thing at all but his quick wit and strong arm, curious mainly, perhaps, to see what would happen. On one occasion he is said to have captured forty-four Union soldiers. He was riding absolutely alone and ran into them taking their ease in a field. Instantly he chose his course. ** Throw down your arms or you are all dead men." ^^ They were green troops and threw down their arms, and Stuart marched the whole squad into camp. When duty forbids a choice adventure, he sighs, as might Don Quixote : ** A scouting party of one hundred and fifty lancers had just passed toward Gettysburg. I re- gretted exceedingly that my march did not admit of the delay necessary to catch them." ^^
I have sometimes asked myself how much of this spirit of romantic adventure, of knight-errantry, as it were, in Stuart was conscious. Did he, like Claverhouse, read Homer and Froissart, and try to realize in modern Vir- ginia the heroic deeds, still more, the heroic spirit, of antique chivalry ? In common with all Southerners, he probably knew the prose and poetry of Scott and dreamed of the plume of Marmion and the lance of Ivanhoe. He must have felt the weight of his name, also, and believed that "James Stuart" might be aptly fitted with valorous adventure, and knightly deeds, and sudden glory. It is extremely interesting to find him writing to Jackson :
- Did you receive the volume of Napoleon and his
Maxims I sent you ? " ^^ I should like to own that volume. And in his newspaper account of Brown's raid he quotes
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