"Yes," replied General Lee, "but he did not fight with a sword. He is a preacher, a Bible teacher, and fights with the spirit."
"That's poetry, isn't it?" asked Corbell.
"General, Dr. Minnegerode always says his prayers with me and asks the Lord to bless me and make me well," said Corbell.
"May I say my prayers with you, too, my boy, and ask the Lord to make us both well and bless us?"
"Yes, General, but you are a soldier, not a preacher."
"No, I am neither now, my little man," replied the General; "just a poor, sick, helpless child like you, asking for health."
He knelt by the bedside and prayed the most beautiful prayer I ever heard.
After the failure of the military system of agriculture developed at Turkey Island my Soldier became the general agent for the South of a life insurance company. His office was in Richmond, where his boyhood had been spent and where we had many pleasant friends and old associations.
Though living a life of deep earnestness, my Soldier was fond of a story or a jest. He used to tell some of Lincoln's jokes and anecdotes which, in his youthful days in Illinois, he had heard from the lips of that famous story-teller, so that when I afterward saw the stories of the great War President in print I remembered many of them as old friends. Mr. Lincoln was much interested in the plantation legends told by the Virginia boy and they exchanged stories, to the delight of both.
My Soldier especially liked a joke if it was upon me. On leaving home for a business trip he once asked me how much money I should need before his return. After a labored calculation I mentioned a sum which he, knowing me, promptly doubled. He had been gone only a day when I suddenly recalled an obligation that had escaped my memory, and telegraphed him. By next mail came a cheque, carefully made out, payable to "Mrs. Oliver Twist." As I must have the money it was necessary for me to indorse it as it was made out. To tease me he kept the cheque to dangle before my eyes on the slightest provocation, and I have it now.
He always made companions of our boys and joked and played with them as if he were the same age as they. One morning when our little George was about ten years old he took him to the office several blocks from home, sending him back with a note, telling him to go directly home and not to get into any trouble on the way. Then he followed him, watching his progress. I still have the note in which were recorded the little fellow's meanderings, of which this is a copy: