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of the city of
Richmond for the first and only time during the war, I found an officer, in a new uniform of a colonel of cavalry, in an unpleasant altercation with one of the employees of the office.
As I approached he turned to me, saying:
It's a hard case, Major, that a veteran colonel of the Army of Northern Virginia is bearded in this way by a beardless boy of a provost-marshal's clerk, and that he cannot have even the poor satisfaction of slapping his jaws as he is entrenched behind this partition.
While pouring out this complaint the
Colonel gazed at me with increasing interest and, as he ceased-starting a little-said abruptly:
I have seen you before, sir!
“Yes,
Colonel,” I replied, “or at least, I have seen you, and I recall just when and where it was; but as you are the ranking officer won't you be good enough to say first, if you can, when and where you saw me?”
“Certainly, sir,” said he; “it was at the
battle of Williamsburg, in May, 1862.
You were then a private soldier in an artillery company and were standing, bare-headed, at the angle of Fort Magruder with a sponge-staff in your hand as I led a charge of cavalry past the fort.”
My recollection exactly coincided with his. The officer, I think, was
Col. J. Lucius Davis, who commanded a body of
Virginia troops at
Charlestown or
Harper's Ferry during the
John Brown raid; but, whoever he was, he was not a colonel at
Williamsburg, but I think a captain; and, as I remember, then wore a brown-gray tunic belted around his waist, and his hair, which was then quite long, swept back from his forehead as he gallantly led his men, sabre in hand, at full speed against the enemy.
We never met save on the two occasions mentioned and could not possibly have seen each other at
Williamsburg more than a moment.
The rank, dress, bearing-everything, indeed, save the essential personality of the two men-was entirely different at the two meetings, and yet neither of us felt the slightest hesitation as to mutual identification or the time, place, and circumstances of the first meeting.
