Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 09.djvu/50

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"18 February, 1817.

"I feel confident, sir, you would not mistake my motives in declining to engage, at a stipulated price, an agent to procure the passage of a law on which it might become my duty to vote; and certainly I did not misconceive yours in applying to me on the subject. I trust we shall be disposed to duly appreciate the motives of each other, notwithstanding there may be shades of difference in the opinions we entertain on the same subject."

My first recollection of Stonewall Jackson is when I was a college-boy at Lexington, Va., in the fall of 1860. I am not able to say whether it was the peculiar carriage of the stiff, military-looking Institute professor, who daily passed the college grounds, that was of chief interest to the students of Washington College, or whether the stories told of daring and reckless courage in his early military life invested him with a halo of romance and made him an object of hero-worship in their youthful minds. Whatever the cause, the solid tramp of Major Jackson on the plank-walk would be the signal to stop all games or mirth that may have been in progress on the college campus until he had passed. The stiff, stolid-looking man would pass on, turning his head neither to the right or left, but a single touch of his cap was the silent recognition given of the deferential respect shown by the boys.

"Old Jack," as he was familiarly called by cadets and students, was so plain in manner and attire, there was so little effort at show, his feet were so large and his arms and hands fastened to his body in such an awkward shape, that the cadets didn't take much pride in him as a professor. They feared him in the lecture-room, they paid the strictest deference to him on parade, but in showing a stranger the sights about the Institute a cadet was never known to point out "Old Jack" as one