"You could not have heard of him, and he was not of sufficient rank to have made an impression upon you if you had."
"Where is he now?"
"In the country."
"And you are leaving him?"
"Yes, sir, but just for a little while."
Then he talked of how much the Southerners had lost and how much they had to forgive; how easy it was to bear victory and how hard to endure defeat, saying that if he had been born in the South he would have been a rebel, and that his sympathies even now were with the Southern people. A sudden suspicion came to me and I said:
"I wish there had never been any rebels at all; not even the first rebel, George Washington; and now, sir, please, I do not want to talk about the war. I am very weary and sleepy and would like to retire. If you please, sir, will you get me my stateroom and ticket? I am so tired—so very tired."
Baby was lying asleep on my lap, hypnotized by the chandeliers. The man looked down on him for a moment and then said, "Of course, I will get them for you," and was going, when an ex-Confederate officer, one of my Soldier's old comrades and friends, came up and, cordially extending his hand, greeted me:
"How do you do, Mrs. Pickett? Where is the General? What are you doing here, and where are you going?"
He himself was returning to his home in the far South, but had been called back to Baltimore on business.