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your convenience leads you to stay in Richmond; and, next, that you owe me nothing, but, if you insist on pay, that the payment must be in Confederate currency, for which alone it was rented to your son. You do not know how much gratification it is, and it will afford me and my whole family, during the remainder of our lives, to reflect that we have been brought into contact and to know and to appreciate you and all that are dear to you.”
In looking beyond Richmond for quarters, General Lee was much in favor of purchasing a farm in Orange County, in the beautiful section near the railroad crossing of the Rapidan, with which he was so familiar; but about that time Mrs. Elizabeth Randolph Cocke, of Cumberland County, Virginia, granddaughter of Edmund Randolph, offered him the use of a dwelling house situated on a portion of her estate in Powhatan County.
As it was known that he had been dispossessed of his old home at Arlington, numerous offers of money, houses, and lands almost daily reached him, as well as requests to become the president of business associations and chartered corporations.
Mrs. Cocke's kind, cordial manner, for which she was proverbial, and the retired situation of the dwelling offered, induced him to put all others aside and accept her hospitable and thoughtful invitation.
The spring and early summer of 1865 were spent by the great soldier in the full fruition of a wellearned and long-needed repose.
In the meantime the trustees of Washington College, at Lexington, Va., determined to reorganize the institution, pledging their personal credit to provide means to repair the ravages of war. A member of the board had accidentally heard that a daughter of General Lee had said she thought her father would like to be connected with an institution of learning, and this casual remark first directed the attention of the trustees to General Lee in connection with the presidency of their college; but, as one of them said, it was unmingled impudence to tender to General Lee the head of an institution which had nothing then, and must start at the bottom round of the collegiate educational ladder.
The temerarious trustees were equal to the emergency, and boldly grappled with the subject, doubtless encouraged and inspired
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