74 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



had known my uncle William Southgate and had loved him 

 dearly. I evidently had a great physical resemblance to him, 

 though he was a small man, and at seventeen I was near six 

 feet high. Countrymen would often accost me with the ques- 

 tion, "Ain't you some kin to little Billy?" In this way my en- 

 trance among the leaders of that time was made easy. 



Above the town of Frankfort, on the top of the steep bluff 

 of the Kentucky River, is a burial-place where lie the bones of 

 many heroes, sons the Commonwealth has lovingly gathered 

 in one fold. It is a beautiful site for this simple Valhalla, with 

 its wide outlook over the noble vale it crowns, to my eyes won- 

 drously enriched by the sense of a people's care for the fame 

 of its illustrious dead. Thereto was the usual walk of young 

 and old, to take the sunset and whatever else came to them 

 there. A wider outlook on varied temples of fame in Europe 

 and elsewhere has not diminished my feeling for that simple 

 place of graves. Even now it makes in me a larger impression 

 than the cloistered dust of Westminster Abbey or the rows of 

 busts on the Pincian Hill ; most likely because of its simplicity, 

 and the contrast between it and the very commonplace scenes 

 about it. 



In Frankfort I met many of those who had played their little 

 parts as soldiers in Mexico and soon were to show themselves 

 in larger action on the wider fields of the Civil War, as well as 

 many near my own age who were to find a soldier's place, and 

 the most of them their graves in that same deadly struggle. I 

 recall John Hunt Morgan, then judged a man of small parts, 

 who as a subaltern had done nothing at all distinguished in 

 Mexico, but who was to win fame as a Confederate commander 

 which would rank him with Wheeler and Stuart. This man, 

 who became the type of a daring raider, seemed to me a com- 

 monplace person. He held a "poker hand" timidly, playing 

 for certainties, and with little of that "knowledge of men" 

 which was then and there held to be the sum of wits. There 

 were the Marshalls, Thomas, Humphrey, and John, three 



