General Smith was a man trained by military discipline to be instant in decision and prompt in action. As soon as the doctors informed him that his son's case required--not wanderings--but a steady residence in a climate bracing, as well as mild, where the comforts of home could supplement the healing of nature, he set himself at once to discover a place which would fill all the requirements. To the old soldier, New England born and Michigan bred, Virginia appeared a land of sun and flowers, a country well-nigh tropical in the softness of its climate, and the fervor of its heat. The doctors recommended Florida, or South Carolina, as in duty bound, and to the suggestion of Virginia yielded only a dubious consent; it was very far _north_, they said, but still it might do. To the general, it seemed very far _south_, and he was certain it would do. In the old time, he remembered, when he was in lower Virginia with McClellan, he had reveled in the softness, the delight of that, to him, marvelous climate. He had found the nights so sweet; the air, vitalized with the breath of old ocean, so invigorating, the heat at noonday so dry, and the coolness at evening so refreshing. There were pines, too; old fields of low scrub, and some forests of the nobler sort; that would be the thing for Warner. He remembered how, as he sat in the tent door, the breeze scented with resinous odors used to come to him, and how, strong man though he was, he had felt as he drew it into his lungs that it did him good. In those old campaigning days, the fancy had been born in him that some time in the future he would like to return and make his home here, where "amorous ocean wooed a gracious land"--that when his fighting days were over, and the retired list lengthened by his name, it would be a pleasant thing to have his final bivouac among the gallant foes who had won his admiration by their dauntless manner of giving and taking blows. The exigencies and absorptions of military life, in time, dimmed the fancy, but it never altogether vanished. Out on the plains with Custer, away in the mountains and the Indian country, vegetating in the dullness of frontier posts, amid the bustle, the luxury and excitement of city life, the fancy would return; the memory of those soft starlit Virginia evenings would infold him with a subtle spell. In thought he would again sit smoking in the tent door, the gray shadows stealing out from their covert in the woods, reconnoitering all the country ere they swept down and took possession, in the name of their queen--the night. The air would grow cool with the fragrant breath of the ocean and the pines; whip-poor-wills would chant in the tree tops, and partridges sound their blithe note away in the fields. It was not wonderful that when the necessity of securing a country home arose, the fancy should resume its sway, and that a meditated flitting southward should suggest Virginia as its goal.