“If Alice will agree to illustrate again.”
“Not I!”
“Q minor!” sighed Charley, thumping his empty goblet. “Jack-Whack, my poor boy, we dwell in a vale of tears!”
| [1] | I need hardly say that I decline to be responsible for such sentiments.—Ed. |
CHAPTER LXX.
It is eight o’clock in the morning, at Harrisonburg, in the leafy month of June. You board the train from Staunton. As it rushes down the Valley there lies spread out before you, on either side, a scene of rare loveliness. Fertile plains, waving with grain; rolling, grass-clad hills, laughing in the sunshine, dotted here and there with woods of singular beauty; limpid streams, brawling over glittering, many-hued pebbles; a pure air filling the lungs with a glad sense of health and well-being. There are few such lands.
But come, take this seat on the right-hand side of the car, and I will tell you of some things which happened twenty years ago.
Ah, there it is! Don’t you see that bluish thread, winding along over there, skirting that hill? That is the Valley Pike. There was no railroad there then. Take a good look at it. Take a good look, for heroes have trodden it.
Ah, the train has stopped. Do you see that grizzled farmer, who has ridden over to the station to get his mail? I know him, for I never forget a face. He was there at Manassas when Bee said, “Look at Jackson, standing like a stone wall!” Yes, many of the survivors of the Stonewall Brigade live along this road.