This gentleman lost an eye at the battle of Chapultepec, having been among the first of our gallant men who scaled the walls. But a young girl of his acquaintance always said she knew it was not bravery so much as "curiosity, which led him to go peeping over the walls, first man!" This was a heartless speech, but everybody repeated it and laughed, for the colonel _was_ a man of considerable "curiosity." Like all old homes, Oaklands had its bright as well as its sorrowful days, its weddings and its funerals. Many yet remember the gay wedding of one there whose charms brought suitors by the score and won hearts by the dozen. The brilliant career of this young lady, her conquests and wonderful fascinations, behold! are they not all written upon the hearts and memories of divers rejected suitors who still survive? And, apropos of weddings, an old-fashioned Virginia wedding was an event to be remembered. The preparations usually commenced some time before, with saving eggs, butter, chickens, etc.; after which ensued the liveliest egg-beating, butter-creaming, raisin-stoning, sugar-pounding, cake-icing, salad-chopping, cocoanut-grating, lemon-squeezing, egg-frothing, wafer-making, pastry-baking, jelly-straining, paper-cutting, silver-cleaning, floor-rubbing, dress-making, hair-curling, lace-washing, ruffle-crimping, tarlatan-smoothing, trunk-moving,--guests arriving, servants running, girls laughing! Imagine all this going on simultaneously for several successive days and nights, and you have an idea of "preparations" for an old-fashioned Virginia wedding. The guests generally arrived in private carriages a day or two before, and stayed often for a week after the affair, being accompanied by quite an army of negro servants, who enjoyed the festivities as much as their masters and mistresses. A great many years ago, after such a wedding as I describe, a dark shadow fell upon Oaklands. The eldest daughter, young and beautiful, soon to marry a gentleman[4] of high character, charming manners, and large estate, one night, while the preparations were in progress for her nuptials, saw in a vision vivid pictures of what would befall her if she married. The vision showed her: a gay wedding, herself the bride; the marriage jaunt to her husband's home in a distant county; the incidents of the journey; her arrival at her new home; her sickness and death; the funeral procession back to Oaklands; the open grave; the bearers of her bier--those who a few weeks before had danced at the wedding; herself a corpse in her bridal dress; her newly turfed grave with a bird singing in the tree above. [4] Colonel Tom Preston. This vision produced such an impression that she awakened her sister and told her of it.