“When my little girl, about four years old, heard of General Lee’s death, she said to me, ‘Father, I can never forget General Lee.’ I asked, ‘Why?’ ‘Because, when Maggie and I were playing at the gate the other day, and General Lee was riding by, he stopped and took off his hat and bowed to us and said, ‘Young ladies, don’t you think this is the prettiest horse you ever saw?’ And we said it was a very pretty horse. ‘Oh, no,’ he said; ‘I want to know whether Traveler is not the very prettiest horse you ever saw in your life.’ And when we looked at him, and saw how white and gay he was, we said, ‘Yes.’ Then he laughed and said, ‘Well, if you think he is so pretty, I will just let you kiss him’; and then he rode off smiling, and I don’t believe I can ever forget that.”
GENERAL LEE ON TRAVELER.
Another gentleman, who was clerk of the faculty at Washington College, says that General Lee was very careful about little things. One day the clerk wrote a letter to some one at General Lee’s request, in which he used the term “our students.” When General Lee looked at it, he said that he did not like the phrase “our students.” He said that we had no property rights in the young men, and he thought it best to say, “the students,” not “our students.” The clerk struck out with his pen the word “our” and wrote “the.” He then brought the letter to General Lee. “This will not answer,” said he. “I want you to write the letter over.” So the clerk had to make a fresh copy.
One day General Lee directed him to go to the Mess Hall and measure for a stove-pipe. “Set the stove in its place on its legs,” he said, “and measure the height to a point opposite the flue-hole, and then the space from the joint to the wall.” The man returned with the measure. “Did you set the stove on its legs?” asked the General. The clerk replied no; that the legs were packed up inside the stove, and that he simply allowed for the legs. “But I told you to put the stove on its legs and then measure. Go back and do as you were told,” said the General, who was always kind but meant to be obeyed.
The same gentleman remembers this amusing incident:—
One day they saw a gentleman coming up the lawn, and wondered who he was. General Lee shook hands with him as though he knew him, and chatted for some time. He tried in vain to remember his name. In the meantime Rev. J. William Jones, whose month it was to lead the services in the chapel, came up and whispered to General Lee to introduce the strange clergyman to him, so that he might ask him to conduct the services in his place. But General Lee, with his own ready tact, said: “Mr. Jones, it is time for service; you had better go in the chapel.”
After service, when he could do so without being heard, General Lee asked Mr. Jones to find out the stranger’s name. He had met him in the Mexican war but could not recall his name. Mr. Jones did so, and General Lee, standing near, heard it, and then, without making it known that he had forgotten his friend of the Mexican war, introduced him to those who were near. He could not think of hurting the clergyman’s feelings by letting him know that he had been forgotten.
General Lee was always careful not to injure what belonged to others.
“A Southern Girl” tells this story of him: