left the earthly home.

The Professor of Latin in the Virginia Military Institute was Major
J.T.L. Preston, grandson of Edmund Randolph. He was a man of great
dignity of character and manner and of unusual scholarship. Though
Margaret Junkin had at times requested her nearest of kin to seclude
her in an asylum for the insane should she ever manifest a tendency to
marry a widower with children, she proceeded quite calmly and with
reason apparently unclouded, to fall in love with and marry Professor
Preston, notwithstanding his possession of seven charming and amiable
sons and daughters left over from a former congenial marriage. She
proved a most devoted mother to her large family, who returned her
affection in full measure. A volume of her poetry is dedicated to her
eldest stepdaughter who, after the death of Margaret, was her most
loving and appreciative biographer. To her great sorrow, one of the
sons was killed in battle.

The marriage was followed by a visit to "Oakland" on the James River,
the home of Major Preston's sister, Mrs. William Armstead Cocke, where
at first the ornately dignified style of living rather dazed the bride
accustomed as she had been to the simplicity of a home in which the
only luxury was in giving help to others. Colonel William C. Preston,
the eloquent South Carolina orator, met the "little red-headed Yankee"
with distinct aversion to her "want of style and presence," but was
soon heard to declare with enthusiastic admiration that she was "an
encyclopedia in small print." Here among ancestral trees she found
inspiration and in the society of her new sister she enjoyed the most
delightful soul companionship.

In the early years of her married life writing was laid aside while