At the appointed time I strolled over
to Dunn's Hill, where General Lee's tent was pitched,
and found General Pendleton ensconced under a magnificent tree,
and a small party of soldiers, with a few ladies from the dwelling near by,
collected about him. In a few moments, General Lee appeared
with his camp chair, and sat down. The services began.
That terrible battery, Number Five, was firing, very slowly,
each report of the great guns making the otherwise profound silence
still more profound. I sat down on the grass and gazed,
with such reverence as I had never given to mortal man before,
upon the grand face of General Lee. He had been greatly fatigued
by loss of sleep.
"As the sermon progressed, and the immortal words of Christian doctrine came
to our hearts and comforted us, sweet influences born of the liberal sunlight
which lay warm upon the grass, of the moving leaves and trembling flowers,
seemed to steal over the General's soul. Presently his eyelids
gradually closed, and he fell gently asleep. Not a muscle of him stirred,
not a nerve of his grand countenance twitched; there was
no drooping of the head, nor bowing of the figure. . . .
As he slumbered so, sitting erect, with arms folded upon his chest,
in an attitude of majestic repose, such as I never saw assumed
by mortal man before; as the large and comfortable word
fell from the preacher's lips; as the lazy cannon of the enemy anon
hurled a screaming shell to within a few hundred yards of where we sat,
as finally a bird flew into a tree overhead and sat and piped
small blissful notes in unearthly contrast with the roar of the war engines;
it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight,
and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic god
sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime
contest of human passion.
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