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marched, and fought under his command; to the faultless chieftain to whose exalted character, transcendent abilities, and well-nigh unerring judgment he yielded the utmost devotion of his great soul, Robert E. Lee, who returned that affection and confidence in unstinted measure; to none of these was Stonewall Jackson ever grotesque.

Whatever his peculiarities, and he had some which were marked, they were no more than idiosyncrasies which are sometimes the companions of genius and of great natures, and no more impaired the dignity and true greatness of the man than does the foam upon the limpid waters of the rapidly moving river lessen its usefulness or its loveliness as it flows in matchless beauty to the sea.

We learn from his biographers that from his childhood and on through his boyhood and youth he exhibited those qualities of courage, indomitable strength of will, self-respecting decision of character, truthfulness, frankness, unfaltering faith, and a high sense of honor, which characterized his conduct throughout his adult life, and were afterwards illustrated upon fields of action which his genius has made immortal.

From his very boyhood his life was dominated by a sense of duty to others and duty to himself. From those early years he was animated by a supreme purpose "to make himself the very greatest of which he was capable," and he placed no very circumscribed limits upon those capabilities.

Some notion of his extraordinary self-discipline and of the ideals which then actuated him is afforded by the admirable code of maxims and rules of conduct which, while a cadet at West Point, he compiled for his own guidance.

Of these maxims the following was conspicuous and most characteristic: