56 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
weapons and called for their horses, panic-stricken fathers and mothers endeavored to collect around them their bewildered children, while the young ladies ran to and fro in most admired despair. General Stuart maintained his accustomed coolness and composure. Our horses were immediately saddled, and in less than five min- utes we were in rapid gallop to the front." ^2 oh, what a life!
You divine that with such a temperament Stuart would love women. So he did. Not that he let them interfere with duty. He would have heartily accepted the pro- found doctrine of Enobarbus in regard to the fair : "It were pity to cast them away for nothing ; yet between them and a great cause they should be esteemed as nothing." Stuart arrested hundreds of ladies, says his biographer, and remained inexorable to their petitions. Cooke's charming account of one of these arrests should be read in full : how the fair captives first raved, and then listened, and then laughed, and then were charmed by the mellifluous Sweeney and the persuasive general, and at last departed with kissed hands and kindly hearts, leaving Stuart to explain to his puzzled aide, who inquired why he took so much pains : " Don't you understand ? When those ladies arrived they were mad enough with me to bite my head off, and I determined to put them in good humor before they left me." ^^
But Cooke dresses his viands. I prefer the following taste of Stuart and girls and duty, as we get it unspiced
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