VIRGINIA SCENES IN '61. 161

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VADCLUSE”— A VIRGINIA HOMESTEAD.

holly and spruce, pine and cedar, to deck the walls and wreathe the picture-frames. On Christmas Eve we had a grand rally of youths and boys belongingto the “clan,” as they loved to call it, to roll in a yule log, which was depositedupon a glowing bed of coals in the big “ red-parlor” fire-place, and sit about itafterward, welcoming the Christmas in with goblets of egg-nog and apple-toddy.

“ Where shall we be a year hence ? ” some one asked at a pause in the merrychat; and, in the brief silence that, followed, arose a sudden spectral thoughtof war. All felt its presence; no one cared to speak first of its grim possibilities.

On Christmas Eve of the following year the old house lay in ruins, a sacri-fice by Union troops to military necessity; the forest giants that kept watcharound her walls had been cut down and made to serve as breastworks for afort erected on the Vaucluse property as part of the defenses of Washington.Of the young men and boys who took part in that holiday festivity, all werein the active service of the South,— one of them, alas! soon to fall under arain of shot and shell beside his gun at Fredericksburg ; the youngest of thenumber had left his mother’s knee to fight at Manassas , and found himself,before the year was out, a midshipman aboard the Confederate steamerNashville , on her cruise in distant seas!

My first vivid impression of war-days was during a ramble in the neigh-boring woods one Sunday afternoon in spring, when the young people ina happy band set out in search of wild flowers. Pink honeysuckles, bluelupine, beds of fairy flax, anemones, and ferns in abundance sprung under

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