certainty point them out. To voice a hoary truism, time alone is the test of "vitality." In our present flood of books, as in any other flood, it is the froth and scum which shows most prominently. And the possession of "vitality," here as elsewhere, postulates that its possessor must ultimately perish. Nay, by the time these printed pages are first read as printed pages, allusion to those modern authors whom these pages cite-the preëminent literary figures of that hour wherein these pages were written-may possibly have come to savor somewhat of antiquity; and sundry references herein to the "vital" books now most in vogue may rouse much that vague shrugging recollection as wakens now at a mention of Dorothy Vernon or Three Weeks or Beverly of Graustark. And this is as it should be. Tout passe.-L'art robust seul a l'éternité, precisely as Gautier points out with bracing common-sense: and it is excellent thus to comprehend that to-day, as always, only through exercise of the auctorial viitures of distinction and clarity and beauty, of tenderness and truth and urbanity, may a man reasonably attempt to insure his books against oblivion's voracity.

Yet the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills—and as immortal. Questionless, there was many a serviceable brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky persons must needs be deleting here and there a phrase in favor of its cuneatic synonym; and it is not improbable that when the outworn sun expires in clinkers its final ray will gild such zealots tinkering with their "style." This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. Some few there must be in every age and every land of whom life claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly of beautiful happenings. And it is such folk, we know,--even we average novelreaders, who are to-day making in America that portion of our literature which may hope for permanency.

Dumbarton, Virginia.

JAMES BRANCH CABELL.

REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR BY A

CONFEDERATE STAFF OFFICER*

(SIXTH PAPER)

RECONSTRUCTION DAYS IN THE SOUTH

One evening in February of the late winter of 1864, on returning to camp near Petersburg after a hard day's work, I found my tent occupied by a man who had taken possession of my bed and was covered up in my blankets. I asked the servants the meaning of it, and they said he merely asked for Major Ranson's tent and forthwith took possession. On examination I found that he was a youth about sixteen years old, very red in the face, and in a stupor. I thought he must have been drinking, but there was no smell of liquor about him. Failing to arouse him I sent for Dr. Gild, medical director, who after examination pronounced him sober but in typhoid fever. Here was a predicament; but Dr. Gild aroused him enough to learn that he was my nephew, John Washington, whom I had not seen since he was four years old, and that he had run away from his home in California to join the Southern Army, crossing the plains mainly on foot and taking six months in the journey. Then he lapsed into unconsciousness.

In this dilemma I went to General Lee for advice. He said promptly, "Enlist him in some battery, and then Dr. Gild can send him to the hospital in Petersburg." Six weeks after that John appeared again at my camp. He went to the hospital a chubby boy, but was now a tall, gaunt man, as weak as a child and as hungry as a hawk. As my ration was hardly sufficient for me, I could not feed him, and in my second dilemma I went again to General Lee. He said as promptly as before, "Leave his name and company with me and I will order him to report to you for duty as courier." So as John had no horse he became my courier on foot, the only one of the kind I have ever

*Copyright, 1915, by the author.

The first of this series of articles by Major Ranson was published in the October, 1913, issue of the REVIEW. This is the concluding paper.-EDITOR.

heard of, and developed an immense capacity for eating and sleeping. A young man who had walked a long distance to fight must have had in him the stuff of which soldiers are made, but as the surrender occurred about two weeks after John came out of the hospital, he must have felt that he had "paid too dear for his whistle."

When the surrender came I exchanged my watch for a horse for John, and he made the march with me from Appomattox to my home in the Valley. In passing through Rappahannock county, I stopped one day under the shade of a tree to rest, while John went on to the village to get a shoe put on his horse. Shortly I heard the clattering of hoofs, and looking down the road saw him coming at full speed, waving over his head a handbill announcing the death of Lincoln, and shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah, old Abe is dead, old Abe is dead!" I shut him up in a very peremptory manner, telling him that he was endangering his life and mine, should any Union man or soldier hear him; that the Northern people would be looking for some object upon which to take their vengeance for the murder, and to suspect would be equivalent to conviction. Besides, I told him that the South had lost her best and most powerful friend, and that we now had only General Grant to depend on for our safety.

It was only a few days after the surrender of General Lee that I had set out for my home near Charlestown in the Valley of Virginia. The distance was two hundred miles and the journey had to be made across the country. I formed a mess with Colonel Osman Latrobe of Baltimore and Colonel Fairfax of Loudon county, both officers of Longstreet's staff.

General Grant had allowed us a wagon and team, and one or two other soldiers went with us. Under the terms of the surrender all officers kept their horses and side-arms. Our route was through Buckingham, Albemarle, Green, Madison, Rappahannock, and Fauquier counties to Loudon. At Upperville I parted from them and went alone across to Shenandoah, to Clarke, and thence to Jefferson county, my home.

When I arrived at my home, three miles west of Charlestown, on the Berryville turnpike, I hardly recognized it. The fences were all gone, the timber had been cut down, and I rode in be

tween the naked gate-posts. In the road, where there was a deposit from freshets, my four children were playing in the sand. None of them knew me, and when I took them up in my arms and kissed them, they silently stared at me as at a stranger.

As I rode in I read upon the gate-posts a notice that all returning officers and soldiers should report to Major Wilder, provost marshal at Charlestown, and that they were forbidden to wear their uniforms. I had no clothes except those I wore, and after my wife had ripped off the gold lace from my sleeves and the stars from my collar, I rode into Charlestown. As I was riding down the street, two men, citizens of the town, ran up and took hold of my bridle. Calling two soldiers and a sergeant, they directed attention to my uniform, and I was arrested and carried to Major Wilder's headquarters at the Carter House.

Major Wilder was engaged for some time, and I stood waiting with my captors. When he was disengaged he turned to us and asked, "Well, what is this man here for?" One of the citizens said, "He is wearing his uniform contrary to your orders. He is the Rebel Ranson and ought to be in jail.' Major Wilder turned to me and asked, "Why have you done this?" I replied, "Major Wilder, I returned home yesterday and read your orders on the gate-posts of my home that I must report to you. My wife took from my uniform all insignia of rank, and I have worn it because I either had to do so or come naked, as these are all the clothes I have in the world."

Instantly he turned upon my captors and said, "You people have given me more trouble than anybody else. You have been too mean to fight on your own side, and too cowardly to fight on ours, and are perfectly content to follow the mean occupation of spies and informers. My soldiers will carry out my orders, not you; and if you dare come here again on any such errand as this I will put you in the jail." Then turning to the soldiers he said, "You see this man; then remember he is privileged to wear his uniform where he damn pleases, and you will so inform both officers and men on guard." When they left the room, I thanked him and was going out when he said, "Don't go; I want to have one bully good drink with you." And opening the door into the next room, we had the drink all right.

Twenty-five years afterward I told the story to a party of men who were dining with me at the Maryland Club in Baltimore, where I was then living. It was then arranged that I should find out where the Major was and invite him to Baltimore, where he was to be my guest at a dinner I would give him, these same men to be present. But on making inquiry from the War Department at Washington I learned that Major Wilder was dead.

I may here remark that, except on the battlefield, I have never had any trouble with the soldiers of the Union Army who did the fighting. My troubles have all been with citizens who stayed at home and did the talking, or with barrack soldiers who never fired a gun. The trouble is that the people who talked and wrote, in the North as well as in the South, brought on the war, and when the war came these two classes of people continued to talk and to write, and took no part in the fighting, and after the war was over continued talking and writing, inflaming men's minds and preventing and delaying all efforts at reconciliation. If the people in the North had known the true conditions in the South the war might have been averted. But being ignorant of the true conditions, and reading and hearing the conditions from theorists and fanatics, a calm and quiet consideration of the subject was impossible. I believe that Uncle Tom's Cabin had as much to do with the coloring of the picture and inflaming of the minds of the people as any one thing, and possibly more; and yet I have heard that Mrs. Stowe said (when she had lived in the South after the war and had learned the true conditions) that "if she had known as much before the war as she knew now, Uncle Tom's Cabin would never have been written."

The reconstruction period in our part of the country was not as bad as in many places further south, but it was bad enough. In the first place all soldiers of the Southern Army and all sympathizers were denied the ballot. In my precinct at Charlestown, where six hundred ballots were cast before the war, eleven men only voted, nine of these being office-holders. The country, the railroads, everything was in the hands of the U. S. Government. At Charlestown the railroad depot was in the hands of a sergeant. The administration of the law was in the hands of a provost marshal and his wretched, drunken, undisci