I can not express the gratification I
felt, in meeting Col. May in New York, at the encomium he passed
upon your soldiership, your zeal, and your devotion to your duty.
But I was more pleased at the report of your conduct; that went
more to my heart and was of infinite comfort to me. Hold on to your
purity and virtue; they will proudly sustain you in all trials and
difficulties and cheer you in every calamity.

So, too, when the young lieutenant had married and settled down a
typical Virginian farmer upon the estate left him by his grandfather
Custis, the well-known "White House" on the Pamunkey, the home of Martha
Washington:

I am glad to hear that your mechanics are all paid off and that you
have managed your funds so well as to have enough for your
purposes. As you have commenced, I hope you will continue never to
exceed your means. It will save you much anxiety and mortification
and enable you to maintain your independence of character and
feeling. It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than
to make our means conform to our wishes. In fact, we want but
little. Our happiness depends upon our independence, the success of
our operations, prosperity of our plans, health, contentment, and
the esteem of our friends, all of which, my dear son, I hope you
may enjoy to the full.

With such counsels, glowing with a father's love and enforced by the
constant example of a father's life, it is no wonder that the son grew
into the manliness, the gentleness and modesty, the charitableness of
judgment, the unconspicuous and patient devotion to duty, and the
personal lovableness of Gen. LEE.

Mr. Speaker, I might say much more from the promptings of a strong and
unfeigned affection and from a sense of the public merits of our late
colleague, but where there are so many to speak, it is not necessary for
one to attempt a catalogue of his private virtues and of his public
services.

Perhaps I may fitly add a word in closing as to Gen. LEE's military
career. From a captain of volunteer cavalry he rose on his own merits at
the age of twenty-six to the rank of major-general. I have not searched
the annals of war to recite his military history, for it is not the
soldier that I have been commemorating, but I may recall a testimony not
improper to be placed on record here to-day. I happened to be in company
with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston a