Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/549

Rh This gave occasion for a second conversation, this time between the general and his adjutant-general. Upon coming out, he again asked me my name, gave me my pass, and bidding them good evening, I started back to town.

By her invitation I took supper with Mrs. Heironimus, and at sunset rode out of town, showing my pass to the pickets, who permitted me to depart undisturbed.

This adventure is remarkable in the following particulars: A Confederate soldier, armed, and in full uniform, was allowed to enter a town garrisoned by several thousand soldiers, to go to the general's head-quarters, to stay in the town and visit his friends for more than two hours, and then to depart on a written safe conduct to his own command. It is probable that no other soldier had such an adventure except under a flag of truce.

Rocky Mount, La.

Seeing in one of our late numbers the case of young Kirkland's ministering to the wounded, under fire, before the lines at Fredericksburg, so well chronicled by his commander, Major-General J. B. Kershaw, your present correspondent would ask a place in your valuable columns to verify, rather than to entirely vouch for, the incident to be related.

In reading, not long since, a little book entitled "Golden Deeds," written by the distinguished author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, of England, I fell in with the passage given below. It occurs at the close of her spirited narrative of the heroism of the Burghers of Calais.

My object in sending it to you is to ask, Is it true? and what are the full names and particulars?

It is as follows:

"In the summer of 1864 occurred an instance of self-devotion worthy to be recorded with that of Eustache de St. Pierre. The city of Palmyra, in Tennessee, one of the Southern States of America, had been occupied by a Federal army. An officer of this army was assassinated, and, on the cruel and mistaken system of taking reprisals, the general arrested ten of the principal inhabitants and condemned them to be shot, deeming the city responsible for the lives of his officers. One of