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VIRGINIA SCENES IN ’61.
commanding infantry at Manassas . The banners were received with allpossible enthusiasm; were toasted, feted, and cheered abundantly. Aftertwo years, when Van Dorn had been killed in Tennessee , mine came backto me, tattered and storm-stained from long and honorable service in thefield. But it was only a little while after it had been bestowed that therearrived one day at our lodgings in Culpeper a huge, bashful Mississippi scout,— one of the most daring in the army,—with the frame of a Herculesand the face of a child. He had been bidden to come there by his general,he said, to ask, if I would not give him an order to fetch some cherishedobject from my dear old home—something that would prove to me “howmuch they thought of the maker of that flag!” A week later I was theastonished recipient of a lamented bit of finery left “ within the lines,” awrap, brought to us by Dillon himself, with a beaming face. Mounted ona load of fire-wood, he had gone through the Union pickets, and whilepeddling poultry had presented himself at the house of my uncle, Dr. Fairfax ,in Alexandria, whence he carried off his prize in triumph, with a letter inits folds telling us how relatives left behind longed to be sharing the joys andsorrows of those at large in the Confederacy.