her suspicions that the little girl had whooping cough, adding the warning: "So you hyer me, ole Missus, you better stop she and li'l Missus mingulatin' wid one anudder." The diagnosis proving correct, my grandmother stopped our "mingulatin'" by taking me to Old Point Comfort to visit her friend, Mrs. Boykin, a sister of Mr. John Y. Mason. At first I was troubled about my only girl playmate; white girl, I mean, for Mary Frances and Arabella, my little colored foster sisters, had been my maids and playmates all my life and I was strongly attached to them, like a princess dispensing laws and giving them their parts to play in the drama of child-life. Only a Southern child can understand these relations and the sentiments born of them.
The charms of Old Point soon dispelled my grief and I was happy, being a favorite not only with the children but with the older guests, who found me useful in amusing the little ones, to whom I taught the fancy steps I had learned from my dancing-master and the original songs and dances of the negroes on the plantation. Alas! in due course of time I developed whooping cough and was thrust into the gulf of social ostracism. Instead of the accustomed hearty welcome, I was greeted with, "Run away, little girl, my little children cannot play with you now." I was a sensitive child, and this sudden change was like a January freeze in midsummer, but I soon discovered that my mammy's advice, "Ef you kyan't be happy den be happy as you kin be," strictly followed, insured contentment in the long run. She pointed out the advantage of being sociable with myself, in that I should have no interference from others, but warned me to be careful not to play too long at one game or I would surely have "one of dem tur'ble low-sperited spells yo' gramma calls 'on yo' ear,'" the latter phrase being mammy's version of "ennui."
Before I had reached this danger-point fate brought me a companion who more than filled the vacancy left by the defection of my former playmates. I had seen a solitary officer on the sands, reading, or looking at the ships as they came and went, or watching the waves as they dashed to sudden death against the shore. He figured in my imagination as the "Good Prince" in the fairy stories my grandmother told me.
He did not look as tall as the men of my family, but he carried himself so erectly and walked with such soldierly dignity that I was sure that any "Good Prince" might have envied him his stately appearance. I noted that his hair, which hung in shining waves almost to his shoulders, was the same color as my own and I pulled one of my curls around to look at it and make sure of the accuracy of the comparison. Even at that early age I had a liking for dainty hands and feet and I noticed his small feet as he paced the sands and the delicate hand that was raised to his cap in salute to an officer who passed. The grace of his hands was well set off by the cambric ruffles that edged his sleeves. My childish eyes took in the neatness and perfect fit of his attire which set off his distinguished form. I thought him quite the handsomest soldier I had ever seen, and was surprised one day to hear somebody say that he had fought in the Mexican war. It seemed impossible to me. How could anyone so immaculate and so beautiful to look upon have really fought and killed people? I had never been near enough to see his eyes, but imagined that they must be brilliant stars like those to which I said good-night just before I cuddled down to invite sweet dreams.
My attention would probably not have been drawn so particularly to my soldier, for I had already begun to call him my soldier, had he been surrounded by dancing, chattering companions and formed a part of the gay life of Old Point Comfort. I should have observed him only as a brilliant feature of the cruel world that had chosen to condemn me to exile. But in his solitude I felt that we were comrades in sad experience. I knew of only one calamity that could so set apart a human being from his fellow creatures as to bar him from association with his kind. The symptoms were unmistakable and I at once recognized the melancholy officer as a co-victim of whooping cough and gave him the tender pity of one who knew all about his misfortune.
One morning I was skipping along, chattering as usual, inquiring about the little girl whose spiteful tongue had been pulled out by a springbok, asking if the bluejay really did carry tales to the devil, and other queries pertinent to my stage of development, when my grandmother stopped to speak to a friend. I rambled on until I came to a spreading umbrella under which my soldier lay on the sands reading. He was so absorbed in his book that he did not see me till I crawled under the umbrella and looked into his face with, I suppose, all the sympathy that I felt and asked him anxiously if he had the whooping cough, telling him of my mammy's infallible remedy for that malady and assuring him of her willingness to apply it to his case. Then he looked at me, courteously raising his cap and smiling, and I saw that his eyes were gray, shot with changeful lights, twinkling blue with mirthfulness as he gave me a polite good morning. This recalled me to a realization of the demands of good society and I got up and curtsied, wishing him "Good morning" and inquiring concerning his health. He arose and with knightly grace returned my greeting, pointing to a seat for me on the sand, and resumed his own place. Returning to the query with which I had opened the interview he asked why I had taken him for a victim of so juvenile an ailment. I feelingly related my own experience and dwelt upon the oppressive isolation of one so afflicted and said that as he did not associate with other officers nor dance with young ladies and had to swim and read all by himself, as I did, I thought it must be because he was suffering from the same misfortune as that which had deprived me of social pleasures.
He looked at me with a shade of sadness in his face and then I saw that his eyes could be very dark, like the sky sometimes at night when the moon had gone to bed and the stars were only little shimmery specks of light in the darkness piled velvety soft. He told me that he did not have the whooping cough but he had something worse, a broken heart, and he did not like to make others sad with his sorrow.
I had never seen a broken heart, but had some acquaintance with articles that had come to grief in the kitchen and had been restored to pristine wholeness by clever manipulation. I comforted him with the assurance that broken hearts did not signify anything of importance; my mammy could mend them with glue and boil them in milk so you couldn't even see the cracks in them, as she had done with my grandmother's sugar bowl. "How did you break your heart?" I inquired sympathetically. He replied that God broke it when He took from him his loved ones and left him so lonely. In return for his confidence I promised to comfort him for his losses and to be his little girl now and his wife just as soon as I was grown up to be a lady.
He took a ring from his guard-chain and put it on my finger and gave me a tiny gold heart inscribed with "Sally," which had been the name of one of his loved ones, and I crept out from under the umbrella pledged to Lieutenant George E. Pickett of the United States Army. Then and to the end he was my soldier, and always when we were alone I called him "Soldier." I still have the ring and heart, and am indebted for this reminiscence to the little red memorandum book which he gave me years after, when he was General George E. Pickett, of the Confederate Army.
"Come again, little fairy," he said as I was leaving him to the uninterrupted perusal of his book. Just then my grandmother came up, with apologies for my intrusion upon a stranger, and the explanation that my nurse had been sent to the Fort with a note for Lieutenant Pickett, the son of one of her old friends, asking the pleasure of his company to dinner. My new-found friend introduced himself as the officer in question, expressing his pleasure in the meeting and assuring her that my visit had been a charming episode in a monotonous waste of loneliness. I explained:
"I am his little girl now already and am going to be his wife as soon as I am grown up to be a lady."
"Yes, it has all been arranged," he laughed.
From that time loneliness was at an end for me. My soldier had no fear of contagion, assuring me when I asked him if he was too big to have whooping cough that it was a privilege of youth and diminutiveness. We built pine bark yachts and sailboats and steamers and sailed them on the lakes we made by damming up the waves that dashed highest on the shore. The waves of our lakes washed the coasts of every country on the map and our stately ships brought back to us rich cargoes from all the countries of the world. We built forts and garrisoned them with men as brave as those who fell with Leonidas in the great battle of which my soldier told me as we worked. Upon the sea-wall he placed a flag that fluttered defiance to the enemy-ocean as the waves dashed up to our embattled ramparts and rolled back defeated. It was my first introduction to the Star-Spangled Banner and the red and white stripes and star-gemmed sky impressed me as very beautiful. In those days the Stars and