"When I was about ten years of age I was sent with my Aunt, Janett Alexander, the daughter of Archibald Alexander, of Rockbridge County, Virginia, to visit at Chatham, I can vividly recall the generous yet well-ordered life which prevailed at that time under the benign auspices of the beautiful Mrs. J. Horace Lacy, with her noble husband, and I remember the huge wood fires in every room and the delicious Virginia food. Each of us in the house, I remember, was furnished with a body servant who was charged with the duty of seeing that we were made thoroughly comfortable. I was shown the interesting tree under which it was said that General Washington and General Lee both proposed to their future wives and I am interested to learn that the Rev. James Power Smith, A. D. C. to Stonewall Jackson, also under that very tree proposed to the lovely Agnes Lacy, the daughter of the house. Every night the family and guests would gather around the huge log fire and discuss the issues of the day. On the way South I had been taken to the Senate to hear Senator Crittenton present his famous compromise. I also had the pleasure of spending the Christmas day of 1859 at the Seddons house, at Snowden, about eight miles from here. Their home was destroyed later by order of General Benj. F. Butler, Mr. Seddon's brother, James A. Seddon, being Secretary of War of the Confederacy. I can readily recall the appearance of the streets of Fredericksburg." Before Dr. Alexander completed his address, over in the City Park a few blocks away, real Rappahannock Indians, descendants of those redskins who inhabited this area, launched into a series of yells, with accompanying dances and waving of tomahawks over their heads, and gave to the people an exhibition of the tribal dance of their ancestors, a preliminary to an informal severance of diplomatic relations with pale faces or some other tribe of Indians that had incurred their enmity. This spectacular ceremony was accompanied by music from a band representing a modern fighting element, the marines. [Sidenote: _Banquets and Luncheons_]