VIRGINIA SCENES IN ’6i.

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an only son barely fifteen years of age, heard that her boy, after being in actionall the early part of the day, had through sheer fatigue fallen asleep uponthe ground, where he was found resting peacefully amidst the roar of the guns.

A few days later we rode over the field. The trampled grass had begunto spring again, and wild flowers were blooming around carelessly madegraves. From one of these imperfect mounds of clay I saw a hand extended;and when, years afterward, I visited the tomb of Rousseau beneath thePantheon in Paris , where a sculptured hand bearing a torch protrudes fromthe sarcophagus, I thought of that mournful spectacle upon the field ofManassas . Fences were everywhere thrown down; the undergrowth of thewoods was riddled with shot; here and there we came upon spiked guns,disabled gun-carriages, cannon-balls, blood-stained blankets, and dead horses.We were glad enough to turn away and gallop homeward.

With August heats and lack of water, Bristoe was forsaken for quartersnear Culpeper, where my mother went into the soldiers’ barracks, sharingsoldiers’ accommodations, to nurse the wounded. In September quite a partyof us, upon invitation, visited the different headquarters. We stopped over-night at Manassas , five ladies, sleeping upon a couch made of rolls of car-tridge-flannel, in a tent guarded by a faithful sentry. I remember the comicaleffect of the five bird-cages (of a kind without which no self-respecting youngwoman of that day would present herself in public) suspended upon a linerunning across the upper part of our tent, after we had reluctantly removedthem in order to adjust ourselves for repose. Our progress during that mem-orable visit was royal; an ambulance with a picked troop of cavalrymen hadbeen placed at our service, and the convoy was “ personally conducted ” by apleasing variety of distinguished officers. It was at this time, after a supperat the headquarters of the “ Maryland line ” at Fairfax, that the afterward uni-versal war-song, “ My Maryland ! ” was put afloat upon the tide of army favor.We were sitting outside a tent in the warm starlight of an early autumn night,when music was proposed. At once we struck up Randall’s verses to thetune of the old college song, “ Lauriger Horatius,”—a young lady of the party,Jennie Cary, of Baltimore , having recently set them to this music beforeleaving home to share the fortunes of the Confederacy. All joined in the ring-ing chorus; and, when we finished, a burst of applause came from some soldierslistening in the darkness behind a belt of trees. Next day the melody washummed far and near through the camps, and in due time it had gainedthe place of favorite song in the army. Other songs sung that evening,which afterward had a great vogue, were one beginning “ By blue Patapsco’sbillowy dash,” and “ The years glide slowly by, Lorena.”

Another incident of note, during the autumn of ’61, was that to my cousins,Hetty and Jennie Cary, and to me was intrusted the making of the first threebattle-flags of the Confederacy. They were jaunty squares of scarlet crossedwith dark blue edged with white, the cross bearing stars to indicate thenumber of the seceded States. We set our best stitches upon them, edgedthem with golden fringes, and, when they were finished, dispatched oneto Johnston, another to Beauregard, and the third to Earl Van Dorn , then