He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of his residence, a pleasant old-fashioned brick house at the corner of York and Yarmouth Streets—­a slender man, not very tall, I judged (though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his seventy-seven years.  Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner, delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual youthfulness.  Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign of it is usually to be read in the eyes.  Colonel Taylor’s keen, dark, observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though, indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.

Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because she had not yet forgiven the “Yankees” for their sins) was also present:  a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.

And why not?  Do not women remember some things longer than men remember them?  Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement?

Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his country, a commander in the United States Navy.  When the war broke out Miss Saunders, wishing to serve the Confederate Government, became a clerk in the Surgeon General’s office, at Richmond, and there she remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military Institute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the general’s aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee.

On April 2, 1865, when Lee’s gallant but fast dwindling army, short of supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant—­then the colonel went to his commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of going to Richmond and being married.  He tells the story in his exceedingly interesting and valuable book, “General Lee—­His Campaigns in Virginia”: