The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe by James Kendall Hosmer
page 45 of 258 (17%)
page 45 of 258 (17%)
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a brilliant, handsome young Irishman, bred a Catholic, who under the
influence of Moncure D. Conway had come out as a Unitarian and left his Washington home for a radical environment in the North. He was brilliant and witty with small capacity or taste for persistent plodding, but forever hitting effectively on the spur of the moment. He was as chivalrous as a palladin and went to his early grave light-hearted, as part of the day's work which must not be shirked. I have his image vividly as he laughed and joked in our last interview. "Dress-parade at six o'clock; come over and see the dress-paradoes!" He fell wounded at Chancellorsville, and while being carried off the field was struck a second time as he lay on the stretcher, and so he passed. There were fine fellows, too, in those days who stood on the other side: McKim, President of the Hasty Pudding Club, who fell in Virginia; W.H.F. Lee, who was in the Law School and whom I recall as a stalwart athlete rowing on the Charles. It helped me much a few years ago when I visited many Southern battle-fields that I could tell old Confederates "Rooney" Lee and I had in our youth been college mates. My classmate J.B. Clark of Mississippi was a graceful magnetic fellow who had small basis of scholarship, perhaps, but a marked power for effective utterance. He fascinated us by his warm Southern fluency, and we gave him at last the highest distinction we could confer, the class oration. He left us then and we did not see him for fifty years. He enlisted in the 21st Mississippi and passed through the roughest hardships and perils. We felt afterwards that he held coldly aloof from us through long years. At our jubilee, however, he came back wrinkled and white-haired, but quite recognisable as the fascinating boy of fifty years before. He had a long and good record behind him as an officer of the University of Texas, and we gave him reason to think |
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