Southern men were proud of being gentlemen, although they have been told in every conceivable tone that it was a foolish pride,--foolish in itself, foolish in that it did not have the heraldic backing that was claimed for it; the utmost concession being that a number of "deboshed" younger sons of decayed gentry had been shipped to Virginia in the early settlement of that colony. But the very pride played its part in making us what we were proud of being, and whether descendants of the aforesaid "deboshed," of simple English yeomen, of plain Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, a sturdy stock, of Huguenots of various ranks of life, we all held to the same standard, and showed, as was thought, undue exclusiveness on this subject. But this prisoner was the embodiment of the best type of Northern youth, with a spirit as high, as resolute, as could be found in the ranks of Southern gentlemen; and though in theory all enlightened Southerners recognized the high qualities of some of our opponents, this one noble figure in "flesh and blood" was better calculated to inspire respect for "those people," as we had learned to call our adversaries, than many pages of "gray theory." [Note: General LEE always referred to the enemy as "those people." JOHN S. WISE, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1894. WISE is one ear-witness among many, and I thought of General LEE, as well as of Dante, when I wrote in my Introductory Essay to Pindar, xxxviii: A word, an epithet, and the picture is there, drawn with a stroke. In the second Olympian P. is telling of the blessedness of the souls that have overcome. When he comes to the damned, he calls them simply "those."--_Non ragioniam di lor._] [Note: Lieut. Gen. JOHN B. GORDON, Reminiscences, p. 422. Perhaps I may be pardoned for adding that when I read the passage in which mention is made of my service on his staff, I wrote to my chief, whose own bearing on the battlefield was an inspiration, that no tribute to my Greek scholarship I had received or could receive would ever be more cherished, if so much; and I cited the famous epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Aeschylus at Gela. No mention is made of his great tragedies. It is simply recorded that Aeschylus had quitted himself like a man in the Persian war. [Greek: alken d' eudokimon Marathonion alsos an eipoi kai bathychaiteeis Medos epistamenos.]