that assembled in the old home. A few years of this charmed life Mr. Johnstone called his, and then he was gathered to his illustrious fathers, and the burden of this great estate fell on the shoulders of his young widow. She stood the test of generalship, as other Southern women of her day have done, and the affairs of the plantation, the slave quarters and the household moved as smoothly as clock work and success smiled on her. The material side of her plantation's progress did not overshadow the religious side, and services for bond and free were held daily in a gothic church on the estate, the chapel of the cross which Mrs. Johnstone had erected in memory of her husband. The daughter of the house was carefully educated, and as she neared womanhood Mrs. Johnstone had a new home built, the present Annandale, and the same lavish hospitality was continued.

Then came the war. There was no husband, brother or son to send to the front, but the women, true to the patriotic sentiments of their house, gave of their best. The big mansion was turned into a factory for supplying Confederate needs. Mrs. Johnstone and her fair daughter, Helen, became the head of a busy body of working women, who gave of their time and talent for the South. All day was heard the whir of spinning-wheels, the slipping of the shuttles in the looms; all day busy fingers carded, wove, spun and sewed, that the soldiers might be made more comfortable. One company of soldiers was equipped throughout the war solely at Miss Johnstone's expense, while she and her mother furnished clothing to two hundred others. The setting of dainty stitches, the manufacture of rolled and whipped ruffles, were laid aside for the time. The rich carpets were torn from the floors and made into blankets; the rare bronzes and brasses were torn from their pedestals or their fastenings and sent to the foundries to be made into cannon; silk dresses were transformed into banners to lead the gray-clad men to victory, and dainty linen and cambric garments and rare household napery and linen were ruthlessly torn in strips to bandage the wounds of the men in the hospitals,

The granaries, smokehouses, and wine cellars gave up their stores for the Confederacy, the wealth of these two loyal women being laid gladly on their country's altar. Yet, through all this troublous season, hospitality and merriment still reigned. The rebel lads adored the loyal women; the Union soldiers tried more than once to burp the house that sheltered such secessionists.

During the war the fair daughter of the house was married to Rev. George Carroll Harris, of Nashville, and for many years rector of Christ Church, and widely known throughout the South.

In 1880 Mrs. Johnstone died, and historic Annandale passed into her daughter's hands, and is still owned by her. A few years ago the son of Dr. and Mrs. Harris, George Harris, married Miss Cecile Nugent, of Jackson, Mississippi, and they live on his place in the Delta, and with the marriage of the daughter Helen to the son of the late Bishop Thompson the younger generation of Annandale closed another chapter of romances for the old home. But even though the windows are darkened and no material form passes daily over the threshold, the inner air is still palpitant with memories, and who knows what gay revels the ghostly companies of the past may not hold in the grand salon when midnight has come and the human world is wrapped in slumber?

A PLANTATION HEROINE

[In Southern Soldier Stories, pages 203 205.]

It was nearing the end. Every resource of the Southern States had been taxed to the point of exhaustion. The people had given up everything they had for "the cause." Under the law of a "tax in kind," they had surrendered all they could spare of food products of every character. Under an untamable impulse of patriotism they had surrendered much more than they could spare in order to feed the army.

It was at such a time that I went to my home county on

a little military business. I stopped for dinner at a house, the lavish hospitality of which had been a byword in the old days. I found before me at dinner the remnants of a cold boiled ham, some mustard greens, which we Virginians called "salad," a pitcher of buttermilk, some corn pones and—nothing else. I carved the ham, and offered to serve it to the three women of the household. But they all declined. They made their dinner on salad, buttermilk, and corn bread, the latter eaten very sparingly, as I observed. The ham went only to myself and to the three convalescent wounded soldiers who were guests in the house. Wounded men were at that time guests in every house in Virginia.

I lay awake that night and thought over the circumstance. The next morning I took occasion to have a talk on the old familiar terms with the young woman of the family, with whom I had been on a basis of friendship in the old days that even permitted me to kiss her upon due and proper occasion.

"Why didn't you take some ham last night?" I asked urgently.

"Oh, I didn't want it," she replied.

"Now, you know you are fibbing," I said. "Tell me the truth, won't you?"

She blushed, and hesitated. Presently she broke down and answered frankly: "Honestly, I did want the ham. I have hungered for meat for months. But I mustn't eat it, and I won't. You see the army needs all the food there is, and more. We women can't fight, though I don't see at all why they shouldn't let us, and so we are trying to feed the fighting men—and there aren't any others. We've made up our minds not to eat anything that can be sent to the front as rations."

"You are starving yourselves," I exclaimed.

"Oh, no," she said. "And if we were, what would it matter? Haven't Lee's soldiers starved many a day? But we aren't starving. You see we had plenty of salad and buttermilk last night. And we even ate some of the corn bread. I must stop that, by the way, for corn meal is a good ration for the soldiers."

A month or so later this frail but heroic young girl was laid away in the Grub Hill church-yard.

Don't talk to me about the "heroism" that braves a fire of hell under enthusiastic impulse. That young girl did a higher self-sacrifice than any soldier who fought on either side during the war ever dreamed of doing.

LUCY ANN COX

[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 54-55. From the Richmond Star, July 21, 1894.]

On the evening of October 15th an entertainment was given in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to raise funds to erect a monument to the memory of Mrs. Lucy Ann Cox, who, at the commencement of the war, surrendered all the comfort of her father's home, and followed the fortunes of her husband, who was a member of Company A, Thirteenth Virginia Regiment, until the flag of the Southern Confederacy was furled at Appomattox. No march was too long or weather too inclement to deter this patriotic woman from doing what she considered her duty. She was with her company and regiment on their two forays into Maryland, and her ministering hand carried comfort to many a wounded and worn soldier. While Company A was the object of her untiring solicitude, no Confederate ever asked assistance from Mrs. Cox but it was cheerfully rendered.

She marched as the infantry did, seldom taking advantage of offered rides in ambulances and wagon trains. When Mrs. Cox died, a few years ago, it was her latest expressed wish that she be buried with military honors, and, so far as it was possible, her wish was carried out. Her funeral took place on a bright autumn Sunday, and the entire town turned out to do honor to this noble

woman.

The camps that have undertaken the erection of this monument do honor to themselves in thus commemorating the virtues of the heroine, Lucy Ann Cox.

"ONE OF THEM LEES"

[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]

There was little conversation carried on, no necessity for introductions, and no names ever asked or given. This indifference to personality was a peculiarity strongly exhibited in hospitals; for after nursing a sick or wounded patient for months, he has often left without. any curiosity as regarded my name, my whereabouts, or indeed anything connected with me. A case in point was related by a friend. When the daughter of our general had devoted much time and care to a sick man in one of the hospitals, he seemed to feel so little gratitude for the attention paid him that her companion to rouse him told him that Miss Lee was his nurse. "Lee, Lee?" he said. "There are some Lees down in Mississippi who keeps a tavern there. Is she one of them Lees?"

Almost of the same style, although a little worse, was the remark of one sick, poor fellow who had been wounded in the head and who, though sensible enough ordinarily, would feel the effect of the sun on his brain when exposed to its influence. After advising him to wear a wet paper doubled into the crown of his hat, more from a desire to show some interest in him than from any belief in its efficacy, I paused at the door long enough to hear him ask the ward-master, "who that was?"

"Why, that is the matron of the hospital; she gives you all the food you eat, and attends to things."

"Well," said he, "I always did think this government was a confounded sell, and now I am sure of it, when they put such a little fool to manage such a big hospital as this."

SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES [In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 32, pages 146-150. T. C. DeLeon, in New Orleans Picayune.

The great German who wrote:

"Honor to woman! to her it is given

To garden the earth with roses of heaven!"