Going down the river one day with my Soldier, his brother Charlie, and their sister, in a boat rowed by the overseer, I had what I thought an interesting illustration of the tenacity of childish habits of thought. Mr. Sims had been overseer on the Pickett plantation in the childhood of the two sons of the family, who used to follow him around and absorb knowledge from what they looked upon as fathomless depths of intellect and experience. They were catching terrapin and my Soldier looked at the catch in the bottom of the boat.
"Mr. Sims, why is it that these terrapin are of such different markings?" he asked with a recurrence of the old-time attitude of mental dependence. "They come from the same water, are grown in the same conditions, and seem in every way alike except that the color markings are different. There is a reason; what is it?"
"Yas, George," said the old man, "of course there is a reason for it, it's jest this way with them tarepins; I've allers noticed they are different. I've been catchin' tarepins off an' on all my life an' I've allers seen 'em that way. Some's streaked an' some's criss-crossed an' some's plain an' some has diamon's on 'em an' that's jest the reason. They's jest made that way."
"I see now," said my Soldier in all seriousness and good faith. "I suppose that is the reason. I have often wondered about it and this is the first time I ever understood it."
After all the years and the wars and the foreign travel and the changes he had unconsciously gone back to the blind confidence of childhood.
Adjoining Turkey Island was the plantation of Colonel William Allen (Buck Allen), Curl's Neck. General Schofield and some other officers of the United States Army, among them Colonel Day, drove down from Richmond, visiting old battlefields and shooting ducks and partridges, and were guests at Curl's Neck. At the invitation of my Soldier they came to our home. Colonel Day had never before seen my Soldier and he afterward thus expressed his feeling upon first meeting the warrior whom he had hitherto known only by reputation:
"Imagine my surprise when, instead of the dashing, rollicking fire-eater whom I expected to see in the hero of the greatest charge in modern history, I touched glasses of apple-toddy with the gentle George Pickett. I was impressed above all with his quiet demeanor, his warm-hearted hospitality and gentleness. I stood in speechless wonder, trying to reconcile the man before me with my preconceived idea of the great warrior. It might all be summed up in the explanation that 'the bravest are the tenderest.'"