Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/172

 168 "No, no, colonel, you must excuse me; I never drink intoxicating liquors."

"I know that, general," said I, "but though you habitually abstain, as I do myself, from everything of the sort, there are occasions, and this one of them, when a stimulant will do us both good, otherwise I would neither take it myself nor offer it to you. So you must make an exception to your general rule and join me in a toddy to-night."

He again shook his head, but, nevertheless, took the tumbler and began to sip its contents. Presently putting it on the table after having but partly emptied it, he said:

"Colonel, do you know why I habitually abstain from intoxicating drinks?" And, on my replying in the negative, he continued:

"Why, sir, because I like the taste of them, and when I discovered that to be the case I made up my mind at once to do without them altogether."

After this characteristic reason for his temperate habits, he handed me the documents I was to take to Richmond, together with a memorandum of other matters to be attended to there, whereupon, bidding him good-by, I left his room and was soon on the road to Staunton, realizing the discomforts of a midnight ride in the rain, with nothing but the "darkness visible." When I arrived at Staunton, learning that a potion of the Central Railroad between Gordonsville and Richmond had, a day or two before, been torn up by the enemy and that I would, therefore, be obliged to turn off at Charlottesville for Lynchburg, so as to take the Southside Railroad, which would keep me a day or two longer on the route, I telegraphed to the Confederate Secretary of War as follows:

"Jackson in a critical position. Send him all the help you can spare. Am on my way to explain situation, but the Central Railroad being cut, cannot reach you until day after to-morrow."