gentleman. "Any man will be polite to a beautiful young woman, but it
takes a gentleman to show the same respect to a homely old woman" was
the stinging rebuke of a father to his son who failed to remove his hat
in passing a forlorn old woman on the public highway.

The old-field school, the private tutor, the high school, whose
excellence in Virginia I can not praise too much, the college, the
university, led the young mind by easy stages to its full intellectual
maturity.

Nowhere was the principle "_Sana mens in sano corpore_" more
scrupulously taught than in Virginia. The rod and stream, the gun, the
"hounds and horns," the chase, with the music of the pack, the bounding
steed, all lent their ready aid in developing the physical manhood of
the boy. In the pure atmosphere of his country home, amid its broad
fields and virgin forests, contracted houses in narrow streets had no
charms for him. To join the chase was the first promotion to which the
boy looked as evidencing his permanent release from the nursery. The gun
and dog became his constant companions, while "Old Betsey," his father's
trusted double-barreled gun of many years' usage, standing in the
sitting-room corner or hanging on stag-horns or dog-wood forks on the
side of the wall, was the eloquent subject of nightly rehearsals of her
prowess and power in the annual deer hunt "over the mountains." Skill in
horsemanship was essential, and breaking colts was naturally followed by
broken limbs; but manhood found a race of trained horsemen, both
graceful and skillful in the saddle, unexcelled, I dare venture to
assert, by any civilized people. A child of nature, the Virginia boy
communed with her as his mother, and from her purest depths drew the
richest inspirations. To him no mountains were so blue as hers, no
streams so clear, no forests so enchanting, no homes so sweet.