Does all this impress the reader as quixotic? Was it a foolish sentimentalism that prompted these men to serve their neighbours and the public without pay, and, upon occasion, to hold themselves rigidly responsible to a high standard of duty? Was it quixotism which prompted George Washington to serve his country without one dollar of pay, through seven years of war, as the general of its armies, and through nearly twice that time as President, first of the Constitutional Convention, and afterwards, for eight years, as President of the nation? Was it an absurd sentimentalism that prompted him, after he had declined pay, to decline also the gifts voluntarily and urgently pressed upon him by his own and other States, and by the nation? The humourists ridicule all such sentiment. But the humourists are not a court of final appeal. At any rate, this sentimentality had its good side. But at this time of extreme excitement, there were, no doubt, ludicrous exaggerations of sentiment and conduct now and then, and on this sixteenth day of April, 1861, the master of Warlock encountered some things that greatly amused him. Having finished his business in the clerk's office, he found himself in the midst of excited throngs. Startling news had come from Richmond that morning. In view of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln had called for seventy-five thousand men as an army with which to reduce the seceding States to subjection. Virginia was not one of the seceding States. Up to that time, she had utterly repudiated the thought that secession was justified by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by any threat to the South which his accession to office implied. The statesmen of Virginia had busied themselves for months with efforts to find a way out of the difficulties that beset the country. They were intent upon saving that Union which had been born of Virginia's suggestion, if such saving could be accomplished by any means that did not involve dishonour. The people of Virginia, when called upon to decide the question of their own course in such a crisis by the election of a constitutional convention, had overwhelmingly decided it against secession, and in favour of adherence to the Union. Under Virginia's influence, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri had refused to secede.