My Day: Reminiscences of a Long Life

Washington was like a great village in the days of President Pierce and President Buchanan. My own pride in the federal city was such that my heart would swell within me at ever...

Early in the winter I had a visit from a beautiful young lady, an orphan daughter of a rear admiral of whom I had known in former days. She had found herself temporarily embarra...

Early in June the two armies of Grant and Lee confronted each other at Petersburg. My dear general had bidden a silent and most sad farewell to his little family and gone forth...

In 1877 the leading citizens of Brooklyn invited General Pryor to deliver an address at the Academy of Music on Decoration Day. This was an opportunity he had long desired, and...

The morning of November 29, 1864, found me comfortably seated at my breakfast table with my little boys and my small brother, Campbell Pryor. My venerable father, Dr. Pryor, had...

In the colony escaped from the shells and huddled together around General Lee were two very humble poor women who often visited me. One of them was the proud owner of a cow, "Mo...

In the summer of 1888 yellow fever appeared in Florida and raged with peculiar violence in Jacksonville. Early in September I received a letter inviting me to meet a number of l...

No house in Virginia was more noted for hospitality than my uncle's. I remember an ever coming and going procession of Taylors, Pendletons, Flemings, Fontaines, Pleasants, etc....

In March my husband wrote a letter of warm congratulation upon my success in gathering all our children together, and sent me a sum to be used in sending them to school. That I...

On the 13th of August, 1862, McClellan abandoned his camp at Harrison's Landing and retired to Fortress Monroe. General Lee withdrew all his troops from Richmond but two compani...

My condition during the military occupation of Petersburg was extremely unpleasant. I was alone with my children when General Sheridan demanded my house for an adjutant's office...

The day drew near when the husband and father of our little family was to be restored to his own home and his own people. Paroled, and not yet exchanged, we could hope for a bri...

He did win! In July he received his fee! Within two weeks I had wound up all my small affairs in Petersburg, kissed "good-by" to my tearful little band of music scholars, sent m...

Early in the spring of 1868 we removed to Brooklyn Heights near the Ferry, much nearer my husband's office in Liberty Street. New York had not then stretched an arm across East...

"I had intended leaving here yesterday, but our friend, General Warren, invited me for dinner Sunday. I find him in a handsome house in a fashionable quarter of the city. Mrs. W...

I was peacefully enjoying a cup of tea with Mrs. Arnold Harris, when her father, old General Armstrong, entered, and brought me the astounding news that my husband had resigned...

As for myself, when my general was no longer needed on the Blackwater, the camp chest and I and the little boys took the road again. We wandered from place to place, and at last...

The year after my fifteenth birthday was destined to be an eventful one to me. In May of that year I wrote a letter to my aunt, Mrs. Izard Bacon Rice, who lived at "The Oaks" in...

The years which had brought me such interesting work were full years also to my dear general. In June, 1888, he delivered an address to the graduating class at the Albany Law Sc...

The "overt act," for which everybody looked, had been really the reënforcement by federal troops of the fort in Charleston harbor. When Fort Sumter was reduced by Beauregard, "t...

The circle that finally gathered around the fireside in the little library at 157 Willow Street was long remembered by some of the men who made it brilliant. John G. Saxe, whom...

A bit of paper, yellow and crumbling from age, has recently been sent to me by the son of an old Charlottesville friend. The tiny scrap has survived the vicissitudes of fifty-on...

Mr. Greeley had at first opposed the Civil War. He had suffered great mental distress at its approach. He labored with all his might to prevent a resort to arms—but, when this w...

Many of the best types of purely American society could have been found in the forties in the towns of the country. Now everybody, high and low, rich and poor, seeks a home in t...

William Walker, the "Grey-eyed Man of Destiny," who was in 1854 more talked about than any other man in the country, was our guest for several days in Richmond. Whether he came...

The general impression I retain of the world of my childhood is of gardens—gardens everywhere; abloom with roses, lilies, violets, jonquils, flowering almond-trees which never f...

November found us at the end of a long, dull season. No business had come into the little law-office—the centre of all our hopes. We had made no friends among our neighbors, to...

The society of Charlottesville in the forties was composed of a few families of early residents and of the professors at the University. Governor Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy i...

In October, 1883, General Pryor was sent to England, as counsel to defend Patrick O'Donnell, who had been indicted for the murder of James Carey, and was now imprisoned in Londo...

Something akin to the tulip mania of Holland possessed the Southern country in the early thirties. The _Morus multicaulis_, upon the leaves of which the silkworm feeds, can be p...

Gordon and I had the privilege of seeing Charlotte Cushman when, no longer able to act in the plays in which she had so distinguished herself, she gave a reading at one of the l...

Mr. Fillmore was a fine type of the kind of man Americans love to raise to the highest office in their gift. He had not been a mill boy, nor lived in a log-cabin, nor split rail...

Everybody was willing at the time of the celebration to sit for two entire days on rude seats under the April sun while the evidences of the power and achievements of our great...

We had the good fortune to secure pleasant rooms in the large boarding-house of Mrs. Tully Wise, sister of Henry A. Wise of Virginia. Mrs. Wise had a number of agreeable people...

Masters were found in a preparatory school for my home education. Happy to escape from the schoolroom, I worked as never maiden worked before, loving my summer desk in the apple...

We found it almost impossible to take up our lives again. All the cords binding us to the past were severed, beyond the hope of reunion. We sat silently looking out on a landsca...

I soon found that two of my children were old enough to pine for something more than physical comfort. They did not propose to live by bread alone. The appealing eyes of our dau...

In the autumn of 1900 a strange disaster befell the beautiful city of Galveston. A mighty wave lifted its crest far out at sea and marched straight on until it engulfed the city...

Two years after our marriage, my husband was seriously ill from an affection of the throat, and consulted Dr. Green, an eminent specialist of Philadelphia. He was ordered to a w...

I am constrained to encourage a possible reader by assuring him that I have no intention whatever of writing strictly an autobiography. Nothing in myself nor in my life would wa...

While these sad days and nights of heaviness hung over us, we were painfully conscious that some of our own people misunderstood my husband's position in New York. Our having le...

When it was found that a refined and intelligent society was inclined to crystallize around the court green of Albemarle County, it became imperative to choose a fitting name fo...

I had a childless aunt, who annually came up from her home in Hanover to spend part of the summer with my parents and my grandfather. She begged me of my mother for a visit, mea...