"'You never saw me before,' I said, 'for I never passed along here.' "'But we do know you,' they said. 'And we've got your picture up yonder in the house, and you are General Lee! And we aint dressed clean enough to see you.' "With this they scampered off to a poor low hut on the mountain side." It was gratifying to him to find that even in this lonely mountain hut the children had been taught to know and revere him. He told us, too, of a man he met the same day in a dense forest, who recognized him, and, throwing up his hat in the air, said: "General, _please_ let me cheer you," and fell to cheering with all his lungs! My last recollections of General Lee, when making a visit of several weeks at his house the year before his death, although not coming properly under the head of "plantation reminiscences," may not be inappropriate here. It has been said that a man is never a hero to his valet; but this could not have been said of General Lee, for those most intimately connected with him could not fail to see continually in his bearing and character something above the ordinary level, something of the hero. At the time of my visit the Commencement exercises of the college of which he was president were going on. His duties were necessarily onerous. Sitting up late at night with the board of visitors, and attending to every detail with his conscientious particularity, there was little time for him to rest. Yet every morning of that busy week he was ready, with his prayer-book under his arm, when the church bell called its members to sunrise service. It is pleasant to recall all that he said at the breakfast, dinner, and tea table, where in his hospitality he always insisted upon bringing all who chanced to be at his house at those hours--on business or on social call.[21] This habit kept his table filled with guests, who received from him the most graceful courtesy. [21] Here was seen the Mount Vernon silver, which had descended to Mrs. General Washington's great-grandson, General Custis Lee, and which was marvelously preserved during the war, having been concealed in different places--and once was buried near Lexington in a barn which was occupied by the enemy several days. Only once did I hear him speak regretfully of the past. It was one night when, sitting by him on the porch in the moonlight, he said to me, his thoughts turning to his early childhood: "It was not my mother's wish that I should receive a military education, and I ought to have taken her advice; for," he continued very sadly, "my education did not fit me for this civil life." In this no one could agree with him, for it seemed to all that he adorned and satisfactorily filled every position in life, civil or military.