After the Civil War many offers of places of honor and fame came to
General Robert E. Lee. He refused them all, says Thomas Nelson Page, in
his biography of the soldier. The only position which he finally did
accept, was the presidency of Washington College,--now Washington and
Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia, with a small salary.
On one of these occasions, Lee was approached with the tender of the
presidency of an insurance company, at a salary of fifty thousand
dollars a year. He declined it, saying that it was work with which he
was not familiar.
"But, general," said the representative of the insurance company, "you
will not be expected to do any work. What we wish, is the use of your
name."
"Do you not think," said General Lee, "that if my name is worth fifty
thousand dollars a year, I ought to be very careful about taking care of
it?"
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Colonel Chesney, of the British Army, said of R. E. Lee: "The day will
come when the evil passions of the great civil war will sleep in
oblivion, and the North and South do justice to each other's motives,
and forget each other's wrongs. Then history will speak with clear voice
of the deeds done on either side, and the citizens of the whole Union do
justice to the memories of the dead, and place above all others the name
of the great Southern chief. In strategy, mighty; in battle, terrible;
in adversity, as in prosperity, a hero indeed; with the simple devotion
to duty and the rare purity of the ideal Christian Knight,--he joined
all the kingly qualities of a leader of men. It is a wondrous future
indeed that lies before America; but in her annals of the years to come,
as in those of the past, there will be found few names that can rival in
unsullied lustre that of the heroic defender of his native
Virginia,--Robert Edward Lee."
_From "Lee of Virginia_,"
--_By Edward Jennings Lee, M. D._
1105
He that visits the sick, in the hope of a legacy, I look upon him in
this to be no better than a raven, that watches a weak sheep only to
peck out the eyes of it.
--_Seneca._
1106
Leisure is sweet to those who have earned it, but burdensome to those
who get it for nothing.
1107
Full oft have letters caused the writers
To regret the day they were inditers.
1108
Letters which are sometimes warmly sealed, are often but coldly opened.
--_Richter._
1109