It is not claiming too much to say that Gen. LEE was the natural product of the civilization existing in Virginia during his boyhood and early manhood, which, alas, except here and there in certain localities, is fast passing away.  The home, not the club, was its center; the family, not each “new-hatched, unfledged comrade,” its unit.  The father was the head of the family, not the joint tenant with the wife of a house nor the tenant at will of his wife.  The wife and the mother was the queen of the household, not merely a housekeeper for a husband and the family.  Obedience to those in authority was the first lesson exacted of the boy.  Inculcated with tenderness, it was enforced with severity, if need be, until the word of the father or the expressed wish of the mother carried with it the force of law as completely as the decree of a court or the mandate of a king.

Reverence for superiors in age and deference to all, rather than arrogant self-assertion, was magnified as a cardinal virtue, not as teaching humility and enforcing a lack of proper self-respect, but rather to exalt high ideals and stimulate an admiration for “the true, the beautiful, and the good.”

Fidelity to truth, the maintenance of personal honor, deference for the opinions and feelings of others, without abating one’s own or aggressively thrusting them on others; a kindliness of manner to dependents, a knightly courtesy to all, but with special and tender regard in thought, word, and action toward woman, were in turn patiently taught in all the lessons of the fireside and at the family altar, and earnestly insisted upon in the formation of the character of a true gentleman.  “Any man will be polite to a beautiful young woman, but it takes a gentleman to show the same respect to a homely old woman” was the stinging rebuke of a father to his son who failed to remove his hat in passing a forlorn old woman on the public highway.

The old-field school, the private tutor, the high school, whose excellence in Virginia I can not praise too much, the college, the university, led the young mind by easy stages to its full intellectual maturity.

Nowhere was the principle “Sana mens in sano corpore” more scrupulously taught than in Virginia.  The rod and stream, the gun, the “hounds and horns,” the chase, with the music of the pack, the bounding steed, all lent their ready aid in developing the physical manhood of the boy.  In the pure atmosphere of his country home, amid its broad fields and virgin forests, contracted houses in narrow streets had no charms for him.  To join the chase was the first promotion to which the boy looked as evidencing his permanent release from the nursery.  The gun and dog became his constant companions, while “Old Betsey,” his father’s trusted double-barreled gun of many years’ usage, standing in the sitting-room corner or hanging on stag-horns or dog-wood forks on the side of the wall, was the eloquent subject of nightly rehearsals of her