It was at Lexington, where the Shenandoah flows through the “Valley of Virginia,” that Jackson spent the next ten years, teaching the cadets, and very interesting work he found it. He loved every inch of the beautiful grounds, and enjoyed every hour of those days. It was here that he met Doctor White, a Presbyterian minister, in whom he found a congenial “spiritual commanding officer.” After examination of all the creeds, Jackson was baptized “a member of Doctor White’s congregation,” and began straightaway, with a zeal that was all his might, the business of leading a veritable “religious life,” and this life he lived to the letter, as far as it is possible for man to live it in this world. “Every act, it seemed to him, was fit occasion for a prayer,—prayer before he drank a glass of water, in the class-room, a blessing on his scholars, on mailing a letter, an appeal for the person to whom it was sent,—silent prayers in most cases; for there appeared little of the Roundhead in this simple man, who could speak out when he thought it necessary, but shrank from uncalled for show.” In 1853 Jackson was married to Elinor, daughter of President Junkin, of Washington College. Less than one happy year were they together, for she died in childbirth, and Jackson sank in despair. There have been many descriptions of this Major Jackson. He is described as being “tall, erect, muscular, with uncommonly large hands and feet, and with a diffident manner of meeting people that was exaggerated by his habitually awkward movements. He walked, it is said, like a dismounted horseman; in the saddle sat loosely, in a kind of slovenly ease, unless, as later, in battle, he was moved by excitement, when his whole body became rigid with martial lines, and he rode with a distinction as imposing, almost, as that of ‘the man on the horse himself.’ The heavy (bearded) jaw, however, was not square, but oval, and Jackson’s eyes, which were large and blue, had a trace of soft light in them not accounted for in this picture of an iron warrior.” In 1856 Major Jackson visited Europe. He scanned every inch of the “beaten path,” and in gratifying his curiosity went to the Battlefield of Waterloo. While he felt that Napoleon was the greatest of commanders, he was sure that he made an error in choosing the Chateau of Hugomont as the vital point of attack on the British line; it should have been the village of Mont St. Jean. In this far away land, his thoughts wandered back to the country of his birth, and to a dear little girl he had known before his marriage. He made her his wife a year after his return. They led a plain, simple, Christian life. Jackson, a keen observer, saw at last the dark clouds of rebellion on the horizon. These signs meant much to him, and, like many another, he was greatly concerned.