“I will give you just another incident,” writes the reverend gentleman, “illustrating General Lee’s love for children, and their freedom with him.  When I first came to Lexington, my boy Carter (just four years old then) used to go with me to chapel service when it was my turn to officiate.  The general would tell him that he must always sit by him; and it was a scene for a painter, to see the great chieftain reverentially listening to the truths of God’s word, and the little boy nestling close to him.  One Sunday our Sunday-school superintendent told the children that they must bring in some new scholars, and that they must bring old people as well as the young, since none were too old or too wise to learn God’s word.  The next Sabbath Carter was with me at the chapel, from which he was to go with me to the Sunday-school.  At the close of the service, I noticed that Carter was talking very earnestly with General Lee, who seemed very much amused, and, on calling him to come with me, he said, with childish simplicity:  ’Father, I am trying to get General Lee to go to the Sunday-school and be my scholar.’  ‘But,’ said I, ’if the general goes to any school, he will go to his own.’  ’Which is his own, father?’ ‘The Episcopal,’ I replied.  Heaving a deep sigh, and with a look of disappointment, the little fellow said:  ’I am very sorry he is ’Piscopal. I wish he was a Baptist, so he could go to our Sunday-school, and be my scholar.’  The general seemed very much amused and interested as he replied, ’Ah!  Carter, we must all try and be good Christians—­that is the most important thing.’  ’He knew all the children in town,’ adds Mr. Jones, ’and their grief at his death was very touching.’”

This incident may appear singular to those who have been accustomed to regard General Lee as a cold, reserved, and even stern human being—­a statue, beneath whose chill surface no heart ever throbbed.  But, instead of a marble heart, there lay, under the gray uniform of the soldier, one of warm flesh and blood—­tender, impressible, susceptible to the quick touches of all gentle and sweet emotion, and filling, as it were, with quiet happiness, at the sight of children and the sound of their voices.  This impressibility has even been made the subject of criticism.  A foreign writer declares that the soldier’s character exhibited a “feminine” softness, unfitting him for the conduct of affairs of moment.  What the Confederacy wanted, intimates the writer in question, was a rough dictator, with little regard for nice questions of law—­one to lay the rough hand of the born master on the helm, and force the crew, from the highest to the lowest, to obey his will.  That will probably remain a question.  General Lee’s will was strong enough to break down all obstacles but those erected by rightful authority; that with this masculine strength he united an exquisite gentleness, is equally beyond question.  A noble action flushed his cheek with an emotion that the reader may, if he will, call “feminine.”  A tale of suffering brought a sudden moisture to his eyes; and a loving message from one of his poor old soldiers was seen one day to melt him to tears.