lights and flowers, not so much
for their own pleasure as that there might be cheer, music, light,
laughter, flowers, praise, and sweetness for the men who were going to
battle. Men and women, all did not come or go at once; they passed in
and out of the President's House, some tarrying throughout the evening,
others but for a moment. The violins left "Il Trovatore," began upon
"Les Huguenots."

The President stood between the windows, talking with a little group of
men,--Judge Campbell, R. M. T. Hunter, Randolph the Secretary of War,
General Wade Hampton, General Jeb Stuart. Very straight and tall, thin,
with a clear-cut, clean-shaven, distinguished face, with a look half
military man, half student, with a demeanour to all of perfect if
somewhat chilly courtesy, by temperament a theorist, able with the
ability of the field marshal or the scholar in the study, not with that
of the reader and master of men, the hardest of workers, devoted,
honourable, single-minded, a figure on which a fierce light has beaten,
a man not perfect, not always just, nor always wise, bound in the toils
of his own personality, but yet an able man who suffered and gave all,
believed in himself, and in his cause, and to the height of his power
laboured for it day and night--Mr. Davis stood speaking of Indian
affairs and of the defences of the Western waters.

Warwick Cary, his daughter on his arm, spoke to the President's wife, a
comely, able woman, with a group about her of strangers whom she was
putting at their ease, then moved with Judith to the windows. The
President stepped a little forward to meet them. "Ah, General Cary, I
wish you could bring with you a wind from the Blue Ridge this stifling
night! We must make this good news from the Mississippi refresh us
instead! I saw your troops on the Nine-Mile road to-day. They cheered
me, but I felt like cheering them! Miss Cary, I have overheard six
officers ask to-night if Miss Cary had yet come."

Warwick began to talk with Judge Campbell. Judith laughed. "It was not
of me they were asking, Mr. President! There is Hetty Cary entering now,
and behind her Constance, and there are your six officers! I am but a
leaf blown from the Blue Ridge."

"Gold leaf," said Wade Hampton.

The President used toward all women a stately deference. "I hope," he
said, "that, having come once to rest in this room, you will often let a
good wind blow you here--" Other guests claimed his attention. "Ah, Mrs.
S