDON I gave General TERRY, one
of the brigade commanders, the order to advance, and I still hear the
cry of one of the men who had been in a disastrous affair a few weeks
before--the fight in which Gen. W. E. JONES fell. "This hain't no New
Hope, Gineral." I still see the light of battle on the faces of the men
as they went forward. My blood tingles as I write.]

In the midsummer of 1863 I was serving as a private in the First
Virginia Cavalry. Gettysburg was in the past, and there was not much
fighting to be done, but the cavalry was not wholly idle. Raids had to
be intercepted, and the enemy was not to be allowed to vaunt himself too
much; so that I gained some experience of the hardships of that arm of
the service, and found out by practical participation what is meant by a
cavalry charge. To a looker-on nothing can be finer. To the one who
charges, or is supposed to charge,--for the horse seemed to me mainly
responsible,--the details are somewhat cumbrous. Now in one of these
charges some of us captured a number of the opposing force, among them a
young lieutenant. Why this particular capture should have impressed me
so I cannot tell, but memory is a tricky thing. A large red fox scared
up from his lair by the fight at Castleman's Ferry stood for a moment
looking at me; and I shall never forget the stare of that red fox. At
one of our fights near Kernstown a spent bullet struck a horse on the
side of his nose, whic