“Well, general,” dropping my voice to the Secesh conspirator level, “how do you like him?”

The general, known by the antique name of Jones (though the Sixth Pennsylvania and other Northern cavalry were acquainted with him under another cognomen), like all the strapping sons of thunder who went actively into the field instead of staying at home and abusing Jeff.  Davis, does not regard his late enemies with that intense hatred which is so gratifying to myself and some other people.

He spoke out aloud:  “I like him first rate.  He is an admirable neighbor—­a man of sense, practical, sagacious and industrious; and his family, wife, sons and daughters, are in all respects worthy of him.  I wish the county had a thousand of just such people.”

This was a crusher for me.  Drawing myself up to my full height—­which ought to be but is not six feet—­I seized a kerosene lamp with my right hand, and looking the unfortunate man full in the eye, I said very respectfully, “General, good-night.”

Undismayed, he eyed me back, and, in a tone of what I took to be cordiality, replied, “Maybe you’d like a little whisky-and-water before going to bed?”

I thanked him “No,” mounted the lofty staircase, divested myself of sundry sartorial cerements and plunged my earthly tabernacle into the centre of a big delicious bed.  There, while the thunder rolled among the mountains, the rain plashed upon the window-shutters and the wind blew like the very devil, I muttered to myself, “Here is a man bearing worthily one of the most honored names in the Commonwealth—­a member, in fact, of one of the first—­the first—­first fam—­families in Vir—­gin—­ia, actually pr—­prais—­praising Yan—­Yank—­Yankees in—­in’s own hou—­” I was asleep.

On the morrow, when I returned to the station and saw how very lovely the country was, how fertile—­the rounded mountains, when cleared of their royal forests, arable to their very summits, the air like Olympian nectar, the sunshine a divine balm, the whole scene a Sabbath-land of peace and of boundless plenty, awaiting only the cohorts of the North and of the white-cliffed isle—­I would fain have cried, “Come, ye moderately pecunious Bulls, and you, ye hyperborean Vandals from the far Lake of Winnipiseogee and the uttermost Cape of Cod—­come to this Canaan, not like carpet-bagging spies to steal our big bunch of grapes and tote it off on a stick between two of you (as per authentic pictures in Sunday-school books), but with your shekels, your deniers, your pence, pounds sterling and crisp greenbacks:  come to this beauteous land, take it, own it, possess it, buy freely, and be sure you reserve enough cash to build a house with; or, better still, bring your houses ready made, in nests like buckets or painted pails (I am sure you have them in your inventive realm).  Come, I say, and oust these mutton-headed Virginians, or sit down beside them, work with them, teach them to work (you are so certain you can), and make this American republic the Storehouse of the nations, the Cornucopia of all creation!”