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of us and in the midst of our surroundings, he glowed like a fair seraph.
After a while he warned the writers that the mail was about to close and they must bring in their letters; that his “old leg” was hurting him and he must be off. The men gathered around.
His haversack was filled with the priceless letters, head and heart crowded to confusion with trite messages, inestimably precious to those at home.
He rose with a smile of weariness and pain, yet bright anticipation, and as he did so said, “Well, let me take a good look at those rascals over the way; for it will be a long time before I get another chance.”
“Look out, Fred!”
Too late!
The sharp shock of the bullet against the skull-he sprang up wildly, his cap flew off and his brothers caught him in their arms and laid him gently down.
The home letters tumbled out of the full haversack and were dabbled with the blood of the postman; his brothers knelt about him, in a silent grief awful to look upon, and heavy-hearted comrades gathered up each his blood-stained package and gazed vacantly at it.
During the great gathering of Confederate soldiers at the dedication of the Lee Monument, in Richmond, I told this story of his Cold Harbor lines and his old brigade to General Kershaw, when Gen. Joseph E. Johnston happened to be sitting near.
It was too much for General Johnston.
Tears started to his eyes and he reproved me sharply for telling a story that had in it only dead, unrelieved pain.
He added that he must “take the taste of that thing out of our mouths as quickly as possible;” and, as sharpshooting seemed to be the theme, he would repeat to us a practical lecture on that subject which he once heard delivered by an expert to a novice.
He said it was during the Atlanta campaign that he was sitting in a clump of laurel on the north face of a mountain, out beyond the bounds of his own lines, sweeping with a glass the lines and camps of Sherman's army, which were spread out before him upon the plain below.
He had been deeply absorbed and was suddenly startled by hearing conversation in a low tone comparatively near him. He sat
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