Homeopathy was not very extensively known in Richmond, a few years before a physician of that school who had been located there had left and from him or some member of his family my father obtained a list of his former patients. He formed the acquaintance of several and his journalistic relations formed in past years as a contributor to the newspapers led him to look to the Richmond papers for help, so that most of the papers were of great service to him. The Examiner had an elaborate editorial on the subject of Homeopathy. The Enquirer, the Dispatch and the Whig also contained flattering notices and Mr. Ritchie of the Enquirer, Mr. Coworden and Mr. Ellison of the Dispatch and Mr. Alexander Mosely of the Whig became his patients, as did also Mr. Smith of the Sentinel when that paper was subsequently established, so that the associations he thus formed, together with his being elected to the Legislature to represent Ohio county in the Virginia House of Delegates enabled him to keep his family in comfort. The latter office gave him many privileges. For instance my shoes were gotten at the Penitentiary whose superintendent Mr. Knote was a constituent of my father, and most nice fitting shoes they were. He had passes over all the railroads and his trips were both pleasant and productive of luxuries for at a time when coffee was made of cornmeal rolled in sorghum molasses, roasted and ground, and the only cloth was homespun and tea was about non-existent as also loaf sugar, indeed everything reduced to the simplest, the rations of the soldiers for instance being nearly exclusively cornmeal and bacon, a trip of my father to Wilmington, North Carolina, led him to visit a blockade runner from Nassau, the steamer Hansa, and when the captain ascertained who he was, and through him he could obtain an introduction to the President and others in authority at Richmond, a shipment was received at our house from this ship of a bag of coffee, a box of tea, a barrel of loaf sugar and cloth for suits of clothes and toys for the children. It should be added that my father’s skill as a physician quickly became recognized and his practice had extended to the families of those occupying the highest official positions under the Government. Upon another occasion on one of his trips he had obtained under some advantageous arrangement a large amount of flour. This he determined to sell and one evening he sold it to a baker on Broad Street and the very large amount of money paid in bulky bills, he, out of apprehension for the garroters that infested Richmond at this time, concealed under my coat around my person, knowing there was slight danger of any attempt to rob a young boy with ostensibly nothing to take from him. The comparative luxury which we were enabled to enjoy was participated in by my father’s constituents, for the Confederate soldier from our district when visiting Richmond on furlough was welcomed and