“Why didn’t you take some ham last night?” I asked urgently. “Oh, I didn’t want it,” she replied. “Now, you know you’re fibbing,” I said. “Tell me the truth, won’t you?” She blushed, and hesitated. Presently she broke down and answered frankly: “Honestly, I did want the ham. I have hungered for meat for months. But I mustn’t eat it, and I won’t. You see the army needs all the food there is, and more. We women can’t fight, though I don’t see at all why they shouldn’t let us, and so we are trying to feed the fighting men--and there aren’t any others. We’ve made up our minds not to eat anything that can be sent to the front as rations.” “You are starving yourselves,” I exclaimed. “Oh, no,” she said. “And if we were, what would it matter? Haven’t Lee’s soldiers starved many a day? But we aren’t starving. You see we had plenty of salad and butter-milk last night. And we even ate some of the corn-bread. I must stop that, by the way, for corn-meal is a good ration for the soldiers.” A month or so later this frail but heroic young girl was laid away in the Grub Hill church-yard. Don’t talk to me about the “heroism” that braves a fire of hell under enthusiastic impulse. That young girl did a higher act of self-sacrifice than any soldier who fought on either side during the war ever dreamed of doing. TWO INCIDENTS IN CONTRAST INCIDENT NUMBER ONE The Masters place at Amelia Court House was a dream of beauty. Major Masters himself was a man of exquisite taste, and his wife and daughter had been devoted for years to the creation of beauty there. They had had the expert aid of Thomas Giles. Thomas Giles was a lawyer by profession, but being a man of large wealth, and having nobody dependent upon him, he had devoted a considerable share of his attention for years to his two fancies--architecture and landscape gardening. It had been his long-continued custom to spend his time from Friday afternoon till Monday of each week at the Masters place, developing its possibilities of beauty. He had spent both his own money and that of Major Masters very lavishly in this endeavor, and the result was a notable one. When the Federal army reached the court house in hot pursuit of General Lee, during that last retreat which ended the war, there was a rush made by the soldiers for comfortable camping grounds on the Masters place. One man had even begun to cut down a stately tree for firewood, when the general commanding rode up. Taking in the situation at a glance, the general turned to one of his aids and said: “Take a squad of twenty men, and drive everybody out of that place quick. Then tell the adjutant-general to post a close guard around it and allow no man to enter it during our stay, upon any pretence whatever.” Then, turning to his staff as the officer rode away to execute his orders, he said: “That place has cost years of growth as well as years of intelligent endeavor to create it. As we are not vandals, I shall not suffer it to be destroyed.”