habit during a campaign, the general had an interview with the chiefs of the commissariat, transport, ordnance, and medical departments, and he spent many hours in consultation with his topographical engineer.  The great purpose for which Virginia stood in arms was ever present to his mind, and despite his reticence, his staff knew that he was occupied, day and night, with the problems that the future might unfold.  Existence at headquarters to the young and high-spirited officers who formed the military family was not altogether lively.  Outside there was abundance of gaiety.  The Confederate army, even on those lonely hills, managed to extract enjoyment from its surroundings.  The hospitality of the plantations was open to the officers, and wherever Stuart and his brigadiers pitched their tents, dances and music were the order of the day.  Nor were the men behindhand.  Even the heavy snow afforded them entertainment.  Whenever a thaw took place they set themselves to making snow-balls; and great battles, in which one division was arrayed against another, and which were carried through with the pomp and circumstance of war, colours flying, bugles sounding, and long lines charging elaborately planned intrenchments, were a constant source of amusement, except to unpopular officers.  Theatrical and musical performances enlivened the tedium of the long evenings; and when, by the glare of the camp-fires, the band of the 5th Virginia broke into the rattling quick-step of “Dixie’s Land,” not the least stirring of national anthems, and the great concourse of grey-jackets took up the chorus, closing it with a yell

That shivered to the tingling stars,

the Confederate soldier would not have changed places with the President himself.

There was much social intercourse, too, between the different headquarters.  General Lee was no unfrequent visitor to Moss Neck, and on Christmas Day Jackson’s aides-de-camp provided a sumptuous entertainment, at which turkeys and oysters figured, for the Commander-in-Chief and the senior generals.  Stuart, too, often invaded the quarters of his old comrade, and Jackson looked forward to the merriment that was certain to result just as much as the youngest of his staff.  “Stuart’s exuberant cheerfulness and humour,” says Dabney, “seemed to be the happy relief, as they were the opposites, to Jackson’s serious and diffident temper.  While Stuart poured out his ‘quips and cranks,’ not seldom at Jackson’s expense, the latter sat by, sometimes unprepared with any repartee, sometimes blushing, but always enjoying the jest with a quiet and merry laugh.  The ornaments on the wall of the general’s quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage.  Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson’s selection, he pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character, which would