invader."

On Thursday of Holy Week, April 22, 1886, the weary life drifted out
upon the calm sea of Eternal Peace.




"BACON AND GREENS"

DR. GEORGE WILLIAM BAGBY


We, the general and I, were the first to be informed of the supernal
qualities of bacon and greens. All Virginians were aware of the prime
importance of this necessary feature of an Old Dominion dinner, but
that "a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens"
was unknown to us until the discoverer of that ethnological fact. Dr.
George William Bagby, read us his lecture on these cheerful
comestibles. We were the first to see the frost that "lies heavy on
the palings and tips with silver the tops of the butter-bean poles,
where the sere and yellow pods are chattering in the chilly breeze."

In the early days after the war Dr. Bagby had a pleasant habit of
dropping into our rooms at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, and as soon
as the ink was dry on that combination of humor and pathos and wisdom
to which he gave the classic title of "Bacon and Greens" he brought it
and read it to us. I can still follow the pleasant ramble on which he
took us in fancy through a plantation road, the innumerable delights
along the way never to be appreciated to their full extent by any but