able, it was attended by the sons of the most prominent people of the place. And therein lay the trouble. If their fathers' views had controlled the election of governor, our residence at Only would have been undisturbed. The city was the stronghold of Know-Nothingism in Virginia. In a vote of nearly four thousand, father had not received exceeding nine hundred votes, and they were for the most part from the humbler classes. The Richmond Democrats were so few in numbers that they were called the "Spartan Band." The rural votes gave father his majority, especially in the splendid yeomanry of the Shenandoah Valley, among whom very few slaves were owned. They were the men who afterwards, drawn into the war to fight the slave-owners' battles, won with their valor the immortal fame of Stonewall Jackson.

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond. It was the abode of that class who proclaimed that they were Whigs, and that "Whigs knew each other by the instincts of gentlemen." The slave market was a flourishing institution in Richmond, fully countenanced if not approved and defended. The majority of Richmond people hated the name of Democracy, and, almost always defeated by it, were willing to unite with the Know-Nothings or any other party to defeat their enemy the Democracy.

At school, I very soon discovered that the Richmond city boys were disposed to turn up their noses at me, not only as a country boy, but because I was my father's son. I had several fistic encounters with them, and after that, things went on more smoothly, but not very pleasantly.

There never was such a place as Richmond for fighting

among small boys. The city is built over a number of hills and valleys, and in those days the boys of particular localities associated in fighting bands, and called themselves Cats. Thus there were the Shockoe Hill Cats, the Church Hill Cats, the Basin Cats, the Oregon Hill Cats, the Navy Hill Cats, etc.

About this time we were seized with the military fever. In those days, the State of Virginia had a large armory at Richmond, and a standing army of a hundred men! The command was known as the "Public Guard," but the Richmond boys called them the "Blind Pigs." The syllogism by which this name was reached was unanswerable. They wore on their hats the letters P. G., which certainly is P I G without the I. And a pig without an eye is a blind pig. QE D.

The public guard was as well drilled and cared for as any body of regulars in the United States army. It guarded the penitentiary and public grounds, and was a most valuable organization in many ways.

Captain Dimmock, commanding officer, was a West Pointer, I think, and the beau ideal of a soldier. His son Marion and my brother, three years my senior, conceived the idea of forming a boy's soldier company. Father encouraged the idea, and caused a hundred old muskets in the armory to be cut down to the proper size for boys. Captain Dimmock entered heartily into the scheme. The boys were drilled assiduously. Their uniform was neat cadet gray; and for several years the "Guard of the Metropolis" was one of the most striking institutions of Richmond. It always paraded with the Public Guard, and the precision of its drill astonished and delighted all beholders. Seven years later, William Johnson Pegram, the first lieutenant of that company, attained the rank of brigadier-general in Lee's army before he was twenty-one

years old, and although killed in battle, is still remembered as one of the bravest and most brilliant artillery commanders of the civil war. Many other members were utilized as drill-masters at the outbreak of the war, and subsequently became excellent officers.

Too young to carry a musket, I was made marker of this famous company, and was as proud of my uniform and little marker's flag as a Frenchman of the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

CHAPTER VI

BEHIND THE SCENES

THE present generation finds it difficult to realize the position in the Union occupied by Virginia, even as late as 1856-60, to which period our narrative now brings us. People recall, in a general way, that Virginia was once the theatre of many historic events; that she gave birth to many great men in the early days of the Republic; and that she was the chief battle-ground in the civil war.

A romantic interest attaches to her in consequence, and there is a certain tenderness for Virginia felt towards no other State, even in sections which were once arrayed against her.

But from many causes, a decline in her social and political importance has occurred within the last forty years, which, in its rapidity and in its extent, presents one of the most remarkable instances in history. Let us not stamp it as degeneracy. The day when she produced men of the type of Lee and Jackson is too recent to justify despair.

It is made doubly difficult to judge her by the character of the writings concerning her. On the one hand, we have extravagant eulogiums and fond laments of those who laud her old-time history and people, and admit no defects in them; on the other, the always unfair and often ignorant denunciations of the anti-slavery folk, who are unwilling to admit, even at this late day, that any good could come out of the Nazareth of slavery. Both are wide of the mark. The social and economic condi

tions of Virginia were neither utopian, as the one loves to depict, nor bad and vicious, as the other would represent them.

It is undeniably true that, between the two extremes of society, as it existed there prior to 1865, was an awful gulf, upon one side of which were green pastures and still waters, and on the other noisome bogs filled with creeping reptiles. It was a condition incompatible with every theory of republican equality among men, and beyond question repugnant to the ideas and sensibilities of free communities.

Whether what has followed will ultimately result in a better civilization is as yet far from settled; but whether for better or for worse, it is certain that a social, economic, and political earthquake, never surpassed in suddenness and destructive force, burst upon that people, working changes that have left little trace of what was there before.

If the Virginian who died forty years ago could revisit his native commonwealth, he would find it difficult to recognize the place where he lived. If he located it by the streams which still flow to the sea, and the mountains still standing as sentinels through the centuries, he would soon learn, even concerning these, that many are no longer landmarks of Virginia, but, snatched from her in the hour of her weakness against her will, are now possessions of an alien State. For the less enduring things, for men such as he knew, for their very habitations, their mode of life, the fashion of thought of his day, for its wealth, its refinement, its culture, for its lofty incorruptibility and high-mindedness, he would search sadly and in vain.

In the day of which I write, Virginia, among the States of the Union, was, in territorial area, second only to