Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/24

 18 recorded of the baby was his great terror at the sight of a very ugly lady, a visitor of his mother's. "Missis, he didn't know if she was folks," was his nurse's explanation when his screams had drawn attention to her charge. When only one year of age he was inoculated, having been sent with his nurse to a public hospital, as the custom then was in Virginia. In due time he passed safely and without disfiguring marks through the dangers of varioloid. He used to relate to us that his mother had said that one of the happiest moments of her life was when her spool of cotton fell from her lap, her little Thomas, then eighteen months old, picked it up and handed it to her. When he was two years old his brother, Philip Augustine Lee, was born, and, two years later, his sister, Martha Burwell. This little flock were taught their letters and to read by a favorite servant, the daughter of their mother's maid. Thomas had great difficulty in remembering one of the letters. Finally, a cake was promised, all for himself, if he would try still harder. So, all day he went about the house repeating "G,G," and the next day, when lesson hour came, his mother put his cake before him as fairly earned.

My father's recollections of his father were very distinct, considering that he died in the forty-third year of his age, when his son Thomas had only attained the tender age of eight years. The memory of this father was ever a most cherished one, and his children remember the almost pathetic manner in which in his own old age he lamented the untimely cutting off of that young life and brilliant career. Benjamin Dabney was at the head of the bar in King and Queen County, and was engaged by the British government to settle British claims. In nearly every case that came to trial in his county he was engaged as counsel on one side. He was considered by his brethren in his profession to be the most learned man in the law in his section. The judge who at that time sat on the bench appealed to him when doubtful on any legal point, saying that Mr. Dabney knew the law, and there was no need to look into