pes on Caleb's. When a man touches forty before his firstborn is put
into his arms, he is likely to take the event seriously. Martha Gordon
would have named her son after the great apostle of her faith, but Caleb
asserted himself here and would have a manlier name-father for the boy.
So Thomas Jefferson was named, not for an apostle, nor yet for the
statesman--save by way of an intermediary. For Caleb's "Thomas
Jefferson" was the stout old schoolmaster-warrior, Stonewall Jackson;
the soldier iron-master's general while he lived, and his deified hero
ever afterward.

When the mother was able to sit up in bed she wrote a letter to her
brother Silas, the South Tredegar preacher. On the margin of the paper
she tried the name, writing it "Reverend Thomas Jefferson Gordon." It
was a rather appalling mouthful, not nearly so euphonious as the name of
the apostle would have been. But she comforted herself with the thought
that the boy would probably curtail it when he should come to a
realizing sense of ownership; and "Reverend" would fit any of the
curtailments.

So now we see to what high calling Thomas Jefferson's mother purposed
devoting him while yet he was a helpless monad in pinning-blankets; to
what end she had striven with many prayers and groanings that could not
be uttered, from year to year of his childhood.

Does it account in some measure for the self-conscious young Pharisee
kneeling on the top of the high rock under the cedars, and crying out on
the girl scoffer that she was no better than she should be?

IV

THE NEWER EXODUS

One would always remember the first day of a new creation; the day when
God said, _Let there be light_.

It has been said that nothing comes suddenly; that the unexpected is
merely the overlooked. For weeks Thomas Jefferson had been scenting the
unwonted in the air of sleepy Paradise. Once he had stumbled on the
engineers at work in the "dark woods" across the creek, spying out a
line for the new railroad. Another day he had come home late from a
fishing excursion to the upper pools to find his father shut in the
sitting-room with three strangers resplendent in town clothes, and the
talk--what he could hear of it from his post of observation on the porch
step--was of iron and coal, of a "New South," whatever that might be,
and of wonderful changes portending, which his father was exhorted to
help bring about.

But these were only the gentle heavings and crackings of the gr