and demanded another shot.

"We agree,

"We agree," said Jackson, "and we will fight with pistols at ten paces. The Captain declined the terms, the men were never reconciled. The Captain died many years after, regretting that he had not killed Lee.

Jackson was a strict constructionist of all orders and of all points of duty.

OBEYED THE ORDER.

When John Brown made his attempt to arouse insurrection in Virginia, Governor Wise called out the troops of the State, and ordered the Corps of Cadets to be held ready for immediate service. General Smith, superintendent of the corps, promptly obeyed the orders. Major Jackson reported at the guard-room ready for the field. General Smith, after giving attention to some matters requiring it, said: "Major Jackson, you will remain as you are till further orders." At that moment Major Jackson was seated upon a campstool in the guard-room with his sabre across his knees.

Next morning at reveille General Smith repaired to the guardroom and found Jackson sitting on the camp-stool and said: "Why, Major, why are you here?"

"Because you ordered me to remain here as I was last night, and I have done so. "'*

Next year he went off to the great war between the States, and won fame at once. Rumors of a great victory came. His wife and friends were anxious for the news. It came by a courier, who spurred in hot haste to his home, in Lexington. These were the words: "My subscription to the negro Sunday-school is due-it is fifty cents--which I send by the courier." Nothing more.

At the First Manassas his fame was made, when that noble soldier, Bernard Bee, cried out to his wavering men, "See where Jackson, with his Virginians, stands like a stone wall! Let us form behind them."

After the repulse at Malvern Hill, General Lee and other generals were discussing the situation, and what we were to do in the morning. Jackson was lying upon the ground, apparently slumbering, his cap lying over his face. He was aroused and asked his opinion

*Jackson was Professor of Mathematics. There was a desire on the part of the cadets that he should command the corps in the impending battle. General Smith meant he should remain as Professor of Mathematics by remain as you are."

of what was to be done in the morning. Removing the cap from his face, he said: "They won't be there in the morning," nor were they.

One morning, while marching with his staff, he stopped at the door of a farm-house. A gentle-looking woman was in the porch, with a little child at her knee, of whom he requested a drink of water. She promptly handed him a stone jug of cool and fresh water, which he quaffed like a horse. One of his staff asked the good woman to "give me a drink of that water, please." She emptied the pitcher upon the ground, went into the house and brought out a white pitcher, from which she gave the captain a drink. "Why did you not give it from the other pitcher?" asked the officer. "Oh," she said, "No man's lips shall ever again drink

from that pitcher."

BLESSED THE CHILD.

Again, while marching on to some new victory, he halted by a farm-house, whence a young mother came out into the road, with her young child in her arms, and said: "General, won't you bless my child?" He took the little infant in his arms, and reverently raising it, with uncovered head, prayed for God's blessing upon it.

In the battle of Kernstown he was worsted by General Shields (one of the noblest of the Federal commanders). Because of the Confederates' ammunition being all exhausted, General Dick Garnett withdrew his troops. Jackson arrested Garnett, one of the truest and highest gentlemen in our army, and held him in arrest until Garnett, by personal influence, procured a trial by court-martial. Jackson was the principal witness for the prosecution. The court acquitted Garnett, after hearing Jackson's testimony, and only permitted the defence to be spread upon the record on Garnett's demand that, after such unusual and conspicuous severity, it was his right.

Poor Garnett fell in front of his brigade in the great charge at Gettysburg. He was mourned throughout our army, for a braver and gentler gentleman never died in battle.

"I FEAR NO MAN."

While a professor of the Virginia Military Institue, Jackson arrested and caused a distinguished cadet to be dismissed for an infraction of the regulations. That cadet was distinguished as a scholar

and soldier.

He found himself after four years of study and scholarly achievements deprived of the diploma, which was the object of his long endeavor; without it his livelihood was imperilled. He was justly outraged by such harshness, and vowed he would castigate. Jackson, and prepared himself to execute that purpose. He was a powerful and daring young man. The friends of both were deeply anxious-Jackson was urged to have him bound over to keep the peace. This would involve his oath that he was in bodily fear of his enemy. He replied: "I will not do it, for it would be false. I do not fear him. I fear no man.” Then the superintendent had to take the oath as required by the law, and have the young man bound over to peace. When the war came on Jackson, upon his own promotion to a corps, had this young fellow made brigadier, and he became one of the most distinguished generals of the war, and is known to-day as one of the ablest men of our State. Jackson knew he had done his pupil a grievous wrong, and did his best to repair it. It is a pity where there is so much to admire and wonder at that Jackson's biographers should claim for him accomplishments he did not possess. Some of them tell of his fine horsemanship. He was singularly awkward and uncomfortable to look at upon a horse. In the riding school at West Point we used to watch him with anxiety when his turn came to cut at the head or leap the bars. He had a rough hand with the bridle, an ungainly seat, and when he would cut at a head upon the ground, he seemed in imminent danger of falling headlong from his horse. One biographer tells us "as proof of his skill that no horse ever threw him." This proof would not satisfy a fox-hunter or a cow-boy, or any other real horseman. He could no more have become a horseman than he could have danced the german.

About 1850 Jackson was a lieutenant of artillery stationed at Governor's Island, when he was invited to accept the chair of Mathematics in the Virginia Military Institute.

In those days the government would grant an officer leave of absence for one year to enable him to try such an office before resigning his commission.

So he came up to West Point to see McClellan and myself and other comrades before retiring from the army. He was more cordial and affectionate than was usual with him, for he was never demonstrative in his manners, and he was in good spirits, because of his promotion and the compliment paid him.

PECULIAR MALADY.

He informed us, however, of a peculiar malady which troubled him, and complained that one arm and one leg were heavier than the other, and would occasionally raise his arm straight up, as he said, to let the blood run back into his body, and so relieve the excessive weight.

I have heard that he often did this, when marching, and having. become very religious, his men supposed he was praying. I never saw him any more, except at Manassas after the battle, when General Johnston and other officers were congratulating him upon his fine conduct in the battle. These peculiarities have often been regarded and cited as evidences of the great genius he possessed.

I have always heard it said that he was an advocate for raising the black flag, and showing no mercy to the enemy who were invading our country and destroying our homes. And it has often been said

and written, that he urged General Lee to assault the enemy in the town of Fredericksburg by night, after their defeat, and while they were retreating over the river, and that General Lee refused to do so because of the peril to the people of the town. I have never heard of Jackson evincing any sympathy or gentleness, or merciful regard for the wounded enemies he must have seen, nor tender emotions of any sort.

Therefore, the delightful book lately published by his widow is a revelation and surprise. Nothing in all literature can equal the exquisite gentleness and sweetness this book gives us of the stern, stolid, impassive nature, who lavished such tenderness upon the object of his love. To her he unlocks a treasure of rich and pious and loving emotions, none of us, his most intimate friends, had ever before suspected to exist.

We are glad to know a new edition will soon appear, for every library is incomplete without his wife's biography of Stonewall Jackson.

DABNEY H. MAURY.

[From the New Orleans, La., Picayune, January 23, 1898.]

HON. THOMAS J. SEMMES.

An Evening with the Venerable Statesman and Jurist.

A Charming Retrospect of a Useful and Eventful Life.

[Perusal of this will justify its preservation in these pages.-ED.]

To every one at times there comes a moment of retrospection when the mind, leaving the currents of every day life, turns back to the past in loving memory, and thoughts now gay and happy, anon sad and tearful, sweep over the heart chords, and the echoes awakened in some dim twilight hour and heard by only a privileged few, make oft-times an important chapter in history of which the great outside world would gladly catch the lingering refrain.

It was the privilege of the writer to share just such a moment as this a few evenings ago in the historic home of the distinguished advocate and jurist, Judge Thomas J. Semmes.

For over half a century a conspicuous figure in the United States, for over forty years a leader of the Louisiana bar, and during that most important epoch of the nineteenth century a part and parcel of that great historic movement which, seemingly ending in defeat in war, still lives as the cardinal principle upon which this American republic is founded, Mr. Semmes stands to-day one of the most important connecting links between the old South and the new, one of the three surviving members of that great Confederate Congress which stood for all that the South held most dear, a living witness of the dear dead days which are forever wreathed in ivy and immortelle in the hearts of our people.

It was one of those rare evenings on which the pencil of a poet or artist might love to dwell. We were seated at dinner in the beautiful old mansion on South Rampart street, which has been the scene of some of the most notable gatherings in the South. There were only five of us-Mr. Semmes, his amiable and accomplished wife, she who has stood by his side these many years, in clouds and sunshine, in triumph and defeat, fulfilling that beautiful picture of Tennyson's "Isabel"—"a queen of women, a most perfect wife”Father Alexander J. Semmes, who, as physician and surgeon, followed the fortunes of the 8th Louisiana Regiment from the hour that