The Days of a Man 



The doctor closed his tale of horrors with the remark, "If the 

 North knew what is going on here, it would stop enlistments 

 immediately." 



That building, erected for worship by a Christian people, was 

 surely a strange place for offering sacrifices of war. ... It 

 should be remembered also that the number there, large as it was, 

 represented only a small fraction of the total cases of wounded 

 in the slaughter pens of the Wilderness. 



It has often been said, and apparently with justice, 

 that the war between the States was the most humane 

 ever recorded in history. If so, it turns a ghastly 

 light on the efficacy of the so-called " Laws of War." 



My Phi Beta Kappa poem, read at the annual meet- 

 ing of the Stanford Chapter in May, 1913, was en- 

 titled "In the Wilderness." 1 



From Spottsylvania I crossed the Blue Ridge to 

 meet my daughter Edith at Staunton in the Shenan- 

 doah Valley, the birthplace of President Wilson, 

 while Cousin Harvey, Krehbiel, and Hill went di- 

 rectly to Lexington to begin our detailed investiga- 

 tion of Rockbridge County a hilly region about the 

 famous Natural Bridge - - of which Lexington is 

 the chief town. 2 A veteran journalist of Staunton, 

 Colonel Rudolph S. Turk, now vividly described to 

 me the desolation of the Valley where "a crow could 

 not fly over unless he carried his rations with him." 

 The Northern soldiers, said Turk, a boy at the time, 

 made the impression of a splendid, well-fed army. 

 But witnessing a little fight near home, he was 



1 See Appendix D of the present volume (page 794). 



2 Here was located the Virginia Military Institute, in which Lee as well as 

 Jackson taught, and here grew up Washington and Lee University, an excellent 

 institution of which Lee became president after the war was over. 



C 432 n 



