s, the intellectual aristocracy of the town,
had held out, as implacable unbelievers. I was as hurt by this as if I
were engaged in some honest occupation. There is nothing surprising
about this. Human beings feel dishonor the most, sometimes, when they
most deserve it. That handful of overwise old gentlemen kept on shaking
their heads all the first week, and saying they had seen no marvels
there that could not have been produced by collusion; and they were
pretty vain of their unbelief, too, and liked to show it and air it, and
be superior to the ignorant and the gullible. Particularly old Dr.
Peake, who was the ringleader of the irreconcilables, and very
formidable; for he was an F.F.V., he was learned, white-haired and
venerable, nobly and richly clad in the fashions of an earlier and a
courtlier day, he was large and stately, and he not only seemed wise,
but was what he seemed, in that regard. He had great influence, and his
opinion upon any matter was worth much more than that of any other
person in the community. When I conquered him, at last, I knew I was
undisputed master of the field; and now, after more than fifty years, I
acknowledge, with a few dry old tears, that I rejoiced without shame.

[Sidenote: (1847.)]

[_Dictated December 2, 1906._] In 1847 we were living in a large white
house on the corner of Hill and Main Streets--a house that still stands,
but isn't large now, although it hasn't lost a plank; I saw it a year
ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the
year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months
afterward. Ours was not the only family in the house, there was
another--Dr. Grant's. One day Dr. Grant and Dr. Reyburn argued a matter
on the street with sword-canes, and Grant was brought home
multifariously punctured. Old Dr. Peake calked the leaks, and came every
day for a while, to look after him. The Grants were Virginians, like
Peake, and one day when Grant was getting well enough to be on his feet
and sit around in the parlor and talk, the conversation fell upon
Virginia and old times. I was present, but the group were probably quite
unconscious of me, I being only a lad and a negligible quantity. Two of
the group--Dr. Peake and Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Grant's mother--had been of
the audience when the Richmond theatre burned down, thirty-six years
before, and they talked over the frightful details of that memorable
tragedy. These were eye-witness