hrough
the Federal campground, from among the numerous household articles,
etc., I picked up a book, on the fly-leaf of which was written,
"Captured at Washington College, Lexington, _Rockingham_ County,
Virginia." That afternoon, as I was slowly toiling up the steep mountain
path almost overgrown with ferns, I was stopped by an old, white-bearded
mountaineer at a small gate which he held open for me. While asking for
the news, after I had dismounted, he noticed the split button on my coat
and my torn trousers, and, pausing for a moment, he said, very solemnly,
"Well, you ought to be a mighty good young man." I asked why he thought
so. "Well," said he, "the hand of God has certainly been around you."

That night I spent at Judge Anderson's, in Arnold's Valley, and the next
day reached Lexington--a very different Lexington from the one I had
left a fortnight before. The Virginia Military Institute barracks, the
professors' houses, and Governor Letcher's private home had been burned,
and also all neighboring mills, etc., while the intervening and adjacent
grounds were one great desolate common. Preparations had also been made
to burn Washington College, when my father, who was a trustee of that
institution, called on General Hunter, and, by explaining that it was
endowed by and named in honor of General Washington, finally succeeded
in preventing its entire destruction, although much valuable apparatus,
etc., had already been destroyed.

Comparisons are odious, but the contrast between the conduct of Northern
and Southern soldiers during their invasions of each other's territory
is very striking and suggestive; especially when taken in connection
with the fact that the Federal army, from first to last, numbered
twenty-eight hundred thousand men, and the Confederates not more than
six hundred and fifty thousand.

General Early, with three divisions, having been despatched from the
army near Richmond, had reached Lynchburg in time to prevent its
occupancy by Hunter, who promptly retreated, and his army soon became a
mass of fugitives, struggling through the mountains of West Virginia on
to the Ohio River. The Confederates at Lynchburg, all told, numbered
11,000 men, the Federals 20,000.

An incident which occurred in Rockbridge County, the participants in
which were of the "cradle and grave" classes, deserves mention. Maj.
Angus McDonald, aged seventy, having four sons in our army, set out from
Lexington with his fourte