“You are General Lee. We know you by your picture.”
So great was the love of the people for Lee that, after the war, almost every home had some picture of the great chief.
General Lee knew all the children in Lexington whom he met in his walks and rides, and it was charming to see their joy when he would meet them.
Once, when calling upon the widow of General A. P. Hill, her little girl met him at the door and held out her puppy which she had named after our hero. “O, General Lee,” she cried, “here is ‘Bobby Lee’; do kiss him.” The great man made believe to kiss him and the child was delighted.
In one of the Sunday-schools of Lexington a prize was offered to the child who should bring in the most pupils.
A little boy of five went for his friend, General Lee, to get him to go to his school. When told that General Lee went to another school, he said with a deep sigh, “I am very sorry. I wish he could go to our school, and be my new scholar.”
General Lee thought it quite funny, and said kindly;
“Ah! C——, we must all try to be good Christians—that is the great thing. I can’t go to your school to be your new scholar to-day. But I am very glad you asked me. It shows that you are zealous in a good cause, and I hope that you will ever be so as you grow up. And I do not want you to think that I am too old to go to Sunday-school. No one is ever too old to study the truths of the Bible.”
When he died, all the schools of Lexington were closed, and the children wept with the grown people when they heard that their kind friend was dead.
A gentleman tells this story, which is quite in keeping with General Lee’s way of pleasing children:—