Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/168

 felt himself to be competent to cope with and overcome them, as I shall now proceed to relate.

Early in the afternoon of the Friday above mentioned, May 30th, the general and his staff—of which I was then a member—were on a hill near Halltown, to the right of the turnpike, where one of our batteries was engaged in an artillery duel with some heavy guns of the enemy that were posted on an eminence in the direction of Bolivar Heights. After noting for some time the effects of the firing he dismounted from the old sorrel—his favorite war horse—and seating himself on the ground at the foot of a large tree, immediately in rear of the battery, he presently assumed a more recumbent attitude and went to sleep.

As he laid there on his back with his arms folded over his breast, his feet crossed like those of a crusader's effigy and his head turned aside sufficiently to show his face in profile, I could not resist the temptation to make a sketch of him and was busily engaged with my pencil when, on looking up, I met his eyes fixed full upon me. Extending his hand for the drawing, he said with a smile: "Let me see what you have been doing here," and on my handing him the sketch he remarked: "'My hardest tasks at West Point were the drawing lessons, and I never could do anything in that line to satisfy myself," "or, indeed," he added, laughingly, "anybody else."

"But, colonel," he continued, after a pause, "I have some harder work than this for you to do, and if you'll sit down here, now, I'll tell you what it is."

On placing myself by his side, he said: "I want you to go to Richmond for me. I must have reinforcements. You can explain to them down there what the situation is here. Get as many men as can be spared, and I'd like you, if you please, to go as soon as you can." After expressing to him my readiness to go at once and to do what I could to have his force increased.