“In Stonewall’s Room”

'W STONEWALL'S KO^'' A SKETCH, BY MATHONIHAH THOMAS.

Few great captains have left a more ardent following than "Stonewall" Jackson. His life was one of intense devotion to the right as he had the light to discern it, and a prayerful obedience to duty. His exterior, stern, severe, almost forbidding; his heart so warm that his soldiers who knew him, fought under him like

demons; remembering him, he becomes their saint. Here is an illustration: Down in the "Old Dominion," while walking on a "straight" road to the Northanna river, one hot day, I passed a large "clear- ing" near the edge of which stood a delapidated shanty, boarded with the old time "shingles," and chinked up with mud. Two pine sticks and a gunnysack made the awning over a hole in the wall. The sight of a grayhead led me to ask, "Straight road to North river?" "Keep straight road, sah." "Any cool water?" "'Taint fresh from spring but hits rate smartly kule, sah.

Won't you all come in?" Turning sharply, I opened the gate and passed into the old house. The interior was low and small and strewn with saddles, and old shoes; a rusty pieces of harness, sacks, scraps of leather, stove, set in abox of sand which at once served for ash pit and cuspador; a low shoemaker's bench near the window where an old man was bent at his work; a few pairs of "fixed" shoes hanging from the low rafters, completed the furnishings of the room.

816 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

As mine host moved toward me with a "gode" full of water, I saw that a wooden leg took the place of the lost member. "Have some mo'?" he queried as I handed back the gourd. "Take a seat, sah," and I overturned a small nail keg. The old man went back to his seat. I mopped my brow and wondered if in some engagement of the Civil War, did this old man of the days gone by, march to the front and fall on a blood- stained battlefield, to lie there suffering all the horrors of the wounded until moved to the hospital; whether his heart did not sink within him when he was later compelled to leave his cherished corps because of "disability to serve." "Pretty warm," I ventured. "Rate smartly warm, sah, but not so hot as 'twas at Spottsyl- vaniain sixty-fo'!" "Ah, in whose corps did you serve?" His eyes brightened immediately, and, with his face wreathed in smiles, he turned a patronizing glance on me as he said with pardonable pride, "Stonewall's." Then as he leaned back to pull from his pocket a twist of tobacco to moisten his tongue, con-

tinued, "They-all called us foot cavalry, sah, we walked so fast and done fought so hard. Was with him from nigh onto the fust — the Valley —down the James— in thro' the Wilderness. He-all was a Christian and a prayin' man, sah. Many a time befo' a fight hev I stood gyuard oveh his tent do' and heah him pray all night long. Pray for eve'ybody and eve'ything, sah. No man was 'fraid to go whar Jackson led sah, fo' he-all brought 'em aout."

The old soldier's eyes kindled at the memory of a glorious captain. I pondered o'er the impress of the praying soldier on the guard. "Straight road to North river?" "Keep straight road, sah."