[Illustration: VALENTINE’S RECUMBENT LEE STATUE At Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia] Lee’s devotion to his soldiers and theirs to him are referred to by one of Pickett’s captains[7]: Many of those who had been wounded in the battle of the first day went into the great charge on the third day with bandages on their heads or arms, at sight of which the imperturbable Lee shed tears.... Here was a devotion of which the Romans of old had never dreamed; here was a holocaust of sacrificial victims such as Greece had never known! The men who at Marathon and Leuctra bled were not greater heroes than those who fell at Gettysburg. In a small volume of War Sketches, issued shortly after the war, I found the following anecdote contributed to a Washington paper by Miss Woolsey, a nurse sent to Gettysburg with the Sanitary Commission: One of the Gettysburg farmers came creeping into our camp three weeks after the battle. He lived five miles only from the town and had “never seen a Rebel.” He heard we had some of them, and came down to see them. “Boys, here’s a man who never saw a Rebel in his life, and wants to look at you.” There he stood, with his mouth wide open, and there they lay in rows, laughing at him. “And why haven’t you seen a Rebel?” Mrs. ⸺ asked. “Why didn’t you take your gun and help to drive them out of your town?” “A feller might er got hit,” which reply was quite too much for the Rebels; they roared with laughter up and down the tents. After the surrender at Appomattox General Lee joined his family at Richmond for a short period of rest before taking up the “burdens of life again.” “There was,” writes General Long,[8] “a continuous stream of callers at the residence ... upon every hand manifestations of respect were shown him.” General Long gives some touching incidents: One morning an Irishman who had gone through the war in the Federal ranks appeared at the door with a basket well filled with provisions, and insisted upon seeing General Lee.... The general came from an adjoining room and was greeted with profuse terms of admiration. “Sure, sir, you’re a great soldier, and it’s I that know it. I’ve been fighting against you all these years, an’ many a hard knock we’ve had. But, general, I honor you for it; and now they tell me you’re poor an’ in want, an’ I’ve brought this basket an’ beg you to take it from a soldier.” Two Confederate soldiers, in tattered garments and with bodies emaciated by prison confinement, called upon General Lee and told him they were delegated by sixty other fellows around the corner “too ragged to come themselves.” They tendered their beloved general a home in the mountains, promising him a comfortable house and a good farm. “Great and star-like as was the warrior,” says Dr. Shepherd, “the man is greater.”[9]