18 MEMOIRS OF
I saw or heard from him every day. I was still such a child that, at first, I thought his gifts of candy and flowers, and his moonlight picnics on top of the mountain, where we all went in old-time hacks, represented merely acts of kindness of an older man to a child. For to sixteen, thirty-eight looks very old.
I did not go back to school the next winter because I was so thin and so subject to terrible colds that I was directed to stay at home and live out in the open air. By Christmas I began to realize that a new element had come into my life, and that romances were not all in books. Of course it was an imitation love, and I wonder now why my father and mother worried over it, for it was nothing but a fascination on my part, though desperately serious on the man's.
In the spring I again visited my aunt in eastern Virginia, which visit was broken by another exciting and unexpected trip, this time to Richmond. The equestrian statue of General Robert E. Lee was to be unveiled in Richmond on Decoration Day, I think it was, and his old soldiers had been asked to come and march, wearing the old Confederate grey uniforms. My aunt's husband, General Field, was to go. His old uniform was brushed and pressed and we drove into town three miles to see him off. About the station the crowd was very dense, and special trains, like troop trains, were going through every few minutes with bands playing and flags waving, and every inch of space taken up, and not even standing room left, for it seemed that the entire South was going to pay this tribute to its loved leader. As I have said before, my aunt was the General's second wife, and as young as his children. She became more and more enthusiastic as the trainloads of friends passed—all calling out to us that we had better come along.
After we had waited three hours, a train arrived in which some space was still to be had. When the General was ready to get on, he said; "Well, madam [as he always called my aunt], I wish you were going along/' To the surprise of