Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
the West--spirit of Hardy and Pendleton.
Moorefield, April 28, 1861.
Old Hardy is all right.
This morning she started thirty beeves towards Winchester as a present for the soldiers.
We have two companies of volunteers in this town, one of fifty men and the other of about forty, and both filling up rapidly.
Petersburg, a town ten miles above here, also in this county, has a company of rifles numbering seventy men.--Franklin, in Pendleton county, has two companies of seventy or eighty men each.
These companies are all composed of the very flower of the country.
We have in our company, (Hardy Blues,) three legal gentlemen, three physicians, some two or three merchants, and sons of all the wealthy farmers around here.
Such a spirit of resistance I have never seen, or heard of among any people; not a wild excitement, but a calm, dignified, and firm deportment is to be seen on all sides.
Our wives talk to us as calmly, and make preparations for our departure as cheerfully as if we were bound on a pleasure excursion.
I remarked to a lady to-day that I did not believe the North could whip Virginia, ‘ "No,"’ said she ‘"for, if the North invade us, the women will fight as well as the men."’ I verily believe this would be the case if it were necessary.
A. 