General Smith was a man trained by military discipline to be instant in
decision and prompt in action. As soon as the doctors informed him
that his son's case required--not wanderings--but a steady residence in
a climate bracing, as well as mild, where the comforts of home could
supplement the healing of nature, he set himself at once to discover a
place which would fill all the requirements. To the old soldier, New
England born and Michigan bred, Virginia appeared a land of sun and
flowers, a country well-nigh tropical in the softness of its climate,
and the fervor of its heat. The doctors recommended Florida, or South
Carolina, as in duty bound, and to the suggestion of Virginia yielded
only a dubious consent; it was very far _north_, they said, but still
it might do. To the general, it seemed very far _south_, and he was
certain it would do.

In the old time, he remembered, when he was in lower Virginia with
McClellan, he had reveled in the softness, the delight of that, to him,
marvelous climate. He had found the nights so sweet; the air,
vitalized with the breath of old ocean, so invigorating, the heat at
noonday so dry, and the coolness at evening so refreshing. There were
pines, too; old fields of low scrub, and some forests of the nobler
sort; that would be the thing for Warner. He remembered how, as he sat
in the tent door, the breeze scented with resinous odors used to come
to him, and how, strong man though he was, he had felt as he drew it
into his lungs that it did him good.

In those old campaigning days, the fancy had been born in him that some
time in the future he would like to return and make his home here,
where "amorous ocean wooed a gracious land"--that when his fighting
days were over, and the retired list lengthened by his name, it would